Today we’re announcing the beginning of some changes to the “Popular Files” and “Popular Items” pages on Envato Market.
As part of our drive to make Envato Market faster and more flexible, we’re launching a design refresh and some structural changes for the “Popular Files” page under All Items, as well as the “Popular Items” pages within each category.
What’s Changing?
On the “Popular Files - All Items” pages of each marketplace, two options for the ‘Top Sellers’ will now be available: a tab for the past week, and one for the past month. The URL for these pages will also be changing from “.net/page/top_sellers” to “.net/top-sellers”.
For “Popular Files - All Items” and “Popular Items - by Category” the “Top Authors by month” sidebar will change to Featured Authors and will display the past 5 featured authors.
Item cards are also getting a design refresh so that they look like the larger item cards you can find within the ‘Featured Files’ section and search results already present across Envato Market.
In addition to these changes, the sub-navigation for “Popular Items - by Category” will get a design refresh but the functionality will remain the same.
When will this happen?
From today you’ll notice these changes within 3DOcean and PhotoDune. This is the first major change to these pages that we have made in a long time so we’ll be watching closely to see how they impact the behaviours of customers. Our intention with these changes, as with all our changes, is to improve the purchase experience for customers and author earnings.
There is no action required by authors but you may wish to update the information used on search results and category pages to ensure it reflects what you would like to appear on the Popular Items pages. If all goes the way we hope, we will roll these changes out across the other marketplaces in the coming weeks.
These are big changes and you may have questions or comments. We’ll be actively monitoring this thread for the next seven days, responding in batches to your questions. Please remember our community guidelines as you post.
These are way too big. How will buyers get to see files at the bottom of the page? Is the goal here to focus more attention on the top 10 files? What about the 40+ other files down the page?
I agree that the previews above are to big, why not have 4 or 5 on each line?
Regarding AudioJungle I´m still wondering why the thumbnails are so small? Many of us use tags, moods and important information in our item icons, and that is totally lost for customers with this new design. Why not resize the AJ icons 100%? seems to me that it is space for it.
The new design gives the site a more modern feel so thats good, also to give featured authors more exposure is a nice move I think.
For AudioJungle Popular list, will you include all genres on the front page? That would really be a simple great little move for customer experience.
Right now we have rotating sub popular lists. (very slowly, can take many days) Customers have to manually write the link for Rock for example if they want to see that:
Nice, but… I understand that first changes were made to the 3dOcean and PhotoDune - both markets are based on a visual side, so I believe big avatars of items may be inspiring for buyers. But I would reconsider it on AudioJungle where buyers are searching for music, not for visuals which are represented by avatar. The only representative avatar on AudioJungle is automatically generated waveform.
That’s why @AurusAudio in my opinion is right - focusing on a few top selling items is something quite opposite to what we have been discussing about recently on the AJ forum. We think it’s time to give little more air to other works than to top of the top selling items.
A lot of empty pages over there! I’d prefer to see results, sales or no sales, maybe after add a search loop based on other things or similar. This way it doesn’t look like it’s working.
This 100%. I don’t use my logo as the thumbnail for all my tracks, I choose a picture that portrays a “feeling” of the track and then I’ll add some text like “5 Versions” or “Epic/Dark”. Now in search the thumbnail is almost non existent, it’s a tiny 22x22 image you can’t even make out. Bad change when they could’ve easily kept the thumbnail to the left of the play button like this:
Looks great! @steve_lam Please forward this design idea to the team, this is crucial to customer experience for us who actually use the thumbnails to convey information. Just think about when you are having a sale/intro price etc it is quite beneficial that customers can actually see it in the icon without going into the item description.
Exactly. It’s a little confusing when Envato’s article / report stipulates that quality icons are important for buyers, and that they often use the visual cue to judge quality. How can they tell with such small icons?
Hi all, here to answer a few of the questions/comments so far!
Yes, that’s correct. We feel that this will give more opportunity to recognise authors in ways that aren’t purely based on earnings/sales.
We’re using the same newly redesigned cards from the search/category pages which have proven to increase conversion.
AudioJungle is yet to be migrated. A new larger AJ Item card, with no thumbnail, was released recently and phase 2 is currently being AB tested. The Popular Files page will get this new design when it launches in January.
Yes, the genres will sit as sub categories on these pages, and will receive a design refresh in January.
Thanks for the update Steve! Glad to see all sub genres will be included in the new layout
If I understand this correctly there will be no thumbnails in the search engine? If so I definitely think this is a move in the wrong direction. It might work fine for other media types without thumbnails, but in AudioJungle the use for thumbnails is quite crucial because of identity and the ability to provide useful information to the customers.
We are already missing proper names on our track which removes a big part of track identity. Customers really need the ability to see difference between tracks so I don´t think the way to go is to make music tracks even more visually unrecognisable.
I´ve seen the tracks in Elements have no thumbnails, but these authors don´t have the need to advertise intro price/sales and have a much less saturated library without a gazillion of identical named tracks.
I know many customers rely on looking at waveforms, but lets say you have 5 different versions of your track, those waveforms then gets squashed, meaning the identity and visual dynamic presentation disappear completely (especially on very loud tracks).
The category filters on the 3d Models top sellers page is a great feature, that will be fantastic when implemented in the same way on AudioJungle with the Music top sellers page etc.
I agree with what other AJ authors have said here, the size of each item being much bigger is a shame, it will make it harder for items that are lower down the page to be noticed (new trending files for instance). If it is possible to have 4 items per row rather than 3 that would be better.
I’m hoping that there will be around the same amount of files being shown on the new Top Sellers page as there is on the current one, if you have too few files being displayed, it will severely hinder new files from being discovered.
I like the feature to change between the past week and past month, however, I do think past 3 months should be added also. In January, you will have mostly Christmas items being displayed on the past month tab, this can be frustrating for buyers, the added choice of a past 3 months tab would give buyers an extra option if they couldn’t find what they were looking for with the other two options.
Another suggestion would be to add the different file type links to the “All Files Top Sellers” page, so you would have:
Music - Music Packs - Music Kits - Logos & Idents - SFX - Source Files
These links would just link to the corresponding Top Sellers pages for each individual file type. Once the user is viewing their chosen file type top sellers page, they would then see the different categories within that file type, such as music genres.
One last suggestion, would it be a possibility to add the “Top Authors of Past Month” list to the “Top Authors” page? This would simply sit alongside the current Top Authors list as a sidebar. It would seem like an appropriate place to put it instead of getting rid of it completely.
I agree that there are quite some thumbnails which is… lets say less attractive. So a good point, this can be swept under the carpet with the removal of thumbnails. Still I´m not sure this weighs up for the information and identity lost for customers. Of course it depends if you use the thumbnails fully out or not. Customers will still be met with many poorly designed profiles, which is not the case in Elements for example were everything is streamlined.
Anyway I see the pro and cons, though mostly cons with removing track identity from a search engine already low on that.
Taking away the ability to visually brand our music with our avatars is a huge negative. For those of us who have spent years building a brand identity that significantly relies on visually connecting with customers, this will hurt deeply.
