What is happening to the market? - part 2

I would just like to see to the ability to 'search' put back..

 Zarcon

deano explained we can:

Buahh.. Guess I should pay attention to the screenshots more huh... Thanks jksurf & Deano!

Yea. But i want it on the actual market page.

Because.......

Well, if you all missed it. Imagine how many others don't realize it as well.

I thought it was going to be missed and go un-noticed back when they first put it there months ago. And i think i was right.

 Absolutely only those of us who frequent this forum will ever know . I am normally pretty observant and did try searching there but didn't notice the drop down and just got irritated by the search results. I didn't have the best day anyway.

As a regular customer, After attending a one day (What is happening to the market?) Learning Intervention, I have now got the hang of it (but God help someone new) and I can live with the changes. I would like to see items listed on the market landing page in the following order Latest - Recently Updated - then what ever listing anyone should so desire (please, please reposition that staff picks some where else).

In my opinion, Boonex still need to sort out the following as it is the greatest pain in the ass, some modules have a version number some do not. Also if a vendor corrects a typographical error or adds some more information on the listing but makes no changes to the module, the market place applies a new updated date. When this happens I am not really sure what has been updated, so I download this update and (where applicable) I spend hours checking code changes, to find the is no change. Things change slow around here and when they do they can be major or even a disaster, I would suggest vendors as their part of taking ownership of change, put the version number in the description something like (My Banner 4.5) and update the description when their is a change to the module then the update date is no longer that important. Now I here you say but you can check on your site for updates, what a disaster that has turned out to be, I have yet to see one module that has appeared as an update in this manor.

Slightly off topic - Vendors I do understand you fear theft of your hard work, but if you use back-links, activation licenses, base64 encoded or otherwise, have the courtesy to let us know in the listing, most people are genuine and honest and pay for what they use. In addition if some wants to steal your hard work they will change or remove the code in ten (10) minutes. When I find such code hidden away somewhere in the files and I am not told in advance, I remove the module as I do not know the effect or what access it gives to my site and on a point of principle never buy from that vendor again. (I ask in that case who is deceiving who?).

Boonex will do, what Boonex feel or consider is right for them, they supply only the foundation and the vendors supply the building blocks and the customer decorates the house.

 
This is already forced. The vendors have to provide a version number when they upload a new package. So let me explain how you can tell if something has been updated or not.

First. My Deanos Tools mod. Shows up in the recent update list however, look at the pic.


Notice there is no version number.

Because version numbers are now being forced when a new package is uploaded this means that a new package has not been uploaded. So this one was just a change in the product description.

Now this one is a more recent addition to the market and all new additions will have a version number. Because they are being forced.



So it's quite simple. If you do not see a version number under the product logo then no product update was uploaded. So you can ignore it.

Otherwise there will be a version number there. And if it is the same as the one you have, then no update to the package.

As developers upload updated products eventually they will all have version numbers. So that issue has already been addressed.

 That also should be there in the technical checklist link if the developer even bothers to list it.

Been away for a couple of weeks with new job, just seen all this!

Gotta say - I really don't like it.

The one page layout just doesn't work design wise with 4 columns.

Product titles are hidden (these are THE key first info a customer looks at...)

The 'SEARCH' button has been removed - okay so you can figure it out in a round about way using the top search icon, then selecting 'market' but thats really a non straight forward method... I use the search function as the main way to navigate the market as a customer!

The sections, 'staff picks', 'noteworthy', 'latest', 'recently updated', 'top rated'  - these work better as tabs. Now, I am forced scroll past them in order to find the ones I find the most useful - latest and recently updated. Im not interested so much in staff picks, or noteworthy - especially considering some of the staff picks have had horrible customer experience for many users...   Ever heard of 'above the crease' or 'above the fold'??? 

Tabs work much better than forcing viewers to scroll down...

Im surprised by this backwards development, seems the boonex team may be good coders, but when it comes to user friendly design and functionality they seem to be out of their skill set.

Search is the main function to use any Marketplace. Not with 4 clicks somewhere around the site header, figuring out with drop down menus, but one single Big Search Field in the first place! 

Without visible obvious Market search members will be able to find anything. The whole market idea is losing sense. It's like Internet without the search engines, but with the list of websites. Click each to figure out. 

Boonex, please make the Main Functions first and then all the rest! This is always the logical way to do it!

On the most websites administration usually posting some messages, like "Marketplace is under reconstruction, some functions may not work properly yet. Sorry for inconvenience." and dates of start and end. I think most of us have spent long time enough on Boonex at least to be warned about some changes, even if Boonex don't want our opinions.

 Agree 100% with this order.

