Why is 1% a good target ?

[Applewood]

The wisdom around here seems to be that a conversion rate of 1% is something to aim for, and if you achieve it, then you can aim for the dizzy heights of 2%.

Can someone explain to me why conversions rates are that crap ?

Assume your game is well polished, full of depth, delivers everything the punter might expect plus a bit more, is named to indicate what it is, etc. In short, there is *nothing* wrong with it and it's damn good.

So why does only 1 person in 100 downloaders actually buy it? Is it really just tightwads looking for demos to play for an hour?

[cliffski]

My conversion rate is much higher than that. I think the 1% rate is more common for match3 and puzzle games.
From observing the rates on all my games I have come to the conclusion that people liking your game doesnt mean they will buy it. As a consumer I buy if

1) I enjoy your game
and
2) I think its worth the money

A lot of people do well on 1) and bad on 2). Have a look at the budget games you can get for $20. These are last years almost-hits with million dollar budgets. If your game isn't providing as much perceived value, you may be in trouble. If you are doing an RPG game for $20 in a fantasy setting, it better be either amazingly original, or have similar production values to Baldurs Gate. A lot of people who like RPGs might ty your game, maybe even enjoy it, but when they look at it vs Baldurs Gate, you wont get a sale even if (and this is the killer) they already own BG, and want a new game. People will think you are ripping them off.

The worst bit is, that if you drop your price much lower, people will consider the game to be shovelware and may not even try it.

So the solution, if you ask me is to:
1) spend some money and make your game VERY high production value
2) serve a niche nobody else bothers with or
3) be damned original,

This is all just my opinion.

[Artinum]

About 1% is fairly typical in a lot of sales - especially mail order. Basically your potential customers are deeply lazy and uninterested and so only a very small number will respond to your adverts. If you get 1%, you've got a comparitively good result. Higher rates are possible, especially if you can target a more specific market. Previous customers, for instance, are more likely to buy from you.

[ThomasW]

We sell our game through five different channels and get vastly different conversion rates from each of them. The conversion rates we get are 1.1%, 3.2%, 5.4%, 22.5% and 27%.

Perhaps the most noticeable affect on conversion rate in our data comes from the number of downloads from each source. When ordered that way the conversion rates go exactly from the lowest (for the most downloads) to the highest (for the least downloads). I've been thinking that the sources that provide the most downloads have the most generic exposure for our game (from being on the front page of a portal displayed to all users, or on our own site linked to by all the press releases), and so while lots of people see it and decide to take advantage of a free trial, very few of those are specifically interested in the game and don't follow through with a purchase.

The sources that have less downloads though only really offer our game in a targetted way (you've got to be looking for the specific genre before you see it). So there are a lot less downloads, but the people that do download it are much more likely to be specifically interested in it and evaluating it for purchase, rather than just downloading it for a bit of free entertainment.

Something that further follows this trend is that getting more general exposure through a given source (such as being mentioned in a newsletter or getting added to the front page) increases our downloads dramatically but reduces our conversion rate significantly.

Our plan is to just make the best demo versions we can and to then focus on pushing them both to a general audience for wider exposure and to a targetted one for more sales.

[svero]

I guess the others have said it more or less, but it's really all about targeting. I've seen conversion rates anywhere from .01% to 20% depending on the audience and how well targeted it was.

Those conversion rates you mentioned are average rates for selling "some random game" to an almost "totally general download" audience. Why is the audience often not well targeted? It's because you're trying to get random downloads off the net by gorilla marketing often. But it definitely depends on your game. If your game is niche enough you can target your ads squarely at your target audience and do a lot better. I'd say 1% is an ok conversion for a general non targeted audience for a mass market try to please as many people as possible product.

[Applewood]

Thanks guys - some interesting explanations.

The question I still have though, is which is better for income? I'd expect a targetted marketing campaign to yield good results - that's kinda the point of them. What I still don't understand though is if your game's is called "arkanoid 2006", is seriously good, and it gets a million downloads from a google ad keyword of "breakout". Why doesn't it get half a million sales ? If someone takes the trouble to find it and download it, why won't they buy it ?

I've got no dog in this race btw, I'm just trying to get a feeling of why the number of downloads is nowhere near the number of sales, in the general case. In a shop, "trials" to downloads = 100% and the stuff is often site unseen.

[woo]

I can't really think of any other way of putting it - the demo model is broken and needs serious fixing. Sure, there are different audiences that would probably buy your game even without a demo. But that population is much smaller, and you are moving yourself further into a niche that will usually lead to lower overall sales. See, if "a general audience plays a random demo" and only 1 out of 100 thinks that the remaining content is worth $20, then something is wrong.

