Orbx Central Sales.... Simplify

[boetie]

Am I missing something? If there is an announcement of "specials" , but in Central they are listed willy nilly here and there under different partners , there is a certain amount of searching required to find the Sale items? Is there an option I'm not seeing that shows all current promos from all developers under the one tab? There are now many partners and a single "on Special" tab would simplify my spending.

Cheers

Graeme

[wain71]

I agree with you entirely, I got lost and gave up, bought 2 things on marketplace instead...

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

As of today, there are 1446 products at Orbx Direct.

Regardless of the sale, it will take some time to browse through them all.

 

The layout of an online store can never satisfy everyone but my suggested course of action would be to make
some choices before starting to look.
Which area of the planet and which simulator you are buying for would be two good decisions.
Once that is decided, you can open the Europe page, for example and then from the drop-down, select for  example,
just MSFS.
You will then be presented with a list, each reduced price product price will be in red and crossed out, with the sale price next to it.

[greybeard]

Now come on guys ya gotta be kidding me !!  I have purchased 140 products from

Orbx Direct and partners for MSFS and you want to make it easier ?

I agree with Nick, it is just too easy.😎

 

Kevin

[mapletree1]

Got too agree,gave up after 30secs!

 

[boetie]

Still clunky. In this day and age there must be a way for IT to group all together. Maybe it's deliberate? First world problems...... heavy sigh

[tom2rific]

Agree..trying to find the specials on sale is tedious..

Too many categories to scroll through

Some of the lists are long

so I usually give up.

[Matt McGee]

5 hours ago, boetie said:

First world problems...... heavy sigh

So right!

 

Out of curiosity, I opened Orbx Direct and scrolled through all the MSFS products at a speed where I could read the product names and also see the red sale prices.

It took me 6 minutes and 55 seconds.

There are currently a lot of products on sale, so a filter of only things on sale would still have a pretty long list. 

 

Within each region you can already sort by Name, New, Price, and Partner, so you can already get the lower sale priced products listed first.

 

I'm not against the ability to generate complex searches of the product library. 

As the numbers of products grows, the time it takes to scan through the products will grow too. 

Being able to filter searches by tags such as: product type (Airport, Cityscape, Mesh), airport type (Grass, Paved, GA, Regional, International), developer, country, best selling, or other tags, would be nice.  However, I don't currently find it unduly difficult to just scan through the current products.

 

A "benefit" of scrolling through the whole list is that I sometimes stumble upon products that I would not have thought to search for.

Everybody is different, but I am more likely to get a product that I have a personal interest in, than I am to buy something just because it is on sale.

Happy holidays!

 

 

[wolfko]

23 hours ago, boetie said:

Still clunky. In this day and age there must be a way for IT to group all together. Maybe it's deliberate?

 

17 hours ago, Matt McGee said:

A "benefit" of scrolling through the whole list is that I sometimes stumble upon products that I would not have thought to search for.

 

It is probably deliberate, because it is mainly a benefit a for the seller, that custumers are buying things they did not itend to buy in the first place.

 

It is the same like many supermarkets are repositioning their selling goods on a regular basis only to force the buyers to stroll through the shelves finding the product they are looking for and this way coming across something they originally haven't ought to buy.

[tom2rific]

Doen't seem to be working very well

Hence this topic.

[Matt McGee]

18 hours ago, tom2rific said:

Doen't seem to be working very well

Seems to work fine for me and some other people who have replied too.

 

The OP’s suggestion that “a single "on Special" tab would simplify my spending”, seems to directly conflict with your own complaint, “Some of the lists are long so I usually give up.”

 

Given the number of products on sale, a list of all sale items would be correspondingly long, thus exceeding your attention span.

The current format of first selecting a category of interest (ie. Europe) results in a shorter list of products that you can then sort for an even shorter list of products to look at.
 

My guess is that most people have specific airports, counties, or developers that they are interested in.  Not just “something on sale”.

Just open the region where the interest is and sort the products by name, price, or developer.

 

Whether I am looking for a specific airport, or just scanning the products in a particular country, OC and Orbx Direct seem pretty straightforward to me.

