The landing page checklist: five things every strong page has
A landing page here means a page the studio controls (not the Steam store page itself) that a visitor reaches from an ad, a social post, or a creator's link, built to collect contact details and send the visitor on to wishlist the game.
"What good ones actually do" below is a set of patterns observed across landing pages, not a walkthrough of named studios' pages; no single page is shown or cited, so the checklist is what to build against, not what to copy screenshot-for-screenshot.
Run a page against these five checks before it goes live:
- One hero visual above the fold. Key art, a short gif, or a single trailer thumbnail, visible without scrolling. A page that opens with paragraph text loses visitors before the pitch lands.
- One form field before the ask. Email only. A form field is a single input box the visitor has to fill in; each one added past the first is a separate decision point that some share of visitors won't make.
- A visible deep link to the Steam store. The button or link that sends the visitor to wishlist appears above the fold, not only after a long scroll. A deep link is a link that lands the visitor directly on the store page's wishlist button, rather than the store's homepage or a search result.
- No more than one secondary channel. Discord or a newsletter signup, never both on the same page. Asking for two separate channels alongside the wishlist click is the single most common way these pages lose visitors partway through.
- The same next step repeated top and bottom. A visitor who scrolls past the top button without acting should meet the identical ask again at the end, not a different message.
How to use the checklist when building a new page
Build the page in the order the checklist implies, not the order that feels natural to write.
Start with the hero visual, before any copy. Pick the single strongest asset (key art or a 10-15 second trailer clip) and design the page around it, rather than writing the pitch first and looking for an image to fit above it afterward.
Write one sentence of context, not a paragraph. The visitor arrived already interested (they clicked an ad or a creator's link); the page's job is to confirm they're in the right place and move them to the form, not to re-sell the game from scratch.
Place the deep link before the fold, then again at the very bottom. Test the link itself on both desktop and mobile before launch: a link that opens Steam's app-switch prompt awkwardly on mobile can lose a visitor who was otherwise ready to click.
Add the secondary channel (Discord or newsletter) only if the studio will actually use it. A Discord invite on the page with no plan to post there regularly asks for an extra click for no ongoing value; skip it until there's a reason for the visitor to join.
Common mistakes when building the page
Putting the pitch before the ask. A long block of copy above the form reads as a mini store page rather than a landing page, and most visitors who wanted the full pitch already got it from the ad or post that sent them here.
Making the deep link hard to find. A button styled like a secondary action, placed below several paragraphs, gets fewer clicks than a page that puts the same button in the first screen a visitor sees. See how to evaluate a wishlist-capture page for why this one costs more than the other checklist items.
Asking for Discord and email in the same step. Sequence them instead: one field followed by a single-click Discord join button.
Changing the ask between the top and bottom of the page. A page that opens with "Join our Discord" and closes with "Wishlist now" asks the visitor to decide twice, on two different asks, rather than reinforcing one decision.
Applying this to your own page
Draft the page against the five-point checklist above before writing any copy, then test the deep link on the actual device mix your traffic uses (creator links skew mobile far more than paid search traffic does). See does an email/Discord capture page hurt wishlist conversion? for the specific mistakes that cost wishlist completions once the page is live, and owning your game audience for why the capture page is worth building in the first place.
Conversion Funnel builds landing pages to this same five-point structure: email and Discord captured alongside the wishlist at the point of traffic, so the list this checklist produces survives the click instead of disappearing into a Steam-side count. See Conversion Funnel.
Sources: Immutable product and landing-page mechanics across studio campaigns; Steamworks store-page documentation (partner.steamgames.com).