I'm partial, as we are just now starting to talk about our competing model - Friends Play Free (http://friendsplayfree.com) - but the only way I see this working is that you simply change the value equation. You give more to your customers for that same $20. Some people think that more content and more modes and more levels are the way to give more to their customers, but it's not the only way. Friends Play Free is all about value. When you buy the game, you can play it (and by "it" I mean the entire online experience, not some crippled mode or one or two levels) with your friends online, without them ever having to buy the game... If they want to play the game when you're not around, or if they want to play with their other friends, then they will buy the game. If there's any doubt about that, look at games like Diablo and StarCraft that did something similar with "spawning" years ago.

Check out the announcement and the prior posts on the subject and if you have any questions, just let me know. We see "Friends Play Free" as being a lot bigger than just one or two of our games. It's something that stretches to a wide variety of genres and provides for opportunities that just don't exist today for a large number of indie developers. If you're interested in talking about what we are doing, please drop me at line at andrew@theoreticalgames.com

Thanks!
-Andrew
http://theoreticalgames.com

[DFG]

Not everyone who downloads your game is a prospective buyer. Kids, foreign traffic, and those who do not have credit cards mess up the conversion rate :)

[Jonas]

Yep, you do have a point Applewood and it seems like it should be that simple.

I guess it really boils down to competition, and not just from other game makers in your Genre:

To some folks just the time they spend downloading your game is payment enough in their minds. (competing with the value proposition in the consumers mind)

This Value proposition continues to the effort it takes to pay. When we 1st started (back in the stone age) we had to have folks send us checks. WAY WAY to much work for the customer. Accepting Credit Cards allowed for a big jump in sales. Now a days accepting CCs kinda a mute point, but the concept of lowering the effort cost isn't.

The perceived risk to them. They don't want to get burned on the deal, this is where money Back guarantees etc come into play to help a bit.

To some the features you add just aren't compelling or weren't a good fit. (competing with their preconceptions of better)

Did they know the cost up front? For the 50% thing to work, you would have to assume that all of those folks we're looking to buy a game, and pay what you want them too. Even if you didn't charge any money, heck even if you gave them money, you wouldn't get a 100% conversion on your downloads.

But yeah if you have 100% eager buyers with money they are just dieing to spend looking for exactly that game you are offering, 50% seems entirely doable. It's just hard to find folks THAT perfect.

You of course could do an exit poll on your downloaders. Ask them why they didn't care to purchase.

[Applewood]

The competition angle is why I went for 50% instead of 100%. Maybe they prefer my competitors version, can't do much about that - it's the nature of commerce. But, I would've expected my example customer to buy one or the other - he's now spent even more time downloading and trying two games, if he really likes both, it seems silly to not buy at least one of them.

I know I'm being naieve expecting everyone who downloads and likes to bean up, but I still can't believe 1 in 100 should be any more realistic. I guess I'm just not the demographic here, as I can't imagine looking for a game, downloading it, being impressed by it and then not paying for it!

Without the benefit of others' experience, if someone asked me what a sensible target CR was, Id've guessed about 10-25% for puzzlers and lightweight stuff, and 50 or more for bigger games with bigger perceived value (big FPS games with lots of levels etc)
(This is of course assuming that the quality is good, the price is reasonable and you're "best in class".)

I also know that because I can't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't so :)

I quite like the boardgame style value add, and I also think there's a lot to be said for picking the right sort of game where there can be a good demo but still lots more extra stuff to get for the 20 bucks. RTS, FPS etc can demo a couple of maps but have 50 more waiting and more guns. A match-3 game isn't going to get better at all is it - just go download another one and have a free hour on that instead!

I would *seriously* love to do a full AAA style isometric RTS game. I've played them all to death and reckon I've got enough new ideas to justify writing my own. Trouble is, I'm not sure I could sell any, especially not for 1%

[KNau]

A download is essentially like someone picking up a game box off the shelf in Electronics Boutique. If you counted every time people picked up a box and put it back down before a game actually gets sold, you'd have something approximates the conversion rate of a downloadable game.

Downloaders are just browsers IMHO - expensive browsers who cost you bandwidth. So maybe there is some truth to the idea that the demo model is broken. It takes a lot of bandwidth to sell one game.

[Davaris]

I'm considering getting rid of my downloadable demo altogether and displaying animated gifs of game play. It wouldn't work if you were depending on portals, but it might work if you were doing your own promotion.

[Anthony Flack]

A download is essentially like someone picking up a game box off the shelf in Electronics Boutique. If you counted every time people picked up a box and put it back down before a game actually gets sold, you'd have something approximates the conversion rate of a downloadable game.

