Category Page Update

[jamesgiroux]

@MojoSoundtrack

Also thank you for not addressing a single concern of those 95% of authors here that are deeply unhappy that Envato even have the nerve to suggest driving traffic to a marketplace that refuse to remove their aggressive misleading advertising to a competing market.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the category page design updates. We’ve discussed in other threads the banners that appear on Market for Elements.

@fbtemplates

Since the preselection will not change anymore, why you do not define the category “Best Sales of the Week” as permanent. So every week customers will be able to see new items on their screens.

Over time, I expect that we will be experimenting with a variety of different options on these pages to try and find the ones that help the most customers find the items they are looking for.

@anchor_point_heshan

This is what they need I feel Envato tries to close this market place and improve elements

There are a few conspiracy theories out there that suggest we’re intentionally doing things to harm Envato Market in favor of Envato Elements. This is not the case. Envato Market is still the largest part of our ecosystem and one we want to see continue to thrive and succeed. The investments we’re making into category page changes are part of our ongoing effort to improve a customer’s ability to find what they are looking for quickly, easily and with as little friction as possible. This in turn leads to greater author earnings as the number of customers who make a purchase goes up.

@Creattive

if I change the sorting, every search made afterwards is done in that sorting. I think this is not an intended behaviour, but only you at envato can know this, maybe this is preferred.

I think it is better to just lock the sorting for search when I have changed the sorting for a search result page before. Not if I have changed the sorting for a category page.

Thanks! I’ve passed this feedback on to the team. Not sure if the change is straightforward but I’ll follow up if they action anything.

@OlexandrIgnatov

I think Envato is going through a massive ‘shift’ from being a cool and a cozy company that really was about authors and community to a big corporation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if a proper steps are taken to maintain a high level of authorship here, item quality and forcing additional ‘checks’ when allowing new people with stolen music and self-buying to join the platform and overcrowd the search engine. It’s just becoming too hard for people with good quality music to compete with the consequences and see reason in staying here if nothing changes for the better for them.

Thanks for your observations. Quality and Integrity are very important to Envato and something we continue to invest in. We’ve reduced wait times for reviews in most major item types and continue to invest in content requirements and guideline improvements to ensure that fewer authors with bad behaviour and not-quite-right items make it onto the platform.

@Toyda

What are the odds that you are wrong and that as a result of the experiment you will have to turn back and take a different path?

Envato is not in the habit of leaving something running that is clearly not working and we do take author feedback on board. A few recent examples of this are broadcast licenses on Elements, Envato Hosted and Envato Video.

@meks

One question, do you have any near-future plans to A/B test different search algorithms on the search results page? Btw, what is the current criteria for “best match” when buyers use the search form? What I would really like to see is something similar that is already done for a long time on wp org. For example, my personal opinion is that items with good rating, recent update cycle and a decent number of sales should have been pushed higher in the results page instead of items that are only doing keyword stuffing. I’m almost sure that this will benefit everyone, all the way from buyers, to Envato and its authors.

We’re always looking for ways to reduce the friction that buyers experience in their search for the right item. We haven’t got any search tests planned at the moment but that doesn’t mean we won’t in the future. Our focus at the moment is on category pages.

The most recent change to the search algorithm for ThemeForest was to include some additional weighting for items that meet our new guidelines. If your portfolio meets the new requirements, your items should have a boost as a result.

@ThemeREX

Showing mainly newest themes, but some certain positions (for instance 3,5,7 - out of 30) will ALWAYS be taken by relevant bestsellers that are going to be in rotation. This way customers will not get tired of the same bestsellers and new themes will have a chance to have a good start and potentially become bestsellers one day.

As simple as it is, this formula gives the balance and works fine, just give it a try.

Thanks for your input and feedback ThemeRex. At the moment, we’re not making any changes to the search results pages, just the category pages. That said, it is only a temporary situation until the new pages are rolled out.

