Hypothesis-driven testing on Envato Market: Item Page tests

Hi all! There have been many changes to the Envato Market sites over the last year, and I thought it would be helpful to give some context about the way our teams are delivering these.

What is it?

Our current method of delivering improvements on Envato Market uses a “hypothesis-driven testing” approach. This allows us to rapidly test several different characteristics, gathering data about the relative importance of these. That data allows us to iterate on the design of our Market pages, ensuring that every new version results in measurable improvements.

Why are you doing it?

The goals for this series of tests are to improve conversion rates (the % of customers making a purchase) on Envato Market, and to reduce the exit rate of customers from item pages.

What process are you using?

We are using hypothesis-driven testing for this work. Our marketplaces are very large sites, with many different components, and these combine in different ways to influence the customer experience on site.

Running tests with multiple variants allows us to get more information faster, and gives us the opportunity to measure how customers react to different combinations of changes. Each test includes a control variant, which is the page as it displays today, to allow us to accurately track any changes in customer behaviour.

It also gives us the chance to iterate with new information: we run a test, analyse the results and then incorporate what we have learned into the next test.

What is the scope of these tests?

We’re really excited to be focussing on the Item Pages. As you probably know, we have previously focused on the Envato Market home pages, category pages, and search results. Item listings are a large part of the Marketplace, and we’re confident there are opportunities to improve the customer experience and increase conversion by changing this page.

At this time, we won’t be making changes to how item ratings are calculated, or to the process for leaving comments on item pages. Our tests will focus on finding the most beneficial way to display existing information to customers at the right time in their journey.

What do I need to do?

No action is needed during the tests.

As we learn more about what makes a more successful item page, we will begin making changes to the design of our item pages. We’ll also be publishing information for authors, sharing tips and advice that you can use to improve your item listings.

The first experiment we ran focussed on the Call To Action in live previews for ThemeForest and CodeCanyon items. We found that having the iFrame and a consistent display of the ‘Buy now’ button resulted in a significant increase to conversion. The best performing variant not only increased conversion, it also resulted in sales for the largest number of authors, and the largest variety of individual items sold.

Our next few tests are on the item page itself - you’ll probably notice some of the changes, so remember you may be seeing something a little different from other people, and these changes will be iterated on.

If you have any questions about our testing approach for Envato Market, please let us know - @sunnicee and the Market Product team can help clarify in this forum thread.

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Interesting. When are these tests expected to start? How long will you be running the tests? Are these tests going to apply to everyone in Themeforest and codecanyon? Will new items be excluded from these tests?

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Very cool. Hope the testing goes well and thanks for keeping us informed.

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It’s a great goal to to improve conversion rates and to reduce the exit rate of customers from item pages. Good luck! Thanks for keeping in touch!

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Sounds interesting. Good luck, I hope the tests will benefit all! :wink: :heart:

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Sounds good, Thanks for sharing.

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Allow authors to

  • Embed (YT/Vimeo) videos in item description
  • More file formats & better content control in item description

Embedding videos on item page can reduce support requests for both envato & authors as item tutorials, install instructions, troubleshooting, demos etc can be addressed on the item page itself. This would be good UX.

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Would love to know if this will affect the current sizes of the description area. Especially since a lot of authors have graphics dependant on these… any thoughts if these will change as well?

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Thank you all for your responses. We’re excited to be exploring opportunities on the item pages, and these tests have already started and are ongoing - all traffic on the Market sites is either shown one of the test variants, or a control variant. As @BenLeong mentioned, this experimentation provides data that we’re using to improve the customer experience and increase conversion.

We’ll be keeping you updated on what we learn, particularly if we make changes to the item page design based on these experiments. Details about specific changes will need to wait for the results of our testing, as we want to ensure that all variables are assessed fairly, and announcing which variants are in current tests can skew the results.

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Sounds like a good initiative.

For me, the number one reason that I would abandon a purchase isn’t because of the item page itself, but because of the added fees incurred at the purchase point. It frustrates me that the price that I end up paying isn’t the same as what’s shown on the product. Say I want to buy a $20 track that I added to my cart. I get to the point where I want to pay and I’m faced with a vague “handling fee” and then VAT on top giving me a total of $26.40. A whopping 32% more than I thought I would be paying. (On top of that, isn’t there a Paypal fee if I choose that payment method? Which would make me wonder what the handling fee is all about if Paypal are handling the transaction!)

I think you should advertise the +VAT price on the items and build your handling fee into the item price. This way, there are no nasty surprises at the business end of the customer interaction.

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Hi. Keep in mind that some test will result in higher conversions just because they’re new, however once settled it can go lower than before.

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Very good new Envato! If that translates into more sales to creators, that’s great! I want more sales!

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@BenLeong @sunnicee

Glad that you keep us updated and you’re constantly focusing on everyone’s benefit: customers getting great items, us and you.

One thing we need as Envato Authors is more Extended Licenses sales

How about a test that keeps the licensing automatically expanded? It’s very difficult for non tech people to even realise there’s two type of licenses: regular and extended.

Please, test it expanded automatically and blame me if it goes wrong. But I bet everyone will thank me later.

Guys please vote this to attract attention

Thanks a lot for your attention

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Hello!

Please put back the ‘close’ iframe button because some products don’t behave well in an iframe and the user will consider that the product has bugs.

You can have a bigger ‘Buy now’ button but a close iframe button (smaller) must be present.

Thank you!

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Wow, item pages need a redesign and new features! Thank you for considering this update, it is really needed!

I hope Hypothesis-driven testing will help reach new item presentation and design possibilities for us :test_tube:

Really excited about the new look!

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I would ask the same thing: Please add back the “Close iFrame” button.

Our demo involves login, which does not work correctly with iFrames.

Less technical users may not understand what is happening, which can hurt conversions.

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Hi @LambertGroup & @WebWizardsDev - if you have item previews that won’t work at all with an iFrame present, please open a ticket with Envato Author Support. That team should be able to help further.

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Great! Thank you very much for doing these tests, this will help us a lot with our products😄

A post was split to a new topic: Another author used our product

Hi. Thanks for keeping us up to date.

And once again I am asking for the update of AudioJungle collection page UI. We need a simple waveform same as in search results page or in portfolio (from client’s account, not author’s). Nothing new, just the same UI.

It should instantly increase conversion rate on collection pages and allow us to make creative albums. Page with musical items without a waveform is totally unconvinient for clients.

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