Anyone care to guess what motivated Boonex Staff to revise the Marketing page?  Was it to emphasize the Staff Picks in an attempt to increase sales for certain Boonex Staff?  I don't remember reading a lot of complaints as to the awkwardness of the old layout... at least nothing that could not be fixed with minor tweaks to the visual layout (note: I'm not including any significant code changes suggested for changing how each module's info is gathered from the database).  

Seriously... if I got this much negative feedback for a site revision I'd made then I'd revert to the previous version... then find a reasonable way to provide access to the newer version, for feedback, while I continue working on it until it was considered better than the old version.  

Andrew, please share your thoughts with us on this matter... your silence has not gone unnoticed.

Yes, it listed activation licenses but the last time I look that was no entry for third party decryption required, such as ionCube.  That needs to be added as well as some of us my not have loaded third party decryption, and may not want to load it, to our servers.

Back to the history of 2012, market layout was just normal, with everything readable and understandable. If I would need to choose between the last couple concepts, I would back at least to this one. Just click-and-go. What do you guys think?

This is very true, who makes changes directly to a production site; especially something big.  Boonex doing so has hurt sales for the vendors.  I brought Deano's web comic because I went to the Market and click on the specials link and saw it listed, A new module at a nice discount.  With the current Market disruption, I am not even bothering looking.

Also when you go to some module, you see this "Download" button which brings you confusing popup:

Why not to make it so it will go directly to the payment page or shopping cart? And to rename this button to something normal like "Buy now".

Imagine going to the store to buy some cheese, the cashier tells you - "It's not your cheese! Pay money to purchase it!" lol

Or how about this; not sure how much of an overhead it would add to the server though.  The download button is greyed out if you don't have the module in your shopping history.  

ROFLMFAOP - Ok, I gotta chime in on GGs last statement, cause it had me laughing for 10 minutes. So, if you download dolphin and install the store module (I can't remember the exact steps so trying to get an understanding). Ok, so you have items in the store. Now, if a user is not logged in, then they do not have the ability to buy or download anything in the store. If you are logged in, then you can see the buy button, but NOT the download button. Once you have purchased the item, then the download button is available to you, but only if you are logged in.

I have not used the store in a long time, so if someone could confirm that this is the proper order of things. If so, then read on.

Is it just me, or does it seem extremely backward to offer in your script to the world something that you can't implement on your own site?

With this new market system with thumb down votes, I just found that two of my modules have by one down vote, wow. Does anybody have any ideas on how it works? 4 out of 5 stars seems like counting as down vote?

If you thumb up something your will see that icon changes to a thumb down.

So a thumb down is a thumb up that was taken away and thumbed down instead. The thumbs up and down are separate from the stars.

 Thanks for explanation, Deano.. So if I accidentally voted something up and then changed my mind, it will count Down vote... Interesting.. And if I want to vote something down, I have to vote up and then "unvote" it... Egghh.... Steel logic..

Yea. i forgot to mention what i thought of that.

Sometimes i wonder if they hired Forest Gump to design the website.

 Haha, I thought it was Mr.Bean! :)

I thought that might be the case... a crazy-stupid way of doing it... unless the designer is purposely trying to hide the way a thumbs down vote is added.  Why not just display both thumbs up and thumbs down icons... with a variation to clearly indicate if one has been chosen.  Clicking on an icon that has already been chosen would unpick it... resulting in neither icon being chosen.  If one icon was already chosen when the other icon was clicked then the vote would "flip".  I assume only registered module owners can vote.  I wonder if anything special happens for those that own more than one copy (I sure a few of us in this discussion have duplicates), i.e. should their vote could be multiplied by the number of copies they own? 

In all the places on the net that I have seen with a thumb up and a thumb down (and you have to have both, I like the FaceSucks stupidity with likes.  300 people have liked this.  Yeah and 3000 may have thought it sucked LOL).  Anyway, they have a thumb up and under it the thumb up votes; and then the thumb down and under it the thumb down votes.  It is very clear to see how many voted thumbs up and how many voted thumbs down.

Thank you for feedback! 

We are working on Market update, which we've been working on after the latest feedback about "Trusted Vendors". What we're doing now is changing this into a more automated ratings algorithm, which would primarily affect positioning of products, instead of exposure of Vendors/Providers. 

You may notice, for example, that at this page - http://www.boonex.com/market/members/top we have a new ranking order, and no arbitrary "Trusted Vendors" list. Ranking is based on amount of positive feedback. 

