30,000+ new product pages on logos.com
Hi all,
In response to requests for better cross-storefront searching, we added 30,000+ FL ebooks product pages to logos.com today. While they aren’t purchasable on Logos, they will come up in search results and they have a link to the sellable product page on ebooks.faithlife.com in a callout below the description.
We plan to do the same for Logos books on ebooks.faithlife.com soon.
We realize that it has the potential to clutter search results unnecessarily for users who don’t wish to see them. To address that, we will be adding a new “sellable/non-sellable” search filter to the site soon.
Please let me know if you have questions or suggestions for improvement.
Senior Director, Content Products
Comments
-
"sellable/non-sellable” search filter to the site soon.
That's confusing.
All FL Sites / This Site Only ?
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
0 -
Why add the books when you are not ready to add the filter? I’d rather have waited for one release of a new website rather than this dripping tap approach.
0 -
Denise said:
"sellable/non-sellable” search filter to the site soon.
That's confusing.
All FL Sites / This Site Only ?
There will be an option to filter out results that are displayable but not sellable on logos.com.
Similar to the "ownership" filter:
Senior Director, Content Products
0 -
We plan to do the same for Logos books on ebooks.faithlife.com soon.
I think it's an awesome and appreciated addition to logos.com. However, is it really desirable to put Logos editions it on the ebooks site? It might lead to more sales or more confusion? Might be more interesting to just have a link at the top the search results to run the same search on Logos.com rather than clutter that store? Just seems there would be more crossover coming from Logos to ebooks rather than vice versa. Just a thought...
0 -
Randy W. Sims said:
I think it's an awesome and appreciated addition to logos.com.
Agreed!
Randy W. Sims said:However, is it really desirable to put Logos editions it on the ebooks site?
My two reasons why it wouldn't generally be desirable:
- Logos tagging/pricing vs. ebook tagging/pricing. Ebook customers who do not use Logos would be paying a premium for a resource that they couldn't fully benefit from.
- The facets sidebar is very different between the two sites. The Logos resources would be far less discoverable at the ebooks site.
Randy W. Sims said:Just seems there would be more crossover coming from Logos to ebooks rather than vice versa.
Yes.
While there's clearly a benefit in finding ebook editions on the Logos store, I don't see an advantage in finding Logos editions on the ebooks store.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
0 -
Sorry Randy and Petah, but I guess I always assumed a much greater overlap in users between the two sites. While I considered some resources (think Amish novels) to be more likely read on a reader like Kindle, I assumed most purchasers had access to Logos. No - I have no statistics, just assumptions.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
0 -
Granted that there are quibbles that could be made and kinks to be worked out, I think this is at core a great idea. There should be one place where a customer can look for all the books that FaithLife offers on a particular topic.
0 -
In response to requests for better cross-storefront searching, we added 30,000+ FL ebooks product pages to logos.com today.
Thank you so much. That will make it so much quicker to find books by an author who could span both sites.
Appreciated.
0 -
Sounds too crowded already 😣
0 -
While they aren’t purchasable on Logos
Ben, can you explain why FL is averse to selling ebooks on the Logos site? It just seems a bit crazy to have to jump back and forth between two sites to add something and then have separate carts and separate checkouts.
I guess when I learned you were going to let me discover all your products on logos.com I assumed I could then buy them there and this confuses me.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
0 -
On the search results I’d love to see a button to jump directly to ebooks product page. The logic is there to hide the buy buttons; it’d be nice to see alternate button(s) to Visit on ebooks and maybe Buy on ebooks (add to cart and open the cart).
Not sure about Wishlist button. It sort of uselessly adds it to logos.com wishlist where it’s described as not for sale.
0 -
Mark Smith said:
can you explain why FL is averse to selling ebooks on the Logos site? It just seems a bit crazy to have to jump back and forth between two sites to add something and then have separate carts and separate checkouts.
Our agreements with publishers make selling the books in the "correct" store the best thing for now, so this was the most viable solution for solving the problem in the short term. In the future, we'd like to sell them all in the same store.