Just my personal opinion.

 

22 hours ago, wolfko said:

It is probably deliberate, because it is mainly a benefit a for the seller, that custumers are buying things they did not itend to buy in the first place.

I would say that organizing products by theIr geographic region and making them sortable by name, price, and developer is both logical and intended to simplify customers finding what they are interested in.

 

Orbx isn’t moving around products like a supermarket.  

 

[Nick Cooper]

On 12/23/2023 at 9:56 AM, boetie said:

Still clunky. In this day and age there must be a way for IT to group all together. Maybe it's deliberate? First world problems...... heavy sigh

 

I took a look at another site, where there is an "On Sale" category.
It contains 382 products on 10 pages.
Because the category is "On Sale", they are randomly for several simulators and 
several types of product on each page.

 

As I mentioned:

 

On 12/22/2023 at 5:32 PM, Nick Cooper said:

The layout of an online store can never satisfy everyone

 

As ever, Orbx will, after Christmas, consider all customer feedback and thanks for providing it.

 

As this is Christmas day, Seasons Greetings to you all. 🎄

[boetie]

31 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

 

I took a look at another site, where there is an "On Sale" category.
It contains 382 products on 10 pages.
Because the category is "On Sale", they are randomly for several simulators and 
several types of product on each page.

 

As I mentioned:

 

 

As ever, Orbx will, after Christmas, consider all customer feedback and thanks for providing it.

 

As this is Christmas day, Seasons Greetings to you all. 🎄

Thank you Nick as always. Merry Christmas mate

[tom2rific]

Chritmas cheers to all

Peace on Earth

[wain71]

thing is everyone won't be happy, that's human nature I'm afraid, however it is okay to say you find it slow and clunky or you think it's great, it's your own opinion...

 

Hope you all had a great day yesterday, put on a few pounds maybe?...Merry Christmas...

[BradB]

If changes are made , the marketplace on MSFS is the way to go . So much easier to find sale items ........ 🤔🙂

[BrianT]

On 12/26/2023 at 5:21 PM, BradB said:

If changes are made , the marketplace on MSFS is the way to go . So much easier to find sale items ........ 🤔🙂

Problem with marketplace is it is slow to update products asobo/MS approval before makinig updates available takes far too long.
But I agree finding sale items is much easier.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,
just to add a few facts:
In the in-game  Marketplace, only Airports can be selected as sale items.
When they are, the list contains 1173 results.

Featured, Aircraft (174), World (82) and Activities (14) are all lists of all the available products,
whether on sale or not and not in sale/not sale order.

Perhaps that is why this icon accompanied the post that you are agreeing with: 🤔

[BrianT]

Sorry Nick unless I'm misunderstanding your post all 4 headings can be sorted by sale items only by selecting the relevent heading and then selecting either on sale, free or bundles and packs. you can also filter by owned and not owned.

Edited December 29, 2023 by BrianT

[Nick Cooper]

Hello Brian,

I stand corrected, operator error.

However, there are still 1173 airports and even when I ask to see those I don't
own, there are 1097 to choose from.
My point, I think, is that where there is a huge number of items on sale, there will
always be a huge search required, unless a few choices are made before the search begins.
 

Nevertheless, as I wrote earlier, all suggestions will be considered.

[BrianT]

3 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello Brian,

I stand corrected, operator error.

However, there are still 1173 airports and even when I ask to see those I don't
own, there are 1097 to choose from.
My point, I think, is that where there is a huge number of items on sale, there will
always be a huge search required, unless a few choices are made before the search begins.
 

Nevertheless, as I wrote earlier, all suggestions will be considered.

 Hey we've all been there Nick 😂 can't see the wood for the trees and I think that's really the OP's point. At the end of the day Orbx will do what Orbx feel is right for them addng functionality would only improve the process and as you said Orbx will consider it ands that's all we can ask. 
If people don't want to use the addiitonal functionality that's fine, it's just a filter.

[John Dow]

My 2c worth... imagine if you asked your local supermarket to put all the specials in one aisle so you didn't need to walk past the normal priced produce to find things on special. 

 

What do you think the reaction would be? 

