What should you do for your official game websites? What tools should you use, how should you design them, and where should you start? I can't throw a rock on social media without hitting a group of indie game developers asking these types of questions, and pitching in to help each other out. There's a hundred ways you could make a website for your game, but I believe I've got the absolute best. And the only reason I believe that is because I've spent most of my career building official game websites, as well as coaching indie game developers on how to optimize their websites to sell more games. This is my signature blueprint for how to make the most effective official game websites as fast as possible. And
">bonus fry, it's cheaper too.Official Game Websites Are Kind of a Pain in the Ass
Your game needs a website. That, we know. And getting one is relatively easy, right? You design and develop games, surely you can throw up a website. And since you're just getting started, there's no way you're going to spend thousands of dollars to hire someone else to do it. And if your games aren't generating revenue, I don't think you should either. But what starts to happen after you throw up a website is you start diving into customizations, tweaks, and trying a bunch of things. An hour turns into a day, a day into a few days, a few days into a few weeks. Creating your own website starts to become a bit of a pain in the ass. Still, it's not enough to make you pay someone else to do it, but enough to send you to game developer forums asking other people what they think.![33iqmp5ATXT5m.gif](http://i.giphy.com/33iqmp5ATXT5m.gif)
Official Game Websites Should Make You Money, Not Just Make You Look Good
I was helping a small indie game studio head optimize their marketing. They had launched a handful of games in the past year, each with its own website. When I asked what those websites cost and how well they performed, they clammed up. And when pressed, they finally admitted they felt websites were worthless. But the one thing they did stress over and over, was that every time they made a game website it didn't "look like every other game website out there." And that these types of custom designed websites sometimes took weeks to complete. So that's where all their time and money went, on making sure their websites looked cool, because they genuinely believed that effort would help them sell more games. Unfortunately, they were wrong. The truth is official game websites are just marketing pieces in a bigger marketing puzzle. They should be pointed towards a certain set of goals, and work in tandem with other pieces of game marketing, such as social media or public relations, to accomplish those goals. But don't get me wrong, I fancy myself a beautifully designed game website. After all, I did help design the official websites, microsites, and experiences for many blockbuster films and AAA games. However, even I admit looks alone don't sell games.The "One and Done" Website Strategy
So your games need websites, but you can't afford to waste time and money on what doesn't work. You need an effective game website that you can stand up relatively fast, and with a relatively low cost of ownership. Furthermore, it's to your benefit to create a system out of what you do, so that building game websites becomes easier and faster, which is a long-term cost-savings. Here's my signature system for building game websites that way:1. Always Start with a Goal
Before building a game website, it's important you ask yourself what's the one thing, above all else, that you want potential players to do. That's your game website's primary goal. If you've ever built a game website without first asking yourself that question, you probably just copied what other game developers were doing. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, their goals might be based on undisclosed business initiatives that don't really make sense for you. A good rule of thumb for figuring out what your primary goal is when you're just starting out, is whether or not you've released your game. If you haven't released your game, then your goal should probably be to build up your audience before launch. And if you've already released your game, then your primary goal is simply getting traffic to your marketplace pages. As your game grows with DLC, sequels, or spinoffs, that rule goes out the window. But it's the right place to start for now.2. Give Your Game Websites Their Own Domain Names
The overarching goal of a game website is to sell your game to players. And the overarching goal of a game development studio website is to sell your company to business partners, employees, and the media. That's why I never recommend using your company website as your game website, because it muddies the waters. When you're just starting out, potential players don't care who you are. And so they're far more likely to follow your games. In fact, even when you're a popular developer, most players still don't care. Infinity Ward and Treyarch are the two studios who develop games in Activision's Call of Duty franchise, but when asked who makes the games, most players will probably say Activision. We would know to say the development studio, but that's because we live in the game industry bubble and speak developer. Give your game websites their own domain names (I use Namecheap). Launching game websites on their own domain helps keep your messaging and goals laser-focused, it helps to attract more players with entertainment, it gives games their own soil to grow into brands, and all that combined helps you sell more games in the long run. The only time I would likely deviate from this strategy is when a game brand becomes pop culture, and needs a hub website.3. Use a Website Builder
This is how most indie game developers build game websites: They buy their own hosting, install the WordPress software, spend a few hours hunting down and buying a theme, and then they spend the following days and weeks mulling over custom design and content creation. By the time it's all said and done, it's taken weeks to build what they consider a basic game website, not to mention all the hours they'll continue to spend with tweaks, plugins, and so on. And I totally get it, because I've done that too. The reason we've all done this is because we believed that it was the fastest, cheapest way to build a website that would give us the greatest amount of control. Basically, we did that because it's "god mode" for website. But it's also cost us countless time and money that would have been better spent just working on our games. So it's time to try something new. I highly recommend using Squarespace to build your game websites. In any case, use a website builder. The reason I recommend Squarespace is because for $12 a month you get a website that would cost upwards of $50,000 to build from scratch. I would know, because I've built those. [media]4. You Only Need One Page with a "Buy Now" Button
Style alone doesn't sell games, but design does. You can have a really crappy game website, and still make money. In other words, a great-looking website is a want, not a need. I've planned, designed, developed, optimized, and measured the performance of official game websites in all shapes and sizes. The only thing your game needs is a one-page, responsive website with a "buy now" button, very similar to what Supercell, and other popular indie game studios, do for most of their games. And here's my wireframe for how I design those pages:![launch-your-indie-game-official-game-web](http://launchyourindiegame.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/launch-your-indie-game-official-game-website-design.png)
5. Install analytics and tracking
Every visitor that comes to your website tells a story with their actions. And those action can be measured with analytics. Where did they come from, how long did they stay, and did they click to buy your game? Analyzing all that data for trends will help you optimize and improve your game websites moving forward. For example, if most of your traffic is coming from Twitter, then investing more time and money in Twitter could be a great idea. Or if most of your conversions happen on mobile, then investing more time and money on optimizing the mobile version of your website could be lucrative. To start taking advantage of all that data, I recommend installing Google Analytics, even if your hosting plan or website builder comes with their own set of analytics. In fact, I would turn those native analytics off if possible, and only use what you get through Google.![google-analytics-dashboard-1024x591.jpg](http://launchyourindiegame.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/google-analytics-dashboard-1024x591.jpg)
The process of promoting your business can be made more effective through email. However, various errors may still occur that prevent your email and your newsletter from working properly. I recommend checking out as much information as you can about these smtp errors in advance, as well as learning more about the UniOne email service provider.