0 -
Randy W. Sims said:
On the search results I’d love to see a button to jump directly to ebooks product page. The logic is there to hide the buy buttons; it’d be nice to see alternate button(s) to Visit on ebooks and maybe Buy on ebooks (add to cart and open the cart).
Not sure about Wishlist button. It sort of uselessly adds it to logos.com wishlist where it’s described as not for sale.
We're planning to enable the pricing box in search and on the product page. The "Add to cart" button will add it to the cart at Faithlife Ebooks. We'll indicate as much with some text under the button. Something like this:
0 -
There will be an option to filter out results that are displayable but not sellable on logos.com.
Yes, that's what you said initially. I was referring to your sellable/not-sellable labels. The former is obvious, the latter implies FL doesn't sell the eBook ones, period (to normal people). Unless you follow the forum.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
0 -
Denise said:
There will be an option to filter out results that are displayable but not sellable on logos.com.
Yes, that's what you said initially. I was referring to your sellable/not-sellable labels. The former is obvious, the latter implies FL doesn't sell the eBook ones, period (to normal people). Unless you follow the forum.
We're discussing a few ways to handle the sellability facet(s). There are a variety of things that could be useful to know. We have to balance sufficient flexibility with not over-complicating things and what's easy to deliver.
Here are some quick and rough ideas:
0 -
Thanks for giving us a glimpse of what you are considering!
1. The Non-sellable item is confusing. I understand that there are some items on the store that are not individually for sale, but the wording doesn't convey that "sellable anywhere" pertains to resources from other sites. (My impression of "anywhere" would mean worldwide distribution, not storefront-related rights.)
2. The Sellable At facet is the most practical for filtering which site's resources appear in the results. (However, aren't the Lexham Press and Verbum titles already sellable though the Logos.com storefront? What would be the point of including/excluding those titles in particular, as compared to the non-sellable Faithlife ebooks that were just added?)
3. The Sellable As facet is problematic. If we're talking about books, I thought they all would also be available individually. If we're talking about unsellable ($0 but no Add to cart button) items in a collection, perhaps that issue should be resolved differently, not by a facet. Maybe those unsellable items shouldn't have a price ($0 is not the same as "not for sale individually"), or even show up in search results, eliminating the need for the Sellable As facet.
4. Sellable In is also very practical, although it's not clear what the distinction would be between Global and Any -- perhaps replace them both with Worldwide?
Thanks for giving us a chance to provide feedback as you decide how to proceed.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
0 -
Thanks for your feedback.
- Non-sellable would mean can't be sold on any store, in any country, or in any configuration. This would apply to a product that the publisher has asked us to stop selling for one reason or another, but that we've retained in the store for SEO reasons and to help guide users to the best alternative product.
- I'm not sure we'd include Lexham and Verbum, but if for some reason your preference was to shop at Logos.com, but you wanted to narrow to the catalog from one of those other stores, you could. The main value here would be Faithlife Ebooks, of course. But having other storefronts as filters could be useful in some cases.
- It seems to me an important distinction whether you can purchase a product directly, indirectly, or not at all. For example, a given dataset can be purchased, but only in a containing collection. Another dataset might be purchasable standalone. In some cases, you might want to see only the latter, but in some cases the former.
- I updated Global to Worldwide after I posted the screenshot. Worldwide would be for products with no geographical restrictions. Any would be for products with or without geographical restrictions.
Here's my latest iteration:
It still needs some work, and some of this might not be easy to implement. So don't take this as anything other than some quick brainstorming of ways we could perhaps solve this problem.
0 -
<tldr>Instead of making the store more complex to suit all Faithlife's policies, simplify the policies and keep the store simple.</tldr>
I'm delighted that we won't have to search multiple stores to find the resources we need. But I'm concerned that Faithlife are making this more complex than it needs to be.
Here's what I think customers want:
- To be able to find resources they need without searching multiple stores.
- To know clearly before purchase the quality of the resource they're buying (eBook vs Logos).
- To (optionally) not be spammed with products we can't purchase.
With that in mind, we only need two filters:
- eBook/Logos edition
- Available/Available only in a Collection/Not available to me
("Not available to me" covers products not available to anyone and not available in my territory.)
