Festive countdown and store

[ibmalone]

I posted something along these lines on reddit a while back, and got an avalanche of "user error" and "just click on the ship you want" type replies in response that utterly missed the point. However, the store categories really need to be sorted out, and the festive paintjobs are a great example.

Here are the festive countdown paintjobs: https://www.frontierstore.net/game-extras/festive-countdown.html

Something missing? I'm sure there was a Christmas Asp?

Oh, it's here in the Asp paintjobs instead.

https://www.frontierstore.net/game-extras.html?ship_model=19

I've seen some more of these before. Wonder which other ships have it. Okay, let's search for "festive" then.

https://www.frontierstore.net/catalogsearch/result/?q=festive

Finally. Is that everything? Who knows? The bobbleheads only seem to have been found because the word "festive" appears in their descriptions, and the festive countdown items don't show up in this search. Come on Frontier, if you want to sell things, then the process for finding them shouldn't really depend on already knowing they exist. Both steps 2 and 3 here relied on me suspecting that first list was incomplete. There's no reason not to have all of these listed in the countdown page, even if they're not officially part of the "countdown". This is part of a general problem about the categories not apparently being flexible or very consistently provided, it basically feels a bit more eBay than Amazon.

 

[Hellfire85]

The festive countdown items and the "regular" Christmas items are 2 different things. Christmas stuff is in store I think since starting December or a bit before. Festive countdown items are only available for a short time.

 

[Kaocraft]

The festive countdown items and the "regular" Christmas items are 2 different things. Christmas stuff is in store I think since starting December or a bit before. Festive countdown items are only available for a short time.

Ok well the Asp festive pack is one of the "regular" Christmas items. As in, items which are NOT part of the festive countdown are called "festive" in their title. So that's confusing. I think.

 

[ibmalone]

The festive countdown items and the "regular" Christmas items are 2 different things. Christmas stuff is in store I think since starting December or a bit before. Festive countdown items are only available for a short time.

Ok well the Asp festive pack is one of the "regular" Christmas items. As in, items which are NOT part of the festive countdown are called "festive" in their title. So that's confusing. I think.

Yes, this is roughly my point. The distinction between the two is a fine one (two types of Christmas promotions, both are for a limited time, though presumably the "regular" ones will reappear next year), and effectively internal to Frontier, rather than something a customer should have to know about just to find them. It could be fixed if they were all in a common "Festive" category, and could still have a separate sub-category for the limited-edition/countdown ones, but the "Festive" thing is just an example of the general lack of navigation and discoverability, a lot of the categories could do with another level of subdivision and making sure everything is catalogued. It almost certainly takes longer to design a flame paintjob than to stick a "flame" tag onto it afterwards. Feels a lot more like online shopping in 2008 than 2018.