My Wishlist for the Stores of Home
by Kassadee_Marie, HSM team writer
I spend a lot — a lot — of time going through all of the stores in Home looking for bargains and themed items. It has occurred to me more than once that the stores could be set up better, to make finding things easier.
My top wish is for a search command. For instance, we should be able to type in “white skirt” and see all the white or mostly white skirts offered, in any length and any style, from Sony and all of the different third-party developers. Who wouldn’t want that? That may be a dream for the far future (or for the PS4), but I believe some changes could be made right now that would be really helpful to us all. Not all that long ago Sony made some changes in the storefront section of the Navigator, deleting some sub-categories and adding new tabs for some third party developers, such as Granzella, Hellfire and Juggernaut. This was great to see happen, but we really need more changes still.
Presently there are 20 main tabs in the Navigator store, which include ten generic tabs: New & Featured Items, Threads, Costumes, Home Estates, Exclusives, Furniture, Boosters, Music, Games, and Sidekicks. There are also ten developer tabs: Lockwood Publishing, Granzella, Juggernaut Games, Hellfire Games, Loot, Konami, nDreams, Heavy Water, VEEMEE, and Billabong. The Boosters tab was added very recently, which was great, but Shears was deleted, which wasn’t so great. I think that was a mistake, because it was wonderful to have one place to look at all the hairstyles.
Under the New & Featured tab, you will now find just new items, as the Featured Items tab was removed very recently. It used to contain the “Monthly Top 10”, “GlassWalls’ Staff Picks”, “Popular”, and “Highlights” (otherwise known as the Diamond Collection.) Although the Featured Items tab wasn’t regularly maintained, I was sorry to see it removed. Its four sub-sections should have been updated on a regular basis — otherwise they were basically worthless, as Sony discovered. “Featured Items” really should be featured items. For instance, when a new Home game is featured in the Navigator, its upgrade items such as armor and weapons could be featured items. When an open house is offered, all of its matching items, such as furniture, clothes, etc., could be that week’s featured items. Seasonal items could and should also be featured. For example, in December, Sony could have pulled out all of their own Christmas outfits, furniture, ornaments and musical items and featured them for the first three weeks of the month, adding new items as they were offered by the developers.
Another sub-category that was deleted from this section was “Sale Items”, which hadn’t been changed in who knows how long. I was sorry to see that this category wasn’t regularly kept up, as it would be a really nice feature for those on a tight budget. And it makes sense to put older items on sale before deleting them from the stores forever. Sale items can be still be found as sub-categories under Threads, Costumes, Furniture, and Sidekicks. And I was hopeful that we would see more updates in those categories. So far, there haven’t been any changes, though. Sale items can also sometimes be found under a developer’s tab.
Also late last year, “Scribble Shooter” was deleted as a sub-category of New & Featured; I’m not sure why it was featured for so long in the first place, unless it was because no one at Sony was really looking at the store tabs. Which brings me to my second wish: I wish there was a dedicated Sony employee to handle such things as updating and maintaining the store interfaces in Home, rather than relying on an overtaxed Digital Platforms team that’s stretched ridiculously thin. Right now it gives the impression that Sony just doesn’t care enough to be bothered with it.
“New Items” still seem to include some really not new items. It seems that items should be under the new section for not more than two or three weeks (unless there’s a seasonal linkage), and category tabs that don’t have something new under them should not be listed here at all. It actually may be doing more harm than good to leave these categories there all the time, as people will get used to not looking for new items there, and will miss out on new items that they may have liked, once the tabs are actually updated.
Individual developers with their own store tabs may want to keep items in their own “new” tabs for a longer period of time, of course. In general, however, I have found that most developers move items out of their new section rather quickly. Having a New section is great for those eager to see the new items, especially on Wednesday mornings. This would actually be the most used tab in the store, in my opinion, if it were properly maintained. But I believe we still need a Featured section, and the return of a Sale tab (one that’s maintained) would be great, too.
The store tabs that are categories, such as Furniture, Threads or Costumes, and even Sidekicks, are all sub-divided in the same manner: New, Sale and A-Z or male and female, if applicable. This is really helpful, and all of these generic stores should have basically the same sub-tabs. However, Estates has New, Personal Spaces, Clubs, and Value Packs as sub-categories; Boosters has sub-categories for each the developers selling these products; Music is a group of approximately 40 items with no sub-categories; and Games has two sub-categories called Home Arcade and Games. Third party developers also set up their stores in various ways, such as by product line or item type. For instance Lockwood has product line tabs such as Figment, Drey, Fool Throttle and Cucumber. While Konami has tabs for categories, such as new, male, female, estates, clubs, furniture, companions, and then their individual games, such as Castlevania. Hellfire doesn’t even have all of its products listed, and has sub-categories for clothing, furniture, Idol Styles and Speed Wings. If all of these differences sound rather confusing, that’s because they are.
And so my third wish is that all of the stores should be standardized, as much as possible. I would like to see a simple and consistent layout for all developers. Categories such as estates, packs, games and locomotions would be there, if the developer offered these items, but most categories would be generic labels, such as furniture or clothing, with sub-categories such as chairs, beds and tables under furniture and dresses, jewelry and shoes under clothing. In other words, the categories that I suggested in my articles, “My Private Decorating Wars” and “My Private Wardrobe Wars”. This is actually how we shop for items, not by developer’s “lines” or any other mode.
In summary, I wish for simplicity, ease and consistency when shopping in the Home stores, and I believe that a few changes and regular updates of new, featured and sale items would increase customer satisfaction and profit for Sony.
March 10th, 2013 by Kassadee Marie | 3 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
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Love your idea of search..type in red dress, see who is offering a commodity that fits your criteria, BRILLIANT!!!
I remember before I saw the store, I expected items from all developers to be jumbled together. For instance, if I want a chair, I would go to the chair section. The newest would be at the top.
Then I expected I would have to apply filters such as color, style and such to reduce the list. One of the filters could be developer.
Basically, my expectation is more like what you describe here than what I found when I went to the store. For goodness sake, how would you find a robot dog in the current store if you did not know the developer? (Besides AlphaZone4)
Great topic. I hope they do change it to something more like you describe.
I agree Kass. Several times I have seen a item that I have wanted to buy and haven’t been able to find it in the stores. Alpha Zone 4 is now my first stop if I’m looking for something, then I go to the store!