Specifically for WordPress on ThemeForest, we are already capturing your idea by creating sequences of items that are based around specific criteria, such as new, trending, best selling, staff picks, etc. We think, as you’ve pointed out, that by providing this type of variety to customers, they will be most likely to find what they are looking for.

[MVPThemes]

@jamesgiroux

There are a few conspiracy theories out there that suggest we’re intentionally doing things to harm Envato Market in favor of Envato Elements. This is not the case. Envato Market is still the largest part of our ecosystem and one we want to see continue to thrive and succeed. The investments we’re making into category page changes are part of our ongoing effort to improve a customer’s ability to find what they are looking for quickly, easily and with as little friction as possible. This in turn leads to greater author earnings as the number of customers who make a purchase goes up.

What you are missing, or purposely ignoring, is that whatever increase in sales you are seeing is going to the top handful of authors, and not the bottom 95% of authors since they are the ones having their themes displayed more prominently. How can you even suggest for a moment that authors who don’t have themes on the first page of each category would see an INCREASE in sales if they are no longer featured prominently? That’s counterintuitive. What’s happening is customers are immediately presented with the best sellers and ending their search earlier and just going with the top seller instead of searching for alternatives. Why would they? After all, if the theme has a ton of sales, it’s gotta be good, right? And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since those are the only themes that will ever have enough sales to qualify as worthy of buying.

Nearly every author we are hearing from is reporting a steep drop in sales. You continue to come up with excuses and deflections instead of actually listening to what we’re saying, and frankly, it’s insulting.

[MojoSoundtrack]

Is that all you could extract from Olexandrs spot on post about the problems directly related to why it’s not a good idea to ask authors to drive traffic to the market under the current conditions? Staying strictly on topic was not so interesting with those particular arguments was it?

@jamesgiroux

There are a few conspiracy theories out there that suggest we’re intentionally doing things to harm Envato Market in favor of Envato Elements. This is not the case.

Of course you do care about the markets. The markets are also a very effective recurring dinner plate for Envato Elements, some suffer less, some suffer greatly under this spammy advertising. Those who had a higher % of Envato credits statements a year ago suffer greatly for sure.

Exclusive market authors do not get paid for this advertising, instead they are literally paying for it with lost sales. A spammy advertising header that lately have become “even smarter” and has a closing point that’s nearly impossible to hit unless you are zooming in and hitting the inner pixel. Classy.

That Envato needs to fill up their Elements catalogue in many categories is a fact. That sorting best sellers all over the place leads to frustrated authors uploading to Elements is also a fact. Those 2 facts are not a conspiracy theories, that’s for sure.

No offence James (I assume you have ghost writers) but the empty lip service from Envato is just getting worse and worse, it has reached the point now where it’s the thinnest soup ever. At least I have stopped wondering about how much respect that’s left for the authors here, it is absolutely 0% at this point. Confirmed.

I had hopes that things could evolve for the better at AudioJungle with all the great ideas and efforts we have put into the forums. But oh boy we have been naive. Hopefully some competition sites have gotten some great ideas out of it if nothing else.

Seeing how you treat your other marketplace authors have really revealed a horror scenario, it’s much worse than I thought. Not even your precious Power Elite Authors with best selling items that actually enjoys extra exposure can get through to Envato. It’s a thick brick wall of ignorance and disrespect. This level of disrespect for the authors deserves a badge really, highest level. Congrats.

[anchor_point_heshan]

Thanks for the reply, if it’s not your intention to drop the sales, the traffic and the consistent submissions of high quality new items to the marketplace repository even a small kid can understand that if you continue to keep run this way by pressurizing the authors wont do any good for the market. Because what this market place sells are what are created by the authors and consistent high quality items are a must for the long term sustainability of customer impressions as in the way you grew up until this point. If you are not sure of this and still can’t understand this simple logic perform a survey to capture data from customers, I think that’s the way you should work before taking any actions which seriously affect the author income in 60% drop. And I wonder how this 65% drop of the sales of 95% of the authors can benefit the overall sales, if it so, it’s only for a shorter time eventually the entire traffic begins the drop reaching competitive marketplaces. First the authors will move to competitors and put high quality items their and then eventually the customers will move too

[DannySkinner]

Envato tells authors: your design is not good enough and fresh, we already have a lot of this, try again. Envato tells buyers: see what a beautiful design of 2013, be sure to buy it!

