The Landing Page

https://warpzone.itch.io/blast-pulser

I think it looks pretty good, but what do you guys think?

When should I start charging?

I uploaded an MVP with no minimum price, with the idea that I'd start charging for it when it was worth charging for.  Until then, I'd be getting free playtesters and maybe even building a little bit of a community.  How would I know when it was worth charging for?  Well, I figured when people started making donations, that would probably be a pretty good sign.  

But then I took a look at Analytics, and I noticed that I was getting a lot more traffic (literally 2x-3x as much) from the non-free versions of pages as from the free versions of the same page.  ( tag-twin-stick-shooter vs free/tag-twin-stick-shooter, for example)

Now, this doesn't prove that the people who were browsing non-free games would have clicked on mine if it had been priced at $2.  But it does suggest to me that maybe a bigger percentage of itch visitors are willing to spend money than I originally thought.

I dunno.  Am I overthinking this?  (Total traffic's still in the double-digits, so probably.)

Well I'd say you should probably start charging when you feel your product deserves. Do you think people already recognizes the value your game offers to them? If they don't, then try to make them valuate it, increase the value peep see in your game. I'd say "you should be charging already, and focusing on convincing people that the price you put matches the value they see in your game".

Overhauled my screenshot production process and took some more recent ones.  I really don't know what else I could be doing wrong.  The landing page is definitely the weak link.  People apparently go to the twin stick shooter genre page, see the animated gif, click on it, find out that the game is pretty much exactly what the animated gif made it look like, in a landing page that you guys claim is excellent... and then they leave without buying.

What am I doing wrong?

Like mentioned earlier, It would be best practice to start charging after you feel the product is now done if it is "early access". This would be fair to the customers if you do not finish.

It looks fine, but not amazing. Here's what I would be inclined to try:

• The star texture in the bottom of the header image looks a bit crap. It gives me an immediate impression of low-effort cheapness, and it's clearly avoidable because the stars don't look like that in the screenshots. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, I think the game art looks really nice, but the header is not representing it well.
• I'm not really a fan of the stars as a background of the page. If you could have stars in the header that matched the background, so that it looked like the ships were fighting on the page, that might elevate it, otherwise I think they are kind of distracting.
• The text feels a bit cluttered. A bit of colour in the headers and the bolded text, and a bit of space between the bullet points, would make it more readable I think.

Does your game have any sort of story/narrative? If so you should definitely mention it.

Your trailer could be improved by cutting together action from lots of different battles, rather than showing a single battle in its entirety. That would make it a lot more exciting, I think.

I don't really have an opinion on when to start charging, sorry!