In response to the proposed filters:
Sellability: I don't care whether a product is generally sellable or not. I only care whether I can buy it. If it's sellable but only in North America, as far as I'm concerned it's not sellable.
Sellable at: I don't care what store I eventually buy it from if I can see all the search results in one place. (It's relevant occasionally only because of Faithlife's policies regarding credit and discount codes. Perhaps these policies could change to help simplify things.)
Sellable as: This is potentially useful. It would be even more useful if none of your products were only available in a collection. (Another example of Faithlife policies making things more complex for customers.)
Sellable in: I don't care whether a product is sellable in Australia or not. I only care whether it's sellable to me.
Sellable via: I'm not sure about this one, as I only buy products. But as there's almost nothing available for rental at the moment, I don't see how it helps much right now. Perhaps one for later?
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
0 -
GIANT STEP BACKWARDS!!
Now i have to wade through pages and pages of ebooks when i want to see what is "On Sale Today" at logos.com.
PLEASE add filtering by store as quickly as possible.
While your at it, can you please add filtering by Progress when you select Store>Pre-Publication Products? This option was removed for some reason that doesn't make any sense to me.
0 -
Mark Barnes said:
But I'm concerned that Faithlife are making this more complex than it needs to be.
When I read the post above, my response was exactly the same as Mark's. I love flexibility, customizability, and user choice. (I wish Faithlife would give over on their inflexible policy in Logos.) But this is a swing to the opposite extreme. Too much choice where it is not needed or where sensible options can be made by default.
Sellability & Sellable As: should be just as well handled by better ranking of search results. Is there an example where this is a major issue that can't be solved with better ranking?
Sellable At: don't care beyond the ebook/Logos edition
Sellable In: don't care. Determine by user location. If it's not mandatory for the user to give their location, put a dismissable yellow caution banner at the top of search results to say some results may not be available in your area, please edit your profile location to get more applicable results. Anyone wanting to see everything regardless of location can do an incognito search.
Sellable Via: Makes sense.
0 -
Phil, How about putting in a EXCLUDE (EBooks, Noet, etc) box to not have to see all of the Stuff you do not want to see. [:D]
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:Thanks for your feedback.
- Non-sellable would mean can't be sold on any store, in any country, or in any configuration. This would apply to a product that the publisher has asked us to stop selling for one reason or another, but that we've retained in the store for SEO reasons and to help guide users to the best alternative product.
- I'm not sure we'd include Lexham and Verbum, but if for some reason your preference was to shop at Logos.com, but you wanted to narrow to the catalog from one of those other stores, you could. The main value here would be Faithlife Ebooks, of course. But having other storefronts as filters could be useful in some cases.
- It seems to me an important distinction whether you can purchase a product directly, indirectly, or not at all. For example, a given dataset can be purchased, but only in a containing collection. Another dataset might be purchasable standalone. In some cases, you might want to see only the latter, but in some cases the former.
- I updated Global to Worldwide after I posted the screenshot. Worldwide would be for products with no geographical restrictions. Any would be for products with or without geographical restrictions.
Here's my latest iteration:
It still needs some work, and some of this might not be easy to implement. So don't take this as anything other than some quick brainstorming of ways we could perhaps solve this problem.
http://hombrereformado.blogspot.com/ Solo a Dios la Gloria Apoyo
0 -
In response to requests for better cross-storefront searching, we added 30,000+ FL ebooks product pages to logos.com today. While they aren’t purchasable on Logos, they will come up in search results and they have a link to the sellable product page on ebooks.faithlife.com in a callout below the description.
First: Thanks a lot! It's so often that users overlook books just because they are only listed in the "wrong store" - this is really helpful.
Second: This callout is much too small - I looked up an eBook on purpose, after reading through this thread - and just missed it. Thinking about new users coming by, they will just get the impression those books (many, many books, especially those with high-percentage savings) are not available at all, creating unnecessary frustration and maybe the wrong impression that listings in the store are fake.
