What have you done to the Store?

[spoonhead]

Wow. What on earth have you done to the store? It's terrible. What's with the huge icons and thumbnails. If you have to have examples of products on the front page, at least make the thumbnails smaller, so we can have 20 products per page again.

What a terrible design. Instead of having the buy button greyed out, you now have a separate button to show that it's owned. The previous version wasn't great, but at least it was easy to navigate, even if the search options reset if you bought anything. You haven't even fixed that. The shopping cart at the bottom is intrusive, and why oh why do you have the menu's on the left when I'm on the forum, but on the right of the browser, if I'm in the shop. Get someone who understands good web design and have a look.

I'm sure there will someone along soon to tell how wonderful it is, but they will be wrong.

[Garou]

To be honest, I don't think the new design is bad in principle. But tastes are different ;) However, I find that a few things could perhaps still be optimized:

- The thumbnails could be much smaller, so that more modules can be seen on one page. It is important that all modules for sale fit on one page. That's how it was before, which I found quite good. Also when new modules appear they are thus directly on a page to see.
- The images for each module are not self-contained. If I open a picture, I can always click through and, without perhaps noticing it, I am actually already in another module.

What I really like is now the option to buy modules again. That's great if you want to give modules away. In this context: is there a solution in sight how to give away modules that are part of a bundle? Or licenses for FGU? There was once a message from SW that this is currently not possible, but they are working on a solution. Is there anything new?

[Zacchaeus]

Indeed. Tastes differ and not everyone can be pleased all of the time.

I think the changes are wonderful; makes the store look much more dynamic and interesting.

[spoonhead]

Indeed. Tastes differ and not everyone can be pleased all of the time.

I think the changes are wonderful; makes the store look much more dynamic and interesting.

Seriously? It's even worse if you use an iPad for browsing. On a phone, Just don't bother.

[Kelrugem]

I also prefer the new style; I often just look at the screenshots and now I can directly access them from the store page :D No need to click on the item first :) Though Garou's suggestions make sense, especially the second one :)

[HywelPhillips]

The new style looks OK for me on desktop but is unusable for me on my iPhone mini. I think if FG stick with this way of displaying, it would be better to put in the responsive layout that it doesn't show the screenshots on phones (and maybe not on tablets either TBH). If this display is retained, there needs to be a much clearer division between one product and the next for phone screens, so at least you can tell when you are on to the next product. But really I think a collapsed view is far more useable for phones.

I wonder whether a general "expand product description" toggle arrow might solve this, defaulting to off for phones (so just showing the one product thumbail) and on for larger screens (show all the screenshots as well)?

I would also strongly prefer to be able to choose the number of products shown per page, as on the forge, as I always prefer to be able to scroll a long (1-dimensional) list than have to paginate, personally.

Most of the other changes seem positive to me.

Cheers, Hywel

[spoonhead]

I realise the shop is not going to win any design awards anytime soon, but please make the thumbnails smaller, increase the number of items per page, and think of mobile users.

[spoonhead]

I also prefer the new style; I often just look at the screenshots and now I can directly access them from the store page :D No need to click on the item first :) Though Garou's suggestions make sense, especially the second one :)

You look at the pictures before you read what the product is about? I’m trying to think of another web store that puts all it’s product pictures on it’s landing page rather than on the product page itself. I’m sure there must be one.

[Kelrugem]

You look at the pictures before you read what the product is about? I’m trying to think of another web store that puts all it’s product pictures on it’s landing page rather than on the product page itself. I’m sure there must be one.

No reason to be harsh and sarcastic here; but yes, I prefer that, either because I already know what the module is about and just want to see some screenshots of its quality, or because I just skim through the store to see what's new and could interest me. Then I can see in the screenshots to get an idea of how it is done and what it is about :)

Similar to Steam, I look at the videos and screenshots first to see whether the genre and style fits to my preferences before I start reading more into the game :)

Actually, I think most people buying stuff in the store already know what the module is about from other sources, at least for me FG is not the main source of information about contents of certain books

[Surge]

The screenshots do seem far too large in my opinion. The amount of scrolling required because of the large images, and the limit of ten items per page, make it very awkward to browse the store.

