Managing Video Game Information on E-commerce Websites
Kaavya Karthikeyan
Sr Content Writer
@Gameopedia
The video games industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in today’s world, with companies boasting years of extensive experience and a long-standing presence in the gaming and esports industry.
This guide is designed for those managing gaming ecommerce websites and looking to optimize their video game information and metadata. It is intended for ecommerce managers, gaming retailers, and anyone interested in optimizing online game stores.
Gaming ecommerce websites face unique challenges and opportunities. The importance of metadata for sales and customer experience cannot be overstated—accurate, structured, and gaming-native metadata is foundational for powering search, discovery, recommendations, analytics, and decision-making across the video game ecosystem. Gaming-native metadata is a structured, hierarchical, and context-aware data platform designed specifically for how games are built, played, marketed, and monetized. It enables ecommerce platforms to deliver a seamless shopping experience, improve product discoverability, and drive higher conversion rates.
This guide will explore the key challenges faced by gaming ecommerce websites, best practices in website design, the critical role of gaming-native metadata, and the essential video game information fields that every online game store should manage. By following these recommendations, ecommerce managers and gaming retailers can enhance customer engagement, boost sales, and stay ahead in the competitive gaming market.
Best Practices in Gaming E-commerce Website Design
Effective gaming e-commerce design is crucial for attracting and retaining customers. Leading gaming ecommerce websites incorporate features such as:
Personalized recommendations: Suggesting games and accessories based on user preferences and browsing history.
User-friendly navigation: Ensuring customers can easily find products, with clear menus, genre categories, and intuitive search functionality.
Visually appealing layouts: Using high-quality images, engaging banners, and well-organized product pages to create an immersive shopping experience.
The average order value for gaming e-commerce stores is $111.85, indicating a significant investment by consumers in gaming products. Additionally, the conversion rate for top gaming e-commerce stores is approximately 1.94%, reflecting the effectiveness of their design and user experience in driving sales. By focusing on these design principles, gaming ecommerce websites can maximize both customer satisfaction and revenue.
Transitioning from design best practices, let’s examine the specific challenges that gaming ecommerce businesses must overcome to succeed in this dynamic industry.
Challenges That E-commerce Businesses Contend With
Video game e-commerce retailers deal with quite a few obstacles when it comes to increasing sales. Some of these are:
Maintaining Customer Loyalty and Engagement
Acquiring new customers costs three to five times more than keeping your existing ones. If your checkout processes aren't easy and your website format is unattractive and hard to navigate, it's unlikely that your customers will return or even stay on your site long enough to buy something.
Standing Out Amidst Competition
There are so many video game e-commerce portals out there right now, ranging from giants like Steam and Epic Games Store to smaller entities, as well as game developers and publishers directly selling their game. You need to figure out how to set yourself apart from your competitors who offer similar services or products.
Obsolete and Outdated Technology
If your technology is outdated or hard to use, it will limit your ability to sell. Whether it is your website or app, your billing solution, or any other feature, it has to be simple to use. Secondly, you need to be able to manage data security to ensure your customers' confidential data is safe, as well as make sure your website's functioning isn't affected. If your data gets hacked, it will lead to a loss of trust.
Sourcing Accurate Data
To ensure that your products are easily discoverable by your customers, it's important that their specifications, related media, tags, and the like displayed are accurate and contain relevant information. This data should be periodically updated as needed.
One of the most critical challenges is ensuring customers can discover your products, which brings us to the importance of video game information and metadata.
Why Is Video Game Information Important In E-commerce
In our blog about video game metadata and this overview of everything you need to know about metadata for video games, we took a deep dive into what exactly metadata for video games is, as well as the different parties which need it. To quickly recap, gaming metadata is any information that gives the reader insight into the game. Everybody that is a part of the gaming ecosystem, from the retailer to the consumer, uses game metadata at some level.
Gaming-native metadata is deeply structured, hierarchical, multi-dimensional, and context-aware, and acts as foundational infrastructure for game discovery, recommendation engines, market analysis, and AI applications. Gameopedia Metadata is a structured, gaming-native metadata platform that powers accurate search, discovery, recommendations, analytics, and decision-making across the video game ecosystem. It is designed specifically for how games are built, played, marketed, and monetized, and is delivered in a scalable and machine-readable format for enterprise systems. Reliable metadata is essential for search and discovery systems to function effectively and accurately, helping eliminate ambiguity and providing a single source of truth for game metadata. Gameopedia Metadata organizes games across hundreds of dimensions, including genres, mechanics, narrative themes, platforms, and content descriptors, and enables meaningful player context for ad targeting and analytics.
