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[joe_eyemobi]

Hey Guys,
We've just released our game Phantasmal on Steam Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/342550/

To date we've had about 60k page views but around 500 sales, which gives us a conversion of 0.8%.  It seems pretty bad, but I can't find many comparisons via google.

Does anyone know what typical conversion rates are? 

Also for the guys who have games on steam, what have you found to be most effective in increasing this rate?

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

Early Access!
Conversion rate for early access will always be bad. just logic.

Unless you put zombies in it.


Hate towards Early Access games is getting higher and higher.


You should just promote your game. I see Early Access as a crowfunding system. At least you pay for something you get to play directly.

[joe_eyemobi]

Yeah, I think the shine of EA wore out a while ago.  There are a select few games that are caning it in EA though, e.g. Darkest Dungeon, Kerbal, The Forest, etc...

Promotions aren't the problem - we've had seemingly good page views, it's the conversion to sales that appears to be the issue at the moment.

[ryansumo]

I'm interested in learning more about this myself as i'm doing research into it.  Hope it's ok that I resurrect this thread in the hopes that someone else might reply?

I'd also be interested to hear from OP whether or not sales have picked up.  The 500 start doesn't seem too shabby if it's assumed that there's a steady trickle pf purchases as the game nears completion.

[ryansumo]

Well, I did a little more Google sleuthing

This article on gamasutra would seem to indicate that your conversion rate is relatively high already, and all you need is more actual views to your steam page.  The quote conversion to click percentage of 0.26%.  Although I'm not sure of terminology so I may be misunderstanding this.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BurakTezateser/20140717/220624/Dynamics_of_Steam_as_a_Sales_Platform.php

This post by Cliff of Positech Games is a little daunting, with lots of numbers thrown about.  But the bottom line is that his conversion rates on his own website seem to be pretty high (+10%).  It doesn't entirely answer your question, but interesting nevertheless.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BurakTezateser/20140717/220624/Dynamics_of_Steam_as_a_Sales_Platform.php

[DanglinBob]

Conversion rates, as you see in the other post, vary immensely by how targeted the traffic landing on your page is. That is to say: While you are on the steam front page your conversion rates will be significantly lower than when you are not (but your sales will be significantly higher).

It's really REALLY important to get apples to apples comparisons or you'll be playing with bad data. So you need to be finding not only other people's conversion rates for the same action (IE: Landing on your steam page) but ALSO data that matches the same set of circumstances that bring them there (IE: A front page feature, a big youtube promo, or just residual no-promotion traffic etc).

The old industry standard for "general traffic" is 1% or higher and you're in good shape. So .8% isn't too far off, but it is 20% below average, so it also isn't great. That's about as general as I can make it and it such a rough rule of the thumb it isn't worth much, so don't put much stock in it.