[M_Adnan]

i have no words for envato stupid decision. when you CLICK on html page you will see most papular theme in 9$. i think we need leave this earth… or wait for envato dies

[GZGRAPHICS]

Your post nailed it!

[anchor_point_heshan]

@DannySkinner You are definitely right. What they show to buyers now are not really 2013 some are 2010 I wonder how they got the 5% conversion, it may be just random and a figure like 5 can be something + and - where author sale drops are more than 60%. I saw the other’s graphs also that they had posted in the other thread it’s the same as mine

[anchor_point_heshan]

[anchor_point_heshan]

And sometimes that pill box may help a little too but it has being worked out only on themeforest wordpress category which is some what a fast moving category at least we should be treated with that even

[VladimirPerumov]

Experts from Envato say your income has increased. Since you are not an expert, I will believe them

[Toyda]

Thank you for your answers, @jamesgiroux , although the question was about the category page experiment.
I still don’t know why I need a separate category page that “replaces the sorting modes”. You have many options for really smart marketing without destroying exposure to new products.

• Leave the sorting modes in place. (Newest Items by default)
• Hide the default filters.
• Add a quick transition to categories.
• Use banners, cards, promotions to your liking! (replace them as if they were A\B\C\D\ tests)
• Enjoy it!

“Experiments” implies change, but we don’t see anything changing.

[anchor_point_heshan]

I noticed some well playing authors too have moved and working fast on competitive market places. It has already started

[VladimirPerumov]

@jamesgiroux

There are a few conspiracy theories out there that suggest we’re intentionally doing things to harm Envato Market in favor of Envato Elements

Conspiracy theory will be the only logical solution until you provide detailed data.
The current situation is as follows:
Empty words envato and that all is good, against hundreds of authors whose income has decreased significantly. The conclusion is obvious

[CleverSoft]

Please don’t show the Element banner on our item pages, portfolio… It’s stealing our customers. I’ve been working here for nearly 10 years and must say that now Envato is not right place for selling digital products. I won’t upload any new item to this market. I also have a plan to move our items to other market as soon as possible.

[secondfalseiteration]

@jamesgiroux

The investments we’re making into category page changes are part of our ongoing effort to improve a customer’s ability to find what they are looking for quickly, easily and with as little friction as possible.

Envato removed “Follow Feed” from main page. Yes, it’s because you want customers to find what they need quickly.

[dgas99]

@jamesgiroux

There are a few conspiracy theories out there that suggest we’re intentionally doing things to harm Envato Market in favor of Envato Elements. This is not the case.

There is nothing with conspiracy theories but with facts which you constantly ignore…Ever since Elements open most of the strongest authors has stopped publishing new items on Market ( this is a fact ).
So comes the experiment with Best sellers see the miracle most items of these same authors ( this is a fact ).
And whatever the 90% of other authors losing, Market has low traffic and sales you’re still bombarding each items with Elements banner, steal traffic and you do not change anything ( this is a fact ).
Well done some geniuses guy make decisions and who will ruin this, without Market Elements is nothing, you will obviously learn it harder ways and this is a fact…

[Rouge_Trader]

Great stuff! true true true!
Envato need courage to create new best sellers. but unfortunately it takes time.
It’s better to have 10,000 best sellers in 5 years rather then 60 best sellers today.
Dare and you shall be rewarded! (and so will your authors…)

[anchor_point_heshan]

@dgas99 Well said… 100% agreed

[IndWorks]

How about Envato runs a monthly/quarterly email/marketing campaign with the newest top quality items from the marketplace? Envato email/marketing campaigns are real sale boosters!

I think not only these campaigns with the newest top quality items will help them reach to the potential customers but also encourage and motivate authors to create quality items.