With an exhaustive game metadata repository and definitive database of video games, you get access to descriptive tags and information, facts, and media that provide an in-depth understanding of the gaming product or service you are offering. This allows you to improve customer retention, engagement, and sales.
Now, let’s look at the essential video game information fields that every gaming ecommerce website should manage to maximize discoverability and conversions.
Vital Video Game Information
The format in which video game information is presented for a particular gaming product and how it is used can vary depending on the requirement, though there are some fields which most retailers/consumers need. Below is a list of vital video game information fields, each with a brief description:
Title: The official game name in a particular region.
Alternate Title: Unofficial or common titles associated with a game, such as abbreviations.
Description: The official description or blurb of the game released by the developer/publisher.
Genre and Subgenre: The defining genre of a game, summarizing the core gameplay concepts and elements present within. Assigned based on gameplay, not story or lore.
Theme: Broadly covers what the game is about, detailing the central theme. A game may have more than one applicable theme.
Platform: Information about what platforms the game is playable on, such as PlayStation, Xbox, PC, or Nintendo Switch.
Release Date: The game's release date in a particular region.
Developer: The studio, organization, or people responsible for creating the video game.
Publisher: The entity responsible for publishing the video game in a particular region.
Product Categories and Related Products: Includes gaming accessories like grips for controllers and mice.
Price and Availability: Current pricing and stock status.
Age Ratings: Official age ratings and descriptors for a game released by the competent authority in a particular region on a particular platform.
Ratings and Reviews: Reviews from major editorials and user ratings about the game.
Single-player/Multiplayer Info: Whether the game can be played in single player or multiplayer, as well as the type of multiplayer (if available).
Perspective: Defines the orientation, position, and angle of the player's viewpoint of the game.
Gameplay Engine: The engine used to build the game.
Cross-play Compatibility: Whether users from different platforms can play together in a session, with details about this feature.
Relations: Connections the game might have to other games or gaming products such as prequels, sequels, DLCs, and expansion packs.
Screenshots: Captures from within the game showcasing its setting, characters, and gameplay.
Trailers: Various gameplay and cinematic trailers released officially for the game.
Gameplay Videos: Captures of the actual gameplay featuring its mechanics, artwork, graphics, music, and more.
Box Art: The cover a hardcopy of a game can come in.
Barcodes: Official barcodes of the game in a particular region.
SKU Number (From the Store): A code used to differentiate products, typically by an alphanumeric combination of 8-or-so characters.
Community Data: Information such as hours played, achievements unlocked, and progress, which becomes actionable when combined with game analytics enriched by structured metadata.
In-game Achievements: Achievements which a user can garner within the video game, such as high scores and completionist trophies.
Title
The title is the official game name in a particular region.
Alternate Title
Alternate Title covers unofficial or common titles associated with a game such as abbreviations.
Description
This is the official description or blurb of the game released by the developer/publisher.
Genre and Subgenre
This category describes the defining Genre of a game, which is a term that summarizes the core gameplay concepts and elements present within. A video game genre is assigned to a video game based solely on its gameplay, and not the story, narrative, or lore, aligning with a rigorous taxonomy for video game genres.
Theme
The Theme of a video game broadly covers what the game is about. This section details the central theme of the game. A game may have more than one applicable theme.
Platform
Platform information tells consumers what platforms the game is playable on, such as PlayStation, Xbox, PC, or Nintendo Switch.
Release Date
The game's release date in a particular region.
Developer
Developers are the studio, organization, or people that are responsible for creating the video game.
Publisher
Publishers are the entity that is responsible for publishing the video game in a particular region.
Product Categories and Related Products
Product categories and related products include gaming accessories like grips for controllers and mice.
Price and Availability
Current pricing and stock status for the game.
Age Ratings
The official age ratings and descriptors for a game released by the competent authority in a particular region on a particular platform.
Ratings and Reviews
Reviews from major editorials and user ratings about the game.