[boetie]

Your average supermarket sells all manor of products ranging from dairy, baked goods, seafood, fruit and veggies, pharmacy products, hardware products, stationery, frozen food, confectionary, pet food, magazines, gift cards, alcohol ...... plus DOZENS more, all dedicated to their own aisles.

Orbx Central sells primarily scenery and aircraft. 

[BrianT]

7 hours ago, John Dow said:

My 2c worth... imagine if you asked your local supermarket to put all the specials in one aisle so you didn't need to walk past the normal priced produce to find things on special. 

 

What do you think the reaction would be? 

Not the best analogy as supermarkets would have to physically move stock and so would rightly tell you to do one! This is a few lines of code that would allow sorting of sale items, and would only need to be written once.
Orbx's reaction as Nick has said twice now is "we'll consider it" which is all we can ask for

I do find it strange that some people appear to be against something which wouldn't affect them in the slightest but would benefit others...bizarre
 

Edited December 30, 2023 by BrianT

[John Dow]

I think it'll be an uphill battle to get Orbx to adopt a sales strategy that goes against the principles of a commercial vendor, but as Nick says the suggestion will be considered.

 

 

11 minutes ago, BrianT said:

I do find it strange that some people appear to be against something which wouldn't affect them in the slightest but would benefit others...bizarre
 

 

From the developers point of view, who after all are the ones who put in the long tedious hours to develop the sceneries, a mixing of full price and sales items will always be advantageous.

[DennyA]

As I once again gave up browsing an Orbx sale due to frustration, I can tell you that you're missing enormous amounts of money but not having a button you can click to filter/show only on-sale items. 

 

Seriously, I once boosted a product I'm working on's sales income by more than double just by reworking an existing sale design.

 

You're missing money and new customers here, folks.

 

[Megadyptes]

On 12/30/2023 at 10:04 AM, John Dow said:

I think it'll be an uphill battle to get Orbx to adopt a sales strategy that goes against the principles of a commercial vendor

When Just Flight have a sale they have a page up with all the items on sale. Contrail has a sales page, SimMarket has a sales page (although usually bloated), Aerosoft has a sales page, Flightsim.com store has a deals page, flightsim.to store has a discounted items page, PC Aviator has a deals and discounts page. And then if I look at other online stores other than flight simulator related ones I also find pages dedicated to deals and sales, like Steam (also bloated but there are a ton of filters you can use), Matrix the publisher of grognard wargames have a Specials page when they run sales, in the UK the HMV site has a deals section with everything they have on sale, the supermarket chain Tesco here have a page with all their deals. I could go on and on.

 

So the only uphill battle here seems to be getting Orbx to adopt a sales strategy that very much goes along with the princples of a commercial vendor. It's plain basic common sense: have a page with a ton of deals and people will be more likely to blow money on the deals. And it's absolutely nothing to do with generations and laziness, the only thing lazy is that ridiculous assumption.

Edited June 21 by Megadyptes
spelling

[wolfko]

8 hours ago, Megadyptes said:

When Just Flight have a sale they have a page up with all the items on sale. Contrail has a sales page, SimMarket has a sales page (although usually bloated), Aerosoft has a sales page, Flightsim.com store has a deals page, flightsim.to store has a discounted items page, PC Aviator has a deals and discounts page. And then if I look at other online stores other than flight simulator related ones I also find pages dedicated to deals and sales, like Steam (also bloated but there are a ton of filters you can use), Matrix the publisher of grognard wargames have a Specials page when they run sales, in the UK the HMV site has a deals section with everything they have on sale, the supermarket chain Tesco here have a page with all their deals. I could go on and on.

 

So the only uphill battle here seems to be getting Orbx to adopt a sales strategy that very much goes along with the princples of a commercial vendor. It's plain basic common sense: have a page with a ton of deals and people will be more likely to blow money on the deals. And it's absolutely nothing to do with generations and laziness, the only thing lazy is that ridiculous assumption.

 

It always gives me a good laugh, when a company's customers think they can tell the company how to improve sales policies to get more money from theese customers in question.

 

I am pretty sure Orbx knows very well how to make the most possible money out of its sales.

