The one number to track first: how fast your wishlist count is growing
Your wishlist count is the running total of everyone who has wishlisted your game. It only ever goes up, it never drops when someone removes a wishlist, because Steam doesn't subtract those. That's exactly why the total on its own can be misleading: it can look fine and steady even in a week where almost nobody new wishlisted the game, because it's still counting everyone from every week before.
Wishlist velocityis a different number: how many new wishlists you're gaining per day or week, not the running total. This is the number that actually tells you whether things are improving or have stalled. As a rule of thumb, gaining under roughly 3 new wishlists a day organically (with no ad spend behind it) is a caution sign; 10 or more a day heading into a big event like Next Fest is considered healthy.
Worked example:a game sitting at 18,000 total wishlists, gaining 150 a week (about 21 a day), is healthy. The same game still sitting at 18,000 total three weeks later, but now gaining only 10 a week (about 1.4 a day), has a real problem, even though the total barely moved and still "looks fine" if you only check the running number.
Track velocity as a 7-day rolling average, not a single day's count. One creator video can spike a single day's number without telling you anything about the real week-to-week trend; averaging over a week smooths that out.
How to actually track it
Pull your wishlist and traffic numbers from Steamworks on the same day every week, checked against the tier thresholds in how many wishlists do you need on Steam. Comparing Tuesday to Tuesday avoids the normal ups and downs different days of the week already have, so you're comparing like with like.
Track your conversion rate alongside your wishlist count, not as an afterthought. Once you have enough sales data to calculate it (roughly the last 90 days before launch, or after a demo or Next Fest entry), conversion rate becomes the more useful of the two numbers to watch, since it's the one that decides what your wishlist count is actually worth. Tracking it only at the very end means missing the chance to fix a problem while there's still time.
Write down what happened each week next to the numbers: a social post, a trailer drop, a Next Fest entry, a store page change. If your velocity jumps or drops, having the actual events next to the numbers lets you see what caused it instead of guessing after the fact.
Use one system that connects spend and channel to the result, rather than several separate spreadsheets. Attribution connects ad spend, Steam link-tracking data, and your wishlist and conversion numbers by channel, so your weekly check shows which channel is actually working rather than one blended number that hides it.
How to read the numbers once you have them
If your total wishlist count is still rising but your velocity has flattened, that's a warning sign even though the top-line number still looks fine. Investigate it the same week you notice it, not after several more weeks of the same pattern.
If velocity jumps with nothing written down that explains it, it's worth figuring out what actually caused the spike (a mention somewhere you didn't expect, an unrelated creator, a Steam feature) rather than just enjoying the number, since understanding it is what lets you repeat it on purpose.
Compare each week's velocity to the week before it, not to a fixed target number. Whether your own trend is speeding up, flat, or slowing down matters more early on than whether you've hit a specific number yet, because the trend is what tells you where the total will land by launch.
What to do when the numbers disagree with each other
If your velocity looks healthy but your conversion rate (once measurable) is weak, the problem is on your store page or your message, not your ability to attract wishlists. Adding more wishlists to a store page that already converts poorly doesn't fix the store page.
If your velocity has genuinely gone flat for weeks, with fresh content still going out and no clear conversion problem, that combination points to why wishlists aren't growing's other causes, a gap between marketing moments, or a store page issue, as the more useful next thing to check than continuing to watch the same weekly number.
Sources: Immutable practitioner guidance on wishlist velocity thresholds from why-are-my-steam-wishlists-not-growing; Steamworks UTM Analytics and discovery documentation.