As for the Market homepage and other prowling pages - please bare with us for a few days. We're working on tuning the algo for the "Noteworthy" listings, which are going to be at the top, with Latest, Updated and Staff Picks following. We have Staff Picks first right now due to unfinished algo - we just need to see how things work first. The new listing is comprised of new products, with special push given to products from Providers with high %% of positive feedback (high ranking of Provider also adds some %% for calculation purposes). You may see total score and positive feedback %% in Providers profiles now. 

There're some layout nuances that we need to fix as well, obviously, so patience is much appreciated.

Again, as far as reasons for the change are concerned - we're doing this to step away from arbitrary selections and to create effective way to feature high-quality products, both new and old. 

Over the next week you will see some smaller changes and fixes, as well as a post explaining the new rankings and ratings. 

Thank you!

Oh, and by the way, the "Noteworthy" is essentially an improved "Hot List", which will be most prominently featured, once ready. See it here - http://www.boonex.com/market/browse/hot .

 Finally some much needed and appreciated feedback Andrew. Thanks.

Thank you for this expiation as I had give the thumbs up to I thought were worth it and the other way round, but now when i try to reverse the thumbs up to thumbs down ( i have just now even confused myself) it will not let you - maybe its my system.

 Maybe it would be good idea to make the basic important things working first, like Search and navigation and then implement improvements? You can have golden plated Ferrari, but it's useless without the engine.

Now people can't find anything and by the time when everything is improved and working, some mod developers may be working somewhere else because of no income.

Importance of things is an arbitrary measure. Some would argue that selection of products featured on homepage is more important than positioning of the search box. There're also some things that we can only see/test when changes go live. 

Specific ideas/suggestions are very welcome and patience is much appreciated. 

Thank you!

Many people here was writing about getting search back. Without search you can't find offers, without finding you can't buy, without buying vendors will not survive.

Search function is the core of a lot of things: books are starting with content list, travel starts from searching where to go, even surfing the Internet in many cases starts from search. Without search there's no ways to find anything. 

Honestly, I'm already looking for backup plans somewhere else, with all my love to this community.

 The old search function is still available via the top-menu "search" where you can choose Market drop-down. It seemed redundant to have two search boxes sitting next to each other, hence the removal.

Meanwhile, however, we're working on additional search tool for specific sections of Market browsing. 

OK, solution then is to remove that Top Search box that many are finding confusing.  Put back the old search link in the forums and put back the old search link in the market.

Andrew, please listen to us, we are telling you of a usability problem with the search in the Market that is going to hurt sales.  It is not evident to most coming in; from the feedback we are getting, that they can search the Market using that magnifying glass icon.  Saying you don't want a dual search thing is fine; however, it is not addressing the key issue of not having an easy to understand Market search.  It would be better to revert back to the old method than to leave the current one.

Now having said that, the additional search tools sounds promising.  Hopefully search results will improve.  In the old search I would get a lot of false positives on searching the Market; I think that was probably coming from vendors over salting their keywords; it is why Google does not place a lot of importance on the Meta Tag keywords.

 In order to search the market, I have to

1. click search icon,

2. figure out to click Google+ icon for drop-down,

3. click "Market",

4. type my search words and....

5... click.... ehh... press Enter key? 

Useful market search with just one field "Search" and button "Go":

1. type my search words and...

2. click "Go"

First time on site impression:

"I clicked "Market" on main menu, wow a lot of great stuff! Maybe they have module for the language translation that I need... let's see...  how to search here? oh, here's some tags.. hmm.. why this mess is not even in alphabetical order? ok, category.... "Translation"..... I see really great module, but wait.... why only one? let's see what other filters says.... featured... what's there.... oh, what if I choose "All" instead..... wow, here we go... 9 modules, not bad! My friend recommended the module named "Blahblah translate" but I don't see it here... how to search?"

Take a look at the screenshot i posted here. http://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/What-is-happening-to-the-market-.htm#230865 and the way it is now.

They added a down arrow to indicate a drop down.

I still don't think that's going to be enough. I would still prefer a search right on the page.

Also. The pages current drop downs are still producing inaccurate results, and it is defaulting to showing featured in all sections which it should not do. The default should be all.

 

LOL. Try other combinations like selecting free and then selecting a tag of templates. Just try and get it to show you all free templates. I think i did it once after a lot of clicking back and forth.

I even had problems with it getting stuck on one category even after i switched it back to all.

It's just not properly working right now. I hope they give it a complete workout before they say it done.

Click Forums and down arrow is not there...  Also there's no drop down menu on member icon from Forum section... 

 All filters doesn't reset after refreshing the page and there's no button "Reset". Confusing... by default it shows "Featured" only...

That freeking box with the 3 lines - ugh. My boss purchased Rayz Group Chat module yesterday - took us forever to find the location of the license.