Single-player/Multiplayer Info
This covers whether the game can be played in single player or multiplayer, as well as the type of multiplayer (if a multiplayer mode is available.)
Perspective
A video game perspective defines the orientation, position, and angle of the player's viewpoint of the game. The Main Perspective refers to the perspective that is used most frequently through the game and most if not all of the game is presented to the player in this perspective.
Gameplay Engine
This mentions the gameplay engine used to build the game.
Cross-play Compatibility
Cross play compatibility refers to if users from different platforms such as PC, console, and mobile can play together in a session, as well as gives details about this.
Relations
These are relations the game might have to other games or gaming products such as prequels, sequels, DLCs, and expansion packs, to name a few, and they are critical context in addressing the video game industry’s growing content complexity problem.
Screenshots
Screenshot captures from within the game which can showcase its setting, characters, and gameplay for consumers to see.
Trailers
Various gameplay and cinematic trailers released officially for the game.
Gameplay Videos
Gameplay videos are captures of the actual gameplay featuring its mechanics, artwork, graphics, music, and the like to show players in detail what they can expect.
Box Art
This is the cover a hardcopy of a game can come in.
Barcodes
Official Barcodes of the game in a particular region.
SKU Number (From the Store)
A SKU number is assigned to a product in order to identify specific information. It stands for “Stock Keeping Unit” and is a code used to differentiate products typically by an alphanumeric combination of 8-or-so characters.
Community Data
Community data covers things such as how many hours a gamer spent playing a particular game, the number of achievements they unlocked, the amount of progress, and other such factors, which becomes far more actionable when combined with game analytics enriched by structured metadata.
In-game Achievements
These are achievements which a user can garner within the video game, such as high scores and completionist trophies.
Transitioning from understanding vital video game information, let’s explore how to manage this data effectively with best practices for video game metadata management.
Best Practices For Video Game Metadata Management
We've established the importance of metadata for video games with respect to maximizing how your customers engage with your products and services. Here are some best practices which can help ensure that you're utilizing the metadata you have optimally:
Have a well-defined strategy:
Develop a plan before incorporating metadata into your projects. Identify your use cases for metadata—if your main interest is selling video game console/PC games online, ensure you plan to maximize their visibility and reach with well-defined metadata. This will help you align your metadata strategy to your business goals and identify important activities.Figure out the scope for your metadata:
Analyze both current and future use cases for your gaming metadata. Based on this, determine the requirements for your web pages and specify exactly how you will capture, integrate, and publish metadata. This will drastically improve product discoverability on your video game e-commerce website or application, especially when you leverage quality game content to boost game discoverability.Get your metadata from a reliable source and avoid crowdsourcing:
Crowdsourcing often results in poor quality information. Without expert curation and strict quality control, details can be incorrect or missed. With a company like Gameopedia, any metadata provided is run through multiple checks for quality and accuracy, ensuring the final data is error-free.Localize Metadata for the regions you're selling in:
Video game information can differ across regions—this could include the game's title, protagonist names, publishers, release date, or other details. Ensuring your metadata is localized and updated for consumers is integral to a game's discoverability and can boost sales on your gaming e-commerce website or portal. Gameopedia offers extensive localized video game metadata coverage across four continents.Optimize your E-commerce Portal to leverage metadata for Discoverability:
Ensure customers can navigate to any page on your website in 3 clicks. Include genre categories as a sidebar and a clearly visible navigation bar.
Incorporate detailed video game information through metadata for every available product to deliver effective and relevant search results. Account for typos and misspellings.
Implement cross-selling and upselling on your website pages. If a customer is interested in one game of a franchise, suggest deals related to that game and others from the series, powered by improved video game recommendations in e-commerce.
Add in-demand and trending games or products to your home page, using persona-driven metadata to optimize game discovery with player personas and ensuring each title’s details are accurate for its market with localized game metadata for eCommerce platforms.
Metadata management is a continuous activity which needs to be scaled with your organization. The sooner you can incorporate a process to go about it, the easier it will be for your team in the future. Make sure you conduct regular audits to help identify both problems and areas where improvements can be made.
Comprehensive and high quality video game metadata can massively improve discoverability, user engagement, and conversions, helping you capture a larger share of the consumer market. Reach out to us for industry leading video game information for over 180,000 games, spanning across 200 platforms for four continents.
