I’m feeling very frustrated as a long-time Wordpress eCommerce manager and short-term Envato Community member.
I joined with my latest client to pick up 2 products from the market - neither of which enabled me to ask questions of the author easily ahead of purchase and neither of which have lived up to their marketing.
The first was basically a list of ‘download these plugins’ instructions plus visual composer masquerading as a theme. The second was marketed as a database when it in fact presents the means to make a database - and it is so illogically structured its less than useless compared to free brands manager plugins.
As an Envato customer I was unable to ask questions of the authors ahead of purchase, leaving me with two terrible plugins with horrifically liberal marketing.
I’m interested in an alternative theme available here - but I can’t contact the author until I purchase. This is just ridiculous Can a staff member please contact Hella on our main email to discuss?
Sorry to hear you’re having problems with some items. You can certainly contact authors before you purchase by using the contact form on the right side of every author’s profile page.
Could you maybe point out where? I’ve submitted post purchase enquiries to two authors I’ve purchased from, only one of which has so far replied. I had to do this through the support forum.
When I’m on the page of a new plugin we’re interested in, we don’t see any contact info.
All of the pages look like this one to us when logged into envato, with no option to contact authors until post purchase.
Almost always there are three ways to contact an Author.
Write a comment on the item’s comments page. This is possible for all items, and this is great for pre-purchase questions. Most times, you’ll even find that your question is already answered.
Use the Authors support solution. Authors most times provide a support page on their own site (found through the support tab of the item) that you can use to contact the author.
Again, I can get to the theme maker page from the plugin but there is NO OPTION for me to contact them.
You have to jump through several hoops to get to the page you posted, I’ve had to do a run around! So you’re saying a new visitor, who isn’t a customer, needs to know how to work your site with literally the worst UX before they can ask a question?!
Land on product - ALL CTAs are to buy and support leads to forum
You want new customers to intuitively navigate away from the page by clicking author portfolio (not relevant to the customer journey) and then click ‘about the author’ on the next page (still not relevant to the customer journey) where they’ll be shown a form they otherwise have no access to?
That’s not acceptable. I couldn’t even find an email address to make this complaint!
How the eff is a new customer supposed to know there is a hidden contact page if you click the author portfolio then about author - which one would presume is a bio. Sorry, but this isn’t good enough1
This is all before we get onto the trading standards issues regarding misadvertised products I need to discuss with you! I have two purchases from you that violate my statutory rights for purchase in the UK and I would like to discuss them in line with these issues. Can you please provide a contact email address for me to bring up these legal issues? I shouldn’t have to be doing it on a forum.
I repeatedly tried, only to be asked to enter my product key before being allowed access. This is because the only option to contact the author from the product page is the support tab.
I know anyone can contact using the bio link, but why on earth would any new customer navigate to a shop portfolio and an author biography when looking for a contact link? It’s completely nonsensical UX and feels a lot like Envato discourage pre-purchase questions. Unless you’ve used the community, which why would you as a new customer, you have no obvious option to contact plugin authors.
I also tried to find the company information so I could contact them directly - this wasn’t available which violates international trading standards. I couldn’t actually find a registered business address for Envato when I wanted to get in touch - I had to come to a bloody forum!
Could you in the least think about your new customers and the legal requirements to enable international customers to contact the company making sales to them?
There is no reason you can’t have the author contact details on the page you’re marketing sales on. As you’ve demonstrated elsewhere on the site, you’re able to add this information to the sidebar - you’ve chosen not to.
Again, the [Comments] tab on any item page can be used to ask pre-sale questions and general comments on any item without purchase code or pre-purchase needed. I am not talking about the bio link or the support tab, I’m talking about the Comments tab.
Envatos adress is listed clearly at https://envato.com in their footer: 121 King Street, Melbourne
Victoria 3000 Australia
Can a staff member please contact Hella on our main email to discuss?
