Best practices for publishing on the Unity Asset Store

Publishing to the Unity Asset Store for the first time can be challenging - especially because there is very little information about best practices available. Since we've faced identical issues, we thought it was time to publicly document our experiences since November 2021 - when we first published to the Unity Asset Store. We hope our findings will help you become successful on the Unity Asset Store faster. Good luck!

The foundation for success: mindset and value proposition

Before you begin, it's important to get into the right mindset: When people use the Asset Store, they are looking for a concrete solution to a concrete problem. After all, they want to save time (to solve their problem).

Plus, most people who visit your product page on the Asset Store have never heard of you or your product. Therefore, think about how you can make the onboarding process as smooth as possible for them.

Lesson learned: If the value of your product or solution is not clear, people will drop out. That's why it's fundamental to answer two questions:

• What problem does your product or solution solve? (What is the added value it provides?)
• How do you solve this problem? (What can your product do?)
  

The first impression decides over life and death

As with so many things in life, the first impression is the difference between life and death on the Unity Asset Store. So review your initial value proposition for your target segments:

• Who do you want to target on the Unity Asset Store?
• What do you want visitors to think when they first see your product?
• Which problems do you want to solve, and how?
  

Less is more!

Lesson learned: You only have a split second to grab their attention. That's why you need an eye-catcher in both your images and your description. An eye-catcher should be a specific piece of information that (visually) stands out from the crowd.

Asset Store Elements

Now that we've covered the basics, let's take a closer look at the best practices for each element of the Unity Asset Store product page.

Title

The title is one of the most important elements that determine the first impression.

• Make your title concise, easy to spell, and memorable
• Try to reflect the value of your asset in the title.

Visuals

Overall, we've found that people prefer watching videos over images. This is important when deciding how to visually showcase your assets.

Images

• Images that focus on (visual) marketing are more effective than images that are very technical.
• Images with little text or information are more impactful than images that contain too much text or that are too cluttered.
• Text should always be in the same spot, as it makes it easier to understand the content of the image.

Video

• Make (at least) one video per feature.
• Convey the goal of the video right at the beginning.
• Many short videos are much better than one long video.
• Make it possible to see the relevant information without having to switch to full screen.
• Many people watch videos without sound. Therefore, add subtitles if needed.
• Avoid shaky footage by adjusting the frame rate of your videos.

Description

When writing the description, remember two things: people are lazy readers - keep the text to a minimum. And: visitors want to know how you can help them solve their problem. Double down on this opportunity!

• Include the feature description at the very beginning.
• Highlight your features from the rest of the description by making them bold.
• Use terminology that everyone easily understands.
• Provide examples of use cases, if applicable.
• Structure your description using line breaks, bold highlighting, and emojis.
• Provide support information
• Include documentation in your asset description so users can read it before trying out your asset.
• Create a roadmap to show that the asset is constantly evolving.
• Developers love open source assets because they can customize the asset via code! If your asset is open source, make sure it's highlighted properly (in the title, description, and visuals)

Keywords

Keywords help you to be recognized as relevant by Unity's search engine. So include the keywords that your target audience uses to find similar content.

Ideas for finding the right keywords:

• Review competitor websites
• Ask your target audience directly
• Connect your website to Google Search Console and determine which keywords your website ranks for
  

Package Content

• Publish on a regular basis. A publication date that is two months old is already considered outdated and unmaintained.
• Avoid deep subfolders to keep the folder structure lean and organized.
• Make sure that the minimum supported Unity version is a recent and frequently used version.
• Version 1.0 or below seems immature and full of bugs. Update and release regularly to show that your product is well maintained.
• Provide a version history to show that the product is constantly being developed. Unity does not show the version history and only displays the first and most recent version. So you have to provide a version history manually.

Reviews

Three reviews are required for them to appear publicly on your asset's product page. Immediately before it says "not enough ratings".

• Always motivate your users to leave reviews, as they are essential for your visibility. The best starting points for this are after a positive contact, e.g. after a good support, a friendly user interview or after they have used a valuable feature.
• Avoid having your negative reviews at the top.
• Reviews, especially positive ones, should not be older than one year.

Pricing

• According to Unity, assets with a price above $50 perform better on average than assets with a lower price.
• Unity pushes assets with a higher price more than assets they can't make a big profit on.
• Free assets will be ranked lower than paid ones.

Draft submission and publication

Before creating your draft and submit your asset for the first review, consider the following information:

• If there is a problem with your asset during submission, you have to go back to the end of the queue after fixing the problem. Go through the Asset Store Submission Guidelines and ensure your asset complies, or you may be rejected.
• You will have to use Unity’s Asset Store Tools to upload your package from inside a Unity project. These include a validator utility which can check your asset for potential issues like invalid prefabs or missing scripts. It’s important to note that it only provides suggestions - having everything green in the validator does not mean your package will be accepted, and vice versa.
• Get the review process started fast, then iterate after you have published. BUT know that the first 14 days you are boosted by the "new release" indicator. Take care of good product packaging (i.e. marketing) to make good use of this boost.

Inspiration for creating awesome product pages on the Unity Asset Store

These suggestions are recommendations from us and our users - Asset Store product pages we consider worthwhile:

• Odin - Inspector and Serializer
• Playmaker
• Amplify Shader Editor

For more inspiration in creating your product page for the Unity Asset Store, you can visit our Publisher page on the Asset Store. There you will find our assets, which we are constantly trying to improve with new insights and the best practices mentioned in this article.