[W2DR]

Even my local grocery store has a separate listing for all the items on sale.

[BrianT]

1 hour ago, wolfko said:

 

It always gives me a good laugh, when a company's customers think they can tell the company how to improve sales policies to get more money from theese customers in question.

 

I am pretty sure Orbx knows very well how to make the most possible money out of its sales.

This isn't about telling Orbx how to improve sales if you'd read the whole thread you would see it's about improving the service for the benefit of the customer. It could in turn boost sales but that's secondary to the point. Because a user requests something it's just that a request. Orbx have chosen to ignore it, that's their choice just like it's the users choice not to go trawling through hundreds if not thousands of items looking for the sale items. For me I don't bother looking anymore. I open central for updates and I move on if there's nothing there. Do I miss out? Not really.. You can't miss something you never had. 

Edited June 21 by BrianT

[DennyA]

On 6/18/2024 at 11:16 PM, John Dow said:

A lot of people in my generation (retired) say on occasion that Gen X and Gen Y are lazy and anything that involves even a modicum of effort is too hard and they move on to find easier ways to pass their time. It seems that this forum has now added several categories of 'Gens' to the list. 

 

That's a helluva insult to make towards a company's customers when you have "Orbx Team" as your member tag. I'm Gen X, so I guess I didn't realize "insult customers" was a Baby Boomer trait. Wow. I'm assuming since you say that you're retired that you have that tag because you support the forum and want to help people. Insulting them for making a request that will benefit the company that hosts this forum is not helping customers or the company.

 

Has nothing to do with effort. Creating pages that list sale items has been a tenet of online sales since web retailing started. And perhaps people of your generation will remember all of the sale fliers and booklets that used to arrive in your Sunday paper, gathering all the great local deals into one section packed in there with the comics and Parade. It's basic retailing. But what do I know, I just used to manage digital game and add-on retailing for a multi-billion-dollar online game and console company.

 

I like Orbx. I'd like the company to succeed. But they are literally the only online flight sim retailer I know that doesn't have a link to list items on sale. Has nothing to do with laziness, and everything to do with selling more items to customers by letting them see discounts together and likely purchase items they didn't even know they wanted until they saw the great deals.

 

[Matt McGee]

On 6/21/2024 at 4:36 PM, DennyA said:

Has nothing to do with laziness, and everything to do with selling more items to customers by letting them see discounts together and likely purchase items they didn't even know they wanted until they saw the great deals.

Or perhaps more people are buying items that they want (whether on sale or not) because they noticed them while scrolling though the products that they had sorted by one of the currently available methods.  Not a clue whether that is the case, I just beta test and have nothing to do with Orbx's sales, policy, or strategies.

 

If price is a person's primary concern, sorting products by low to high price seems like a straightforward way to search.

Just because a product is on sale doesn't necessarily make it inexpensive.  A "normal" priced product might still be cheaper than a different product that is on sale. 

 

As I have previously posted, I am personally more interested in whether a product is of interest to me, not whether it is on sale.  I do care about cost, but I am more concerned with whether the product is worth the current price, and not whether that price is a "sale" price or not.  I am going to spend my money on products that interest me, not just products that are on sale.

 

Orbx might be missing out on some sales.  Human behavior factors might cause some people to make a purchase because they think they are getting a good deal just because something is "on sale".  Or perhaps Orbx is selling more scenery because people stumble upon a normal priced product of interest to them while scrolling through products looking for sale items.  I have no idea which might generate more sales for Orbx, but I suspect Orbx has a pretty good idea of what works well for its business.

[BrianT]

This carousell has come to a stop I think... Orbx seem to not want to change and that of course is their choice, although it would be nice if they just said that from the get go. 
What started out as a simple request to benefit customers has descended as usual into a bun fight.
No customer will be disadvantaged by doing it and all customers would benefit. So as I said many posts ago why anyone would take a position against it is beyond me it would appear some just like to argue for the sake of it.
Probably time for Nick to shut it down.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,
the suggestion is well made and also discussed.
I have made the marketing department aware of the topic.
Thanks to all who contributed.