u/Atelier_Breezen

Hi All,

I just created my first trailer for my game, and currently my steam page is screenshots only without any trailer.

I hear that Steam may give a game some more traffic when the first trailer is uploaded.

I'm thinking if I prepare more localized versions, the conversion rate may be higher during this boost. If I just upload the only English version, the potential traffic boost may be wasted due to lower conversion rate.

Do you have any experience about it? Is there any difference whether I just upload the English trailer or wait more days to prepare?

Actually, is it true that Steam will give more traffic in just a few days after the first trailer is uploaded? If this is even not true, I guess I can just upload my trailer once it's ready (or not so ready but better than nothing).

Thank you.

TL;DR: When your daily traffic is tiny (two-digit visits), CTR, visit-to-wishlist ratio, and even wishlist-to-follower ratio have no observable correlation with actual wishlist adds. Only raw traffic volume seems to move the needle.

Hi everyone, indie dev here, building turn-based tactical RPG.

Been running my Steam store page for ~4 months now and wanted to share something that surprised me.

CTR

I used to obsess over this thinking it measures capsule appeal. Nope. Many of you already know that hot games have low CTR (Steam shows them everywhere), new games have high CTR (tiny sample). And Steam counts external traffic in the calculation, so it's meaningless if you do any outside marketing.

Visit-to-wishlist ratio

Polished my assets repeatedly trying to improve this. Found near-zero relationship with total wishlists. High ratio + low visits = few wishlists. Low ratio + high visits = more wishlists. At tiny volumes it's just noise.

Wishlist-to-follower ratio

This one was interesting. My ratio started at 1 follower per 20-40 wishlists. Over the past month it improved to 1 per 7-8, and even 4-5 in the past two weeks. I got excited, thinking this was a quality signal. Checked my wishlist numbers. Still 0-2 daily. Still multi-day zero streaks (3 days this week). The ratio changed but wishlist adds just didn't increase.

Takeaway

At this scale (two-digit visits daily), the only metric that seems to matter is raw traffic volume. Everything else is noise. Maybe these ratios become predictive at higher volumes? Would love to hear from others who've observed similar or different.

https://preview.redd.it/19u79zihymzg1.jpg?width=1780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99c06845ba2eb99844e1d608dd9d19c2c341ace8

Hello everyone, my first indie game got 200 wishlists today. The number is small but I'm still happy.

I'd like to share some learnings as a new indie dev. They may be obvious and trivial, and not apply to all. So just for your reference.

Some background:

• Steam store page published
• Trailer/ demo in preparation
• Steam store page available in English, Chinese, Japanese, and German
• Genre: turn-based tactical JRPG, mecha/robot-themed
• No paid ads yet
• Totally new - zero followers in all the SNS when the page is published

Some learnings:

• There can be lots of direct search results impressions if the title contains popular words, but just ignore them as no useful visits
• depending on the genre and store page content (visual, trailer, screenshots), the baseline of daily wishlist can be 0-2 when no external marketing - I know some people have hundreds of even thousands of wishlists in a few days, some having really appealing store page hook (trailer, visual, gameplay, etc), some having streamer/ media posting, or other successful approaches, but for my game, it's just 0-2 daily
• I thought two months ago that rearranging screenshots and polishing capsules can increase CTR as I did some tests and saw small improvements - well the conclusion may still be true, but after two months I have to say the effect is not so obvious that I should not conclude when the traffic is low since it's not solid from statistics
• External traffic will make Steam's own traffic breakdown less useful
  • CTR counts external traffic so cannot be used to verify the capsule quality reliably
  • direct navigation, direct search results, and search suggestions will all increase when you do external marketing
  • So as a result, don't overthink about the report especially in early stage
• However, I still believe that everyone should play with the tags to make sure Steam sets the similarity correctly
  • Two weeks after the store page published, I started to see the "why you are interested as you've played before" section, however, it's a 4x strategy game but not a typical turn-based tactical RPG likes mine
  • I did checked my tags and thought they are good, also the tagging wizard shows the similar titles in the preview page so I confirmed the tags should be right
  • However, after I removed the tags of war and hex (grid), the similar game was updated to the actual similar one, instead of the 4x strategy game which is not so related.
  • I think war and hex tags are still proper to my game, but they also accidentally make Steam thinks my game more similar to those less-similar ones. As a player myself, I think fixing this issue is a must, which helps me to know what this game is about faster and clearer
• I have no data clue but I think polished screenshots help conversion. My early screenshots contain some prototype objects, and to be honest I as a player will hesitate to wishlist. Even today, the screenshots are not final and I've lots of items to polish. This may waste the algorithm boost of store page publish and all the external marketing efforts. I thought I balanced the visual readiness and the "publish the store page as early as possible once art style is decided" but now I think I may get even more wishlists today if I polished more and published later. Anyway, it cannot be changed again so I'm fine.
• Some marketing attempts
  • Posts in r/SoloDevelopment, r/SoloDev, r/IndieDev talking about why and how I decided to make this game - almost no wishlists and people are not interested
  • Announcement post in r/JRPG with screenshots and short descriptions got over 100 wishlists in 3 days - SNS followers increased from zero to a few
  • Short dev progress sharing on SNS - some likes/reposts but almost no wishlists, and most of visits were untracked as people don't install Steam on their phones
  • Self-promotion posts in some genre specific Discord servers - almost no wishlists
  • A few simple short videos on YouTube shorts - ~13% watch rate and only hundreds of watches from Vietnam in two hours then totally invisible, and again almost no wishlists
• External traffic spike of over 100 wishlists won't trigger any change in Steam's own store traffic algorithm. 4 days after the Reddit post and it just returned to 0-2 wishlists daily
  • Maybe a larger one will change something. So I decided to do some external marketing when my first trailer is ready, to see how large an external traffic spike can help, including Reddit/ Discord/ SNS posts and even trying sending press kit to media