Third: This changes what users see, especially when not looking up a precise book or author, but e.g. "all by savings". This calls for the often-requested feature of negative facet selection ("all except fiction")
Have joy in the Lord!
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
The "Add to cart" button will add it to the cart at Faithlife Ebooks. We'll indicate as much with some text under the button. Something like this:
Sounds good!
Have joy in the Lord!
0 -
Mark Barnes said:
<tldr>Instead of making the store more complex to suit all Faithlife's policies, simplify the policies and keep the store simple.</tldr>
I'm not sure what policies you're referring to.
Mark Barnes said:To know clearly before purchase the quality of the resource they're buying (eBook vs Logos).
We're adding this to the Product Details section (e.g., here) and plan to add a Format facet to include Logos Edition, Ebook, Facsimile, and (perhaps in the future) User Created.
Mark Barnes said:Available/Available only in a Collection/Not available to me
These kinds of user-specific facets are pretty complex and costly to build. While we might be able to get here in the future, we might need to start with facets that are easier to compute based on objective metadata on the products themselves rather than factoring in mullions of users' licenses and billing addresses.
Mark Barnes said:Sellability: I don't care whether a product is generally sellable or not. I only care whether I can buy it. If it's sellable but only in North America, as far as I'm concerned it's not sellable.
I agree we may not need this facet (and said as much in my notes). There's probably not a lot of value in finding only the products we no longer sell anywhere in any configuration. But it might have some application in a case where we lose the rights to sell all the titles from a publisher (e.g., Moody years ago).
Mark Barnes said:Sellable at: I don't care what store I eventually buy it from if I can see all the search results in one place.
We may make Noet Ebooks show up on Logos.com, but I imagine most people most of the time would want them hidden from search results. It seems like controlling Noet Ebooks and Faithlife Ebooks separately will be essential for a good experience, and the easiest way to do that it through the storefront they're sold in.
Mark Barnes said:(It's relevant occasionally only because of Faithlife's policies regarding credit and discount codes. Perhaps these policies could change to help simplify things.)
Changing that policy is unlikely. We'd end up taking a loss on most sales, which is already the case for birthday codes used at Faithlife Ebooks.
Mark Barnes said:Sellable as: This is potentially useful. It would be even more useful if none of your products were only available in a collection. (Another example of Faithlife policies making things more complex for customers.)
The Faithlife policy is to make everything sellable individually that we legally can. No changes to that policy will help things here. In the cases where we don't, we can't.
Mark Barnes said:Sellable in: I don't care whether a product is sellable in Australia or not. I only care whether it's sellable to me.
I agree. See my comment above about the complexity of user data and personalized facets. We'll explore it, but it will likely be easier to facet on data on the products themselves.
Mark Barnes said:Sellable via: I'm not sure about this one, as I only buy products. But as there's almost nothing available for rental at the moment, I don't see how it helps much right now. Perhaps one for later?
This one wouldn't be that useful to most people. I included it to be thorough. Recall that I said this was just ideation, not a spec.
0 -
Randy W. Sims said:
Sellability & Sellable As: should be just as well handled by better ranking of search results. Is there an example where this is a major issue that can't be solved with better ranking?
If you sort by newest, price, savings, title, etc., would you expect to have all "sellable to me" sorted first followed by all "not sellable to me" sorted in a separate list and appended to the end? I'm not sure how hard this would be or whether there would be cases this would be undesirable. Practically speaking, this would amount to always hiding non-sellable-to-me resources.
Randy W. Sims said:Sellable At: don't care beyond the ebook/Logos edition
Really? You're fine seeing all Noet Ebooks intermixed with Faithlife Ebooks?
Randy W. Sims said:Sellable In: don't care. Determine by user location.
See my comments to Mark on the complexity of using user data to build personally unique facets. Adding the Ownership facet was not a small undertaking.
0 -
Tom said:
How about putting in a EXCLUDE (EBooks, Noet, etc) box to not have to see all of the Stuff you do not want to see.
Unchecking the boxes for the stores you aren't interested in seeing would accomplish this.
