First impressions count for everything

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it, we all do. And with hundreds of new indie games released every month it’s imperative that the user’s first impression is a good one. In an ideal world their first impression would be of jumping straight into your game, but it’s quite unlikely that this will be true for all your users. Much more likely is that their first impression will be made when they visit your website, app store page, Xbox Live arcade page or a whole host of places that aren’t your game.

You need to manage all the possible entry points to your game, ensuring they give the best possible representation of what your game is about. The last thing you want is for people to be put off by a poorly designed website or badly worded app store page and never even play the game you have spent countless hours developing.

The key things to cover are:

• Ensure people know what your game is about.
• Give a fair representation of what the game play is like
• Where they can get it and how much it will cost

Don’t get carried away trying to impress people with long winded copy, grandiose language or misleading artwork. This can not only put people off, but the last thing you want, other than people not playing your game, is people playing your game expecting something else.

Try to get an objective view, what would you HONESTLY think about your site if you had come across it for the first time. Would you stick around to check it out? Or would those flashing gifs and exclamation marks probably put you off?

But of course, it’s your game; you designed the site or wrote the copy, so you can’t exactly be objective. Try asking someone else, preferably not someone who will lie in order to not hurt your feelings. The first key to success is a successful first impression.