[ddavison]

I appreciate the feedback.


The cart resetting as you buy has been fixed. It was fixed previously but got unfixed with this release. It should now work again without reloading the page or changing your search/navigation/etc.
Buy button not disabled if you already own it is on purpose. We have lots of customer support requests on how to buy something that someone already owns. People buy duplicates to gift to other people.
The thumbnail on the left and more images are meant to showcase the products which have a lot of visual differences between them. It's very similar to how Steam's store is setup.
Size of screenshot images - I previously fit another per row but below a certain size, you can't make out sufficient details and then why even have them.
Screenshots on small displays - these render as a single column. I think it looks good on iPad in landscape view, personally. I was on the fence on whether to just hide the screenshots on phone displays. I still may, depending on overall feedback. I could also add an advanced search option to disable the screenshots.
Buying gifts for people when you qualify for a bundle discount is still something that needs to be resolved. For now, it can't be gifted.
10 Items per page is the current setting to reduce the page size and improve page load times. If I can find a good way to optimize the thumbnail display further, I may increase back to 20.


Most people don't read the product descriptions and they are visually oriented instead. Long scrolling pages is actually the current design trend, and has been for a while.

We will continue to collect feedback and adjust accordingly. I would ask that you give it a bit to sink in since it is a drastic change from the previous version. If you are curious about the previous version, you can view it here:
https://fantasygrounds.com/store/index20210809.php

[SilentRuin]

As I have "old eyes" and would never use some small screen (like ipad or iphone) to ever display this stuff - the icons are fine to me. Consider the normal "placard" display for things in online stores for computers - they are much larger or equivalent in size.

Still its a trivial concern one way or the other compared to other things needing work and resolution in the Forge (looking at you "Account Page" info).

[Zacchaeus]

Seriously? It's even worse if you use an iPad for browsing. On a phone, Just don't bother.

Indeed, I have no reason at all to look at the store page on anything other than a computer. But as I say you can't please everyone all of the time.

[Dudin]

I think the thumbnail photos are maybe a tad big, but otherwise I am fine with it. The only other thing I noticed that is a minor annoyance is that when scrolling through the thumbnail photos, you can keep browsing beyond the thumbnails of the selected product and into the next one. That threw me off when I was browsing one item and started scrolling through photos of the scarlet citadel underneath it.

[ddavison]

I think the thumbnail photos are maybe a tad big, but otherwise I am fine with it. The only other thing I noticed that is a minor annoyance is that when scrolling through the thumbnail photos, you can keep browsing beyond the thumbnails of the selected product and into the next one. That threw me off when I was browsing one item and started scrolling through photos of the scarlet citadel underneath it.

That was a bug. The lightboxes now have distinct IDs and should no longer show full res screenshots from other products.

[Valyar]

I find the listing too big too. I have 2k monitor and it is two products per screen on maximized browser, something that I don't usually run. A lot of scrolling. Also - I read the product text and I think each page should have text + screenshots.

[Tindjin]

The style is fine, the functionality is really bad, at least on Chrome and PC. The "cart" window takes up 1/3 of the screen at the bottom and no way to close it. The search is not working at all it seems, at least nothing looks to be not filtering anything and if you search for any words it always comes back blank.

[ddavison]

The style is fine, the functionality is really bad, at least on Chrome and PC. The "cart" window takes up 1/3 of the screen at the bottom and no way to close it. The search is not working at all it seems, at least nothing looks to be not filtering anything and if you search for any words it always comes back blank.

I can't reproduce that issue on Chrome and PC. Are you clicking on the non-advanced search submit instead of the one for the advanced search?

Shopping cart has a max height of 25% but should only show if you have items in your cart.

[ddavison]

I just pushed an update to make it minimal on the cart. It should now just have Clear Cart, the total amount in the cart, and a link to the Checkout.