A few months ago, many of you noticed an experiment we were conducting on Envato Market around the way visitors navigate. Our goal was to test whether changing the navigation to focus on what each marketplace was selling would make it easier for visitors to find what they were looking for.
Today we’re announcing the results of those experiments and as a result, some changes we’ll be making to the header of Envato Market (our navigation).
How did we get here?
As always, one of our goals is to do everything we can to ensure that those who visit Envato can quickly and easily find what they are looking for and buy it. Since the beginning, we’ve been been able to do this by leveraging organic search engine results to connect potential customers with our marketplaces.
What we’ve noticed in the last few years is that visitors to Envato Market are growing beyond professional creatives. As more people look to get online or try their hand at a creative pursuit, less and less experienced visitors are finding their way to Envato. Often through those very same search engine results.
This is great news for authors because it means that more potential customers are visiting Envato Market. The challenge is that once they get here, finding what they are looking for is less obvious.
How did the experiment go?
What we were looking to test with our recent experiments was how visitors behaved when the names of the marketplaces were replaced with more specific words around what each marketplace sold.
For example, one of the experimental headers replaced our brands like CodeCanyon and PhotoDune with words like Code and Photos.
We tried a few variations to see what would happen and the result was that there was no drop in conversion (meaning that just as many visitors became customers). Just as important though, visitors were more likely to visit one of the other marketplaces than the one they started in when the header described the content rather than the brand.
Said another way, visitors were just as likely to buy something if that was their intent while also visiting marketplaces beyond the one they started in, increasing their exposure to the rest of our community’s great items.
So, over the next few weeks, visitors will start seeing changes to the header bar across Envato Market to de-emphasize our brands and focus more on the content each site contains.
Based on the results of our experiments we see this as a great way to increase the exposure of photos customers to video items, code customers to theme items, graphics customers to 3D items, and beyond.
What’s next?
Our brands aren’t going away with this change. You’ll still be able to type in a marketplace URL and get to the right place but once there, the emphasis will be less on the name of the site and more on the items available there. Authors may want to update the copy on their item pages to reflect these changes too.
Beyond the change itself, what’s going on here?
What authors should take away from the results of this experiment are the key lessons we’re learning about how customer demographics are changing.
A great question to ask and think through is how your items can support a DIY user to get the most out of what you’ve created. What might need to change in your item page copy, demos, instructions, support materials, etc., to enable those who are new to get the context they need to be successful?
Here at Envato we’re having those same conversations and adapting the way we present ourselves to ensure that visitors, regardless of their experience with software and creative assets can find what they are looking for and complete their project.
One great example of where this is most evident is in the content and writing style of our blog. Take a look at the titles and way the content focuses on supporting authors by educating visitors.
We’ll be around to answer any questions about these changes for the next seven days. Please remember our community guidelines as you post.