But what do you get when you pick up the box? Not a playable demo. You get a couple of paragraphs of info and some screenshots. Sounds more like a visit to your website.

A demo is different, and more tricky - because it satisfies your curiosity before you hand over any money. And curiosity is one of the big things that drive a sale.

[KNau]

In that case, I guess you're right. A conversion rate in the 1% area would either mean you're not targetted well enough or there's something wrong with your game. Maybe a better marketing tactic would be to weed out the customers who are just browsing - games by invitation only?

If you are hitting the right audience with the right product (at the right price) then maybe conversion rates should be in the double-digits. But then we go back into the discussion of niche products since you can't really "target" the middle-of-the-road.

Didn't the mighty Pavlina try removing demos of his games at one point?

[woo]

Removing the demos completely for downloadable pc games doesn't seem like a great resolution to the problem. If you look at other industries - whether it's sports to board games or collectible card games, you need to have some (usually free) exposure to it before you go out and buy it yourself. Normally the exposure is from your peers, and there's even sometimes a sense of peer pressure reinforcing your desire to purchase.

Why are the conversion rates of Xbox Live Arcade so high? The value proposition is better (only a few dollars for most games). The effort to buy the game is very low (especially if you already have points available, but it's almost as easy as itunes). And the worst games will still contribute some to your overall gamerscore, which is a system designed exlusively to reinforce the peer pressure aspect - "which of your friends has the highest gamer score?"

If we can come up with a way to solve even a couple of those problems on the PC side of things, we'll see a sizeable increase in conversion rates. Not many people are bothering though, as the status quo seems very well entrenched. "An object at rest..." :)
-Andrew
http://theoreticalgames.com

[Applewood]

I agree that completely removing the demo wouldn't be a good idea. One disadvantage we have is that anyone can set up a website and claim to sell something, and there are amateurs and scammers everywhere.

You know when you buy a game from a high street store that it will actually have a game in it, even if you don't end up liking it.

A demo proves to punters that this is at least a real product. Unless your game sells almost exclusively via word of mouth, it's going to be a difficult thing to remove.

[sillytuna]

XBLA conversion rate is artificially high due to lack of content/competition, lack of 360 games and hardcore with-money early 360 owners.

It'll be more realistic in 12 months time, although I do think it'll remain higher than on PC.

One *very* important thing about the demo-then-play thing - it lessens the chances of license domination, and by that I mean cartoons/films/celebs/toys/comics.

A license will help the downloads, but people only buy if the game is good. Licenses will increasingly come in, as will sequelitis (actually, both are already here aren't they!), but demos will help keep the good games selling.

In the commercial retail market that isn't true. A shoddy license can do 100x the sales of a really good game.

[Applewood]

Nah, it takes em 12 months to answer mails from already-registered developers. In 12 months, everything will be the same as it is now. Exactly!

We're already thinking of changing our indie title over to PS3 as Sony are pretty good at actually returning phone calls and providing general dev support.

[sillytuna]

I can't comment directly on MS as I don't wish to break our NDA, however I'd say that "the big companies are taking over", with a few nice exceptions.

The problem I have with these kinds of systems as that an indie dev has to buy hardware, do potentially quite a bit of work on the concept/prototype, get approval, then do the title, then wait until the release slot comes around (we're talking over a year in many case) and then wait again for royalties. Don't bet on releasing on other systems... it isn't always so easy.

So, for an investment of $100-200k, no return for over a year and possibly no other platforms to release on. That makes it one hell of a risky prospect for start-ups and established small teams.

For god's sake don't bet on the conversion rates being quoted either!

[zoombapup]

Damn straight. never rely on figures posted on a forum ffs :)

1% seems reasonable. Given that if you spammed 100 people with any kind of request, then 1% response is actually probably quite hopeful.

Of course there is also the factors of how big the possible total mass is and your effectiveness of targetting same.

Its the old purple cow thing again really.. is your product worth actually buying? Is it worth telling your mates about? is it worth THEM buying it too?

I think fundamentally I'm into multiplayer games because of this phenomenon. Almost all of the games I play are bought because my mates play em and I dont want to be left out. If I can figure out a value proposition to one or two people, then they are my ambassadors.

Those guys are also the ones you want to seed...

[Applewood]

I can't comment directly on MS as I don't wish to break our NDA, however I'd say that "the big companies are taking over", with a few nice exceptions.
Oh, I'd already figured that one out. Looks like we missed the boat here which hopefully won't be happening with Sony just yet - things are progressing nicely there and we have some past rep with them.

Biased though I am, I think it's a bloody travesty that XBLA is being given over to the big firms. In a years time, all you'll be able to download is 250Mb demo versions of retail games and trailers for retail games. That benefits no-one long term.