Recently, I’ve come up with a few ideas and suggestions regarding the work of the Fab store for the seller. I’d like to share my thoughts.
Products and their editing:
- When editing products, there is no option to expand the text input window; it is inconvenient to work with a large description in a small window. I would like the text input windows to be expandable, and ideally, it would also be possible to display the text editor in full screen.
- There aren’t enough images — 25 — for products, especially in the Environments category, or for products with a large amount of content. No other marketplace has such a limitation.
- I would like to be able to add separate images for different formats, especially for Unreal, Unity, Blender, and Zbrush. Often, a buyer needs one of these formats, and scrolling through the gallery to find the required images is inconvenient.
- The text description of the formats on the product page is hidden under the specifications, but I would like it to be at the top and immediately noticeable to the customer. It’s easier to include important information there than to enter inconvenient specifications, especially for large products.
- The product specifications are very inconveniently designed; there are too many parameters that aren’t really necessary. It’s much more convenient to enter this information via the format description.
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It would be great to make the proposed description as it was in the Unreal Marketplace, which is presented after selecting a category and only requires filling it in. Otherwise, why would I need to fill in the total number of triangles, squares, and vertices for the environment in game engine formats, when the product contains hundreds of individual meshes and thousands of meshes in the scene? The Geometry tab for the environment in the game engine format is completely useless, and the other tabs are arranged in an inconvenient way.
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The situation is further complicated by the fact that the parameters are arranged in several rows. It would be simpler to create a single, logical list, similar to the description provided in the UE Market, where you would just need to enter the parameters for the number of Blueprints, meshes, textures, materials, instances, particles, and other similar data, as well as confirm the presence of lod, collision in geometry and lightmaps, and the method of their creation (manual or automatic in the engine).
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The characteristics of simple 3D models in Blender or FBX formats also look confusing. We need to take a cue from other 3D stock sites, such as Turbosquid or CG Trader, where entering basic data for a 3D model is much simpler and more intuitive:
For example, as on CG Trader: select the model type - CG or Print; then use the buttons to confirm the presence of textures, materials, animation, rig, whether the model is suitable for Game Ready, whether it has PBR Materials, and also whether UVs are present; then select the UV type — Overlap, non‑overlap, mixed, and others; only after that do we enter the number of polygons and vertices. On Turbosquid, the technical data is roughly the same; everything is easy and clear to enter.
Statistics are the main pain point for sellers on Fab. They’ve been sorely lacking since the Unreal Marketplace days. All other competitors have had them for a long time, and they’re quite extensive.
- There is a lack of normal product statistics. One of the most successful examples is the analytics in Asset Store. There are charts and a table that can be configured for a specific time period, and you can also view the entire table for a specific product or create your own product groups to view data only for those groups.
- In my opinion, the table should consist of the following columns:
- Product Name
- Sales (Gross)
- Sales (Net)
- Sales qty
- Pageviews Full
- Conversion (views to sales)
- Downloads
- Wishlisted
- Views in the preview (how many times the product appeared in search or on the homepage)
- Reviews (the number of reviews left)
- Sorting by parameters in the table from largest to smallest is also important. In the case of Product Name, it’s sorted alphabetically, and for numerical parameters, it’s sorted in ascending and descending order.
- Above the table, it would be nice to see an adjustable chart showing the selected period’s data; the parameters should be the same as in the table.
- Very important: you need the ability to select either all products or individual ones, as well as to create your own product lists and view statistics for the lists when making selections.
- It would be great to see general parameters on the listing editing page and on the general page for all listings. For example: how many times people viewed the product, how much money it has earned over time, and how many wishlists it currently has. You can also add sorting by these parameters on the listings page.
All of the above will give sellers a much better understanding of their business. It will provide insight into the best direction to take, which products generate more revenue, and which attract more audience attention; it will also help adjust prices and accelerate market growth.
Reviews: The review system is still imperfect, and I have a few simple suggestions.
- In the seller’s personal account, you need to add a separate page with reviews for all of the seller’s products. The reviews should be listed from newest to oldest and should include brief information (product, rating stars, review date). When you click on a review, a separate page with the review and a customer response window should open — similar to the one on the product page. A system similar to this is available in AssetStore.
- If a new review or rating for a product appears, an email notification should be sent. And on the Fab website, next to the profile icon, you can add a notification section, for example, as on ArtStation, a review notification should be sent there separately and until it is read, the notification icon should be highlighted. From this notification, when clicked, you need to go to the review page from the reviews section, which I wrote about above. Other important notifications for the seller can also be sent there in the future. Similarly, customers should receive timely responses to their feedback and other notifications, for example, about sales on the website or sales of items from their wish list.
- Do not allow leaving a rating with 1, 2, or 3 stars without a text review. And the ability to dispute such reviews if the person wrote nothing about the product and didn’t try to resolve the issue. I myself have several such reviews, one of which spoils the impression of a fairly good product — but it has only one 1‑star rating, even though the product sold well on Fab and is quite popular on other platforms.
Social network:
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It would be a good idea to add the option to subscribe to authors. So that everyone can subscribe to a page they like on Fab and receive notifications about this author’s sales, or when the author publishes a new product.
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It would also be very useful to have a system of private messages so that each author could be contacted. This would significantly simplify communication between the buyer and the seller. Not everyone wants to look for the seller’s social media accounts or write via email; many simply leave a bad review without understanding the issue.
Also, it would be a good idea to separately flag customers (those who have bought a product from you) and other users. This would make it much easier and faster to resolve issues, and the buyer wouldn’t have to separately prove that they bought a product from you.
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All communication should be displayed in the notifications section, which I mentioned above. For example, users’ subscriptions to you, which can even be anonymous, as well as private messages or support requests (messages from the customer).
Perhaps these are my main wishes. I really want to see high‑quality statistics on Fab; it’s very important for running a business and analyzing the situation in my own store on Fab.
I also want to see as little AI‑generated content as possible that isn’t properly labeled and tries to mislead buyers. One well‑known marketplace has been too actively promoting AI features and content, and now it’s gradually falling apart — it’s raising sellers’ commissions and introducing extremely unfavourable subscriptions that are harming artists. The incomes of all participants in this marketplace are falling every month. And this was CG Trader — don’t repeat their mistakes.
Sincerely, Vladimir Seleznev – seller on Fab.
