Yesterday I introduced you to the barriers of sale, or the “sales chain” — a long list of steps which must be completed before you ever see a cent from your visitors. Every broken link in that chain — no matter where — is a missed sale; money lost. It is up to you to strengthen your sales chain to its maximum fidelity in order to take your downloadable game business to the future. And that requires you pay special attention to every link in your sales chain. Today we’ll be talking about another one of these vital links: screenshots.

In a recent post, I explored some surprising statistics about my visitors — casual gamers — and the utter lack of dial-up subscribers in the bunch. A little more than 4% of my visitors successfully downloaded a full 4.72 MB demo with a dial-up connection, and only the smallest fraction of those purchased the game. Only 0.02% of my business effectively comes from dial-up users. Seems like a pursuit hardly worthwhile, doesn’t it?

At this point, you’ve got one of two options: support dial-up users, or don’t. In my experience, however, their business impact is so low that I feel there is no question which is more valuable. With a broadband target, you are free to experiment with new asset types, site designs, and so much more that simply wasn’t an option when you made yourself available to dial-up users. However, just because a user is on broadband doesn’t mean they’ll download your game.

Jeweltopia gets approximately 1 download for every 6 visitors (~16%) that view the game information — screenshots, copy, etc. (This includes the few download sites Jeweltopia is featured on, so the statistics are probably significantly lower than what you’re used to seeing with your own site, alone.) Dial-up users can’t be blamed for such a discrepancy because they only account for less than 10% of the total viewership and their download rate per capita is actually higher than broadband users. And surely a sub-5 MB game isn’t turning off the broadband users…

So, where’s the problem?

Here’s a question for you: What’s the first thing a visitor does when exposed to your game? The visitor explores it; they investigate it. The visitor does this by reading copy and looking at screenshots. I have no idea of the frequency at which visitors read the game’s copy — it’s simply impossible to measure without a dedicated testing facility and gobs of expensive monitoring equipment. But I do know how many visitors view screenshots: almost all of them. 94%, to be exact. This viewing rate is light years ahead of the ~16% download rate I’ve learned to accept.

Why screenshots? Why are screenshots so intriguing that 94% of my audience will bother to expand at least one? Because they give the visitor the richest taste of the product before commiting to the download/install process. The copy is most likely skimmed (nobody reads anymore), but the screenshots… the screenshots are golden. You could say they sell the game. Less than 1% of my viewership downloads the game without expanding a single screenshot.

How do you increase the impact of the screenshots? How do you utilize the popularity of the screenshots to drive downloads? We’ve decided to stop supporting dial-up users, so maybe we need to re-think the dial-up-friendly screenshot paradigm. Screenshots are static, boring representatives of an interactive medium. Videos, on the other hand, are not. With video, we have the capacity to actively sell the download to our visitor.

With all the wonder and availability the Internet has brought the world, the one thing it lacks (depending on your point of view) are salesmen. We rely on the visitor to pull information from our sites. The visitor must actively seek, search, and assimilate the data in any given site. This is a frustratingly tiring approach for the average visitor, which is why you’ll find so many people merely scanning and skimming the text on most sites they visit. In contrast, if you walk into many stores in the U.S., you’ll find yourself innundated with obnoxious salesmen, each trying to help you — each trying to earn a commission. Annoying, perhaps, but the last thing you’ll need to do is work to find what you want.

The most popular medium of the last several decades is the television — the boob tube. An extremely lazy form of information “push,” that permeates almost every single home in the U.S. And why has it gained in such popularity? Because it’s easy. There’s nothing the general public likes more than “easy.” (Except, perhaps, “free.” But that’s an essay for the future.)

So let us combine the two most profound technologies of our time — television and the Internet — and throw in a dash of what makes a great salesman useful: easy information. Consider, now, you have the capacity to actively sell your product to a visitor. For every visitor looking, searching, prodding for information, you can feed it to them in a manner they appreciate. Easy, full multimedia glory: vibrant video and explosive audio. Your very own salesman on your very own site, actively feeding pitches to your audience without the slightest bit of effort.

Video is what this world has grown up on, and video is what it expects. The dial-up popularity of the early days of the textual Internet are quickly fading, giving way to a new method of expression available only to the increasing numbers of broadband users. So, give the users what they want: easy, palatable information at the touch of a button. No reading required. No thinking required. Just full, unadulterated media spoon-fed to the expecting public.

So, the value to your visitors is clear. What isn’t is whether such tactics would provide you with an increase in downloads. I’ll venture to say it does, if for no other reason than the sheer popularity of screenshots, combined with the ubiquitous penetration of broadband connectivity and the desire to be fed information. Users previously unwilling to learn about the game by reading the copy (too much work) can now explore the game in a full multimedia presentation. For every link in the “sales chain,” if only one fails, you’ve ultimately lost a sale for sure. For every user that doesn’t find immediate interest in your static, boring screenshots — screenshots that barely reflect the interactive nature of your medium — and doesn’t download the game, you’ve lost a potential sale.

I’ll be experimenting with videos over the next several months, and I’ll be sure to share the results with you. Until then, begin thinking of other ways you can excite your visitors with unique and engaging media. If you can increase your downloads, you can increase both your exposure and your sales. Anything you can do to strengthen each link in the chain dramatically increases your chances of successfully closing a sale and earning a return customer for your future products. In the next iteration of the “Double Your Sales” series, I’ll be taking the multimedia screenshot idea to the next level: interactivity and web games. Until then, keep your chain strong and prosper!

Note: Video development and deployment is an entire essay on its own, and there are already many excellent resources available throughout the web. I would suggest looking into Flash as a deployment platform, as the earliest version that supports video is 7, and with a penetration of over 95%, you’re going to hit a lot less compatibility walls than using a proprietary format, such as WMV or QuickTime.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.