0 -
NB.Mick said:
Second: This callout is much too small - I looked up an eBook on purpose, after reading through this thread - and just missed it. Thinking about new users coming by, they will just get the impression those books (many, many books, especially those with high-percentage savings) are not available at all, creating unnecessary frustration and maybe the wrong impression that listings in the store are fake.
Agreed. We're addressing this.
NB.Mick said:Third: This changes what users see, especially when not looking up a precise book or author, but e.g. "all by savings". This calls for the often-requested feature of negative facet selection ("all except fiction")
Checking or unchecking a couple of boxes should solve this. We'll just need to remember your facet preferences from session to session (for at least some facets), which we don't do yet.
0 -
Robert Neely said:
PLEASE add filtering by store as quickly as possible.
We're working on it. Should we remove the Faithlife Ebook products until we have the necessary facets?
Robert Neely said:While your at it, can you please add filtering by Progress when you select Store>Pre-Publication Products? This option was removed for some reason that doesn't make any sense to me.
Sorry about that. I didn't realize that. I put a note into the team to look into this right away.
0 -
Please add a filter to exclude all Romance and Amish Fiction [;)] (just kidding)
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:and (perhaps in the future) User Created.
I like it that you are still at least thinking about doing further work on Personal Books, assuming that is what you mean. Maybe, maybe if you are still thinking about going back to the original plan to make them available in the store, they might even make it to mobile??? Not expecting you to actually answer this [:P]
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:Robert Neely said:
PLEASE add filtering by store as quickly as possible.
We're working on it. Should we remove the Faithlife Ebook products until we have the necessary facets?
YES, is my vote. The sort by Savings has the items from logos.com appearing after ~200-300 ebooks. This is just too overwhelming.
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
We're working on it. Should we remove the Faithlife Ebook products until we have the necessary facets?
I'd think it would depend on how long it would take to add the necessary facets.
If it's only a few days, no sense undoing the work already done. We can be patient.
If it's a few weeks, it would be helpful to get unsellable/fiction out of search results for now, thanks!
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
We may make Noet Ebooks show up on Logos.com, but I imagine most people most of the time would want them hidden from search results.
Fair enough. But even then, the fact that they're sold on ebooks.noet.com is not the problem from the users' point of view. The problem is the genre of the book. From the users perspective, it's easier to understand to have a Biblical & Theological Studies / General Christian / Others than it is to have Logos.com / Faithlife.com / Noet.com
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:The Faithlife policy is to make everything sellable individually that we legally can. No changes to that policy will help things here. In the cases where we don't, we can't.
I don't think that's true for features. There's a lot of Faithlife owned features that aren't for sale individually. There are also a lot of collections that are broken up on user-request, but it seems like there's a big queue of collections that could be broken up if someone had the time to make that happen.
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:Mark Barnes said:Sellable in: I don't care whether a product is sellable in Australia or not. I only care whether it's sellable to me.
I agree. See my comment above about the complexity of user data and personalized facets. We'll explore it, but it will likely be easier to facet on data on the products themselves.
I think you're you're over thinking this. I appreciate ownership status is immensely complex, but this isn't. If you build the technology to only show items in Australia/UK/whatever, is trivial to go from there to only showing me the UK facet and not showing me the Australia facet. And it's only a small step from there to combine the "Sellable in" and "Sellability" facets. The only change would be that If I click on the "Available in the UK" facet, the website just needs to add "&sellable=yes&countries=uk" to the URL. Under my suggestion the backend would handle the request in exactly the same way as if I'd selected both those facets in your proposal. If that's not clear I'm essentially suggesting things:
- Filtering the "Sellable In" category to only show Worldwide and My Country.
- Hiding the Sellability facet, but having it autoselect when I choose "My Country".
(This double-duty facet would then need to be renamed, of course.)
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
We may make Noet Ebooks show up on Logos.com, but I imagine most people most of the time would want them hidden from search results.
A clearer separation between theology and other Christian books (FLEB) and secular books (Noet) might be helpful.
Currently, there are several theology books on Noet, such as the Zondervan guides on Cults (at quite a bargain price, I must say...)
