Before/After: Indie Game Marketplace Homepage Redesign Cuts Discovery Time by 40%

Gaming · 5 min read

The marketplace's original homepage was dense: multiple carousels, large banners, and autoplay trailers competed for attention. User interviews found players felt overwhelmed and often defaulted to top sellers or search instead of browsing. Designers experimented with a compact card grid that combined gameplay GIFs, a single-line genre strip, and contextual tags (e.g., 'quick session', 'offline') to surface fit-for-purpose games.

The team introduced a curated editor's row with weekly themes plus an algorithmic feed tuned for diversity rather than popularity. Product tiles shifted focus from promotional art to playable snippets (15-second clips) and explicit time-to-play metadata to help players make quick choices.

After the rollout, time-to-first-play fell by 40%, average session length increased modestly, and conversion from visit to demo play rose 22%. Analytics also showed wider distribution of engagement across catalog items, indicating reduced reliance on bestseller amplification.