When browsing products, you can sort them by popularity, and on the homepage there are sections that show various groupings of products.
Here’s an explanation for how popularity is calculated, and how these sections are sourced.
Popularity
The popular metric is the key piece to all of this, and it’s where the magic really happens when finding products that are new, interesting, and enjoyed by others.
The metric takes a few key pieces of information, in order:
- The number of times the product was recommended in the last 30 days.
- The number of purchases in the last 30 days.
- The number of recommendations over all time.
- The number of purchases over all time.
- The number of views over the last 30 days.
All of this combined informs the popular metric. This is easiest to see when ordering products while browsing, and it also affects some of the homepage sections.
New & noteworthy
The homepage section titled New & noteworthy shows products by fetching the following:
- The 15 most recently published products, regardless of popularity.
- The 10 most popular products published in the last 60 days.
It takes those 25 products, shuffles them into a random order and shows 4 of them. This means you will see different products in that section on each page load, and you will always see recently published products that lean toward the more popular.
When using the ‘New & noteworthy’ filter on the Browse page, it will use the same logic, but include all products.
Trending now
The Trending now section of the homepage fetches the 20 most popular products, shuffles them into a random order, and shows 4 of them. Because the popular metric emphasises recent reviews and purchases, this section will always remain up to date and current.
Now in print
The Now in print section of the homepage doesn’t look at popularity. Instead, it finds the 20 most recently published products with a print book available, shuffles those into a random order, and displays 4 of them.
Featured creators
The Featured creators section of the home page sources creators with at least two published products, sorts them by the number of recommendations across all of their products (using their number of published products as a tie-breaker for equal recommendations), then trims that list to the top 25 rated creators. It then shuffles the list into a random order and displays 4 of them.
Creator’s top product
When browsing creators, you will see a Top product mentioned below their name. This is selected by fetching the 5 most popular products from that creator, shuffling them up, and showing one at random.
Browse by taxonomy
The Browse by {taxonomy} sections on the home page select which taxonomy terms to show by fetching all of them that have at least 3 products, shuffling them into a random order, and displaying 5 of them.
Each taxonomy term includes 2 products in its display. To select these, they first find the 30 most popular products in that category/genre, then they shuffle that list into a random order, and display 2 of them.
There are three of these sections that display in this order: category, genre, and a third taxonomy selected at random on page load.
Header featured products
In the home page header, there are 5 featured products displayed as photos. These are manually set by the RPG Trader team, where any number of products can be set as ‘featured’ with a random set of 5 of them being shown at a time.
While the criteria that the team uses to set products as featured is subjective, the main factors that influence the decisions are:
- Is the product interesting?
- Does it have a striking primary image?
- How popular is the product?
- How broad is the product’s appeal?
These criteria may change and evolve over time. If you feel like your product should be included in this section, please email support@rpg-trader.com and we’ll review it.
Recommended for you
The Dashboard includes a section of personalised product recommendations. This will show 10 products that are chosen based on the following criteria:
- Products that share the same taxonomy as products you have viewed or purchased.
- Products that are popular right now.
- Products published recently.
It excludes products you have already purchased.
Related products
On each product details page, you will see a section showing related products. This looks like for products that share taxonomy terms with one you are viewing - the more shared terms, the more likely it will be shown. If you are logged in, it will deprioritise products you have already purchased.