Thanks for reading, and feel free if any comments.

https://preview.redd.it/l4ez89bkpmzg1.jpg?width=1780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c02a0c721791c71c35fae02cc4070d5e5ae59e3

Hello everyone, my first indie game got 200 wishlists today. The number is small but I'm still happy.

I'd like to share some learnings as a new indie dev. They may be obvious and trivial, and not apply to all. So just for your reference.

Some background:

• Steam store page published
• Trailer/ demo in preparation
• Steam store page available in English, Chinese, Japanese, and German
• Genre: turn-based tactical JRPG, mecha/robot-themed
• No paid ads yet
• Totally new - zero followers in all the SNS when the page is published

Some learnings:

• There can be lots of direct search results impressions if the title contains popular words, but just ignore them as no useful visits
• depending on the genre and store page content (visual, trailer, screenshots), the baseline of daily wishlist can be 0-2 when no external marketing - I know some people have hundreds of even thousands of wishlists in a few days, some having really appealing store page hook (trailer, visual, gameplay, etc), some having streamer/ media posting, or other successful approaches, but for my game, it's just 0-2 daily
• I thought two months ago that rearranging screenshots and polishing capsules can increase CTR as I did some tests and saw small improvements - well the conclusion may still be true, but after two months I have to say the effect is not so obvious that I should not conclude when the traffic is low since it's not solid from statistics
• External traffic will make Steam's own traffic breakdown less useful
  • CTR counts external traffic so cannot be used to verify the capsule quality reliably
  • direct navigation, direct search results, and search suggestions will all increase when you do external marketing
  • So as a result, don't overthink about the report especially in early stage
• However, I still believe that everyone should play with the tags to make sure Steam sets the similarity correctly
  • Two weeks after the store page published, I started to see the "why you are interested as you've played before" section, however, it's a 4x strategy game but not a typical turn-based tactical RPG likes mine
  • I did checked my tags and thought they are good, also the tagging wizard shows the similar titles in the preview page so I confirmed the tags should be right
  • However, after I removed the tags of war and hex (grid), the similar game was updated to the actual similar one, instead of the 4x strategy game which is not so related.
  • I think war and hex tags are still proper to my game, but they also accidentally make Steam thinks my game more similar to those less-similar ones. As a player myself, I think fixing this issue is a must, which helps me to know what this game is about faster and clearer
• I have no data clue but I think polished screenshots help conversion. My early screenshots contain some prototype objects, and to be honest I as a player will hesitate to wishlist. Even today, the screenshots are not final and I've lots of items to polish. This may waste the algorithm boost of store page publish and all the external marketing efforts. I thought I balanced the visual readiness and the "publish the store page as early as possible once art style is decided" but now I think I may get even more wishlists today if I polished more and published later. Anyway, it cannot be changed again so I'm fine.
• Some marketing attempts
  • Posts in r/SoloDevelopment, r/SoloDev, r/IndieDev talking about why and how I decided to make this game - almost no wishlists and people are not interested
  • Announcement post in r/JRPG with screenshots and short descriptions got over 100 wishlists in 3 days - SNS followers increased from zero to a few
  • Short dev progress sharing on SNS - some likes/reposts but almost no wishlists, and most of visits were untracked as people don't install Steam on their phones
  • Self-promotion posts in some genre specific Discord servers - almost no wishlists
  • A few simple short videos on YouTube shorts - ~13% watch rate and only hundreds of watches from Vietnam in two hours then totally invisible, and again almost no wishlists
• External traffic spike of over 100 wishlists won't trigger any change in Steam's own store traffic algorithm. 4 days after the Reddit post and it just returned to 0-2 wishlists daily
  • Maybe a larger one will change something. So I decided to do some external marketing when my first trailer is ready, to see how large an external traffic spike can help, including Reddit/ Discord/ SNS posts and even trying sending press kit to media

Thanks for reading, and feel free if any comments.

In Steam’s marketing traffic breakdown chart page, More Like This traffic appeared two weeks after the page published, then in lots of days, the visit numbers were just higher than impressions, especially for the coming soon sub category under More Like This category.

https://preview.redd.it/faja5nzqttyg1.jpg?width=1970&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=247c3ca5947817ac3bfdaddb086b9fd06a641c80

It’s a bit weird because for other categories, visit numbers are far lower than impressions, even for the other sub categories under More Like This such as “more like main item”.

I cannot find documents about how it’s counted. Could anyone explain what does it mean?