For example: https://ebooks.noet.com/product/125919/buddhism-buddhism-taoism-and-other-far-eastern-religions (about half price compared to Kindle)
Others are crazy expensive for the fact that they are not even properly tagged.
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:Mark Smith said:
can you explain why FL is averse to selling ebooks on the Logos site? It just seems a bit crazy to have to jump back and forth between two sites to add something and then have separate carts and separate checkouts.
Our agreements with publishers make selling the books in the "correct" store the best thing for now, so this was the most viable solution for solving the problem in the short term. In the future, we'd like to sell them all in the same store.
I've been away from the forums for a bit now and missed this announcement. I really like the direction but had the same question as Mark. Thanks for the explanation Phil. I really do hope that you are able to sell all of them on the same site in the not-too-distant future.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
0 -
Mark Barnes said:
From the users perspective, it's easier to understand to have a Biblical & Theological Studies / General Christian / Others than it is to have Logos.com / Faithlife.com / Noet.com
I don't disagree, but those categories don't perfectly align. Logos.com ≠ Biblical & Theological Studies; Faithlife Ebooks ≠ General Christian, and Noet ≠ everything else. There's a lot of overlap between Logos.com and Faithlife Ebooks and a decent amount of overlap between Logos.com and Noet. That's not to say those broader categories wouldn't be helpful, only that they don't perfectly align to some of the other storefront distinctives like royalty rates, ability to discount, etc.
Mark Barnes said:I don't think that's true for features. There's a lot of Faithlife owned features that aren't for sale individually. There are also a lot of collections that are broken up on user-request, but it seems like there's a big queue of collections that could be broken up if someone had the time to make that happen.
But not as a matter of policy, at least not for content-bearing items. We made the decision a couple of years ago to split up all bundled content where we were permitted to by our contracts. We only recently got the ability to split in bulk. There are still some datasets that haven't been unbundled, but not as a matter of policy. We just haven't completed that task yet.
Mark Barnes said:I think you're you're over thinking this. I appreciate ownership status is immensely complex, but this isn't. If you build the technology to only show items in Australia/UK/whatever, is trivial to go from there to only showing me the UK facet and not showing me the Australia facet. And it's only a small step from there to combine the "Sellable in" and "Sellability" facets. The only change would be that If I click on the "Available in the UK" facet, the website just needs to add "&sellable=yes&countries=uk" to the URL. Under my suggestion the backend would handle the request in exactly the same way as if I'd selected both those facets in your proposal. If that's not clear I'm essentially suggesting things:
- Filtering the "Sellable In" category to only show Worldwide and My Country.
- Hiding the Sellability facet, but having it autoselect when I choose "My Country".
(This double-duty facet would then need to be renamed, of course.)
We'll look into it. Perhaps it's easier than I think, but I've learned over the last several years that the vast majority of things turn out to be much harder than I think they'll be.
0 -
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:NB.Mick said:
Third: This changes what users see, especially when not looking up a precise book or author, but e.g. "all by savings". This calls for the often-requested feature of negative facet selection ("all except fiction")
Checking or unchecking a couple of boxes should solve this.
It should, but it doesn't due to the incomplete tagging (see below). And it is cumbersome. Everytime I select or unselect a facet, the website rebuilds and scrolls to the top. I have to wait till it shows up again (which takes around three/four seconds at my current internet connection) and then scroll down to select the next facet - rinse & repeat. I planned to build an "all except fiction" search string for the benefit of users asking about such, but I'm not ready yet to repeat this cumbersome facet selection 75 times. So we see another thing that the facet selection needs: select/unselect all functionality or a multi-select option before the site rebuilds.
Coming back to the incomplete tagging - which I think has been mentioned in the past - which is breaking the deal here. I put some facet totals into Excel to check my gut feeling. Of 64657 resources, there are only 33893 genre taggings (which would mean at maximum 52% of all resources are genre-tagged) which means that if I select all 75 genres except "fiction", which will remove 5132 resources from the tagged search hits, I'll get at maximum some 28500 odd results. All except fiction would be near 60k - see the difference? Moreover, I assume the genre tag exists for eBooks primarily, thus someone building an "all except fiction" by adding up the genre's they are interested in would be leaving the "old Logos" content off the search hits!
Due to the overlap of resources tagged to multiple genres the percentage of not-genre-tagged resources is surely above 50% and thus we would need to have an "untagged" facet under genre.
The same with languages. If I select all 39 languages tagged in the store, I will still miss at least 997 untagged products. But then there's a lot of overlap (especially in multi-resource bundles). I tried to get a feeling fo this. The most probable use case will be people only reading English, or reading English plus a small number of languages, such as Spanish, and Greek and Hebrew. Those four languages combine 62610 tags - selecting those, however, gives "only" 61257 products, which means there are at least 1353 more language-untagged products In fact, selecting all twenty-two language tags with more than two products tagged gives exactly 62k products, i.e. we are talking about more than 2600 language-untagged resources.
In selecting English and Spanish, users will falsely exclude more untagged resources (which probably are nearly all English) than resources from all other languages combined!
(Your idea would work with 100% tagging, and a relatively small number of selections, which is verifiable when looking at the Delivery Method facets. The 8 methods seem to be mutually exclusive, and thus the tags add up to 64657).
Aside from tagging all resources (which may take years...) and developing the negative selector you argue against, an "untagged" facet would be very very helpful to not miss meaningful search hits.
I personally would not ask for rolling back the addition of the 30k eBooks to the store search. Go ahead with your planned development. A quick fix for those not interested in the former Vyrso content would be an edition selection L and/or E.
EDIT: The figures above refer to (subsets of) the 64657 products tagged as "live". This filter is auto-selected and it seems can't be unselected either. Don't know if including the PP and CP would change much /EDIT
Have joy in the Lord!
0 -
This evening, I had a chance to test this. It's certainly helpful to me to have Faithlife eBooks show up in searches. Because I was looking for things that were fairly specific, the extra books didn't make my searches less relevant. I even bought two books while testing!
A few practical points in terms of UX/UI:
- Ideally, I'd like to be able to distinguish between different stores in the search results. Colour-coded buy buttons would be best, I think. (Assuming you're intending implementing those.)
- A buy button would be much more helpful than the current link. But the link is badly worded: "Find this product and thousands more on ebooks.faithlife.com" sounds like it's taking me to the home page where I'd have to search for it. "Add to your cart at ebooks.faithlife.com" would be more direct.
- Seeing the price on the product page is obviously also important.
- There seems to be a search problem at least for authors. I searched for David Farnell as I knew he had eBooks but not Logos books. The search results were not relevant at all. Searching on just his surname did return relevant results, but clicking on his name on the product page results in no results at all.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
0 -
Do a Sort by Savings and let me know how long it takes you to find a title from logos site.
0 -
Thank you! As a non-Reformed person, this is greatly appreciated. Hopefully, one day, the Logos selection for Orthodox will be on par to the other denominational options - but in the meantime, it will be nice to find the other resources from the other sites for purchase that still can be used in Logos (though without the full features set). This will prevent me from buying them on Amazon first to only then discover you offered it on one of your non-Logos sites.
I do hope though, you'll offer discounted upgrades to books that will later maybe get the full "Logos" treatment.0 -
I don't understand how this was a good idea.
It's actually discouraging me to browse through any searches because of the countless irrelevant results that come up. I really think most logos users don't care much for non-logos products and those that do would have gone to the faithlife site to check those items out. Now we are given countless irrelevant items just to see what logo items are on sale. This is really bothersome and this was not a smart decision unless the desire was to lose sales.
0 -
Hmmm not sure about this move to be honest.
Would I like to see search results for...
- Lexham Press results? Yes, please!
- Verbum? Yes, please!
- Faithlife eBooks? I thought I did but now I am not so sure I do. Seeing the Logos store results clogged with fiction and crazy books on dating seriously harms the logos brand.
Conclusion: Integrate search results from 1&2 keep,3 separate. Or integrate it but have the filter option set to 'off' by default.
Carpe verbum.
0 -
While I have concerns about how the search works - especially when I enter an exact title and it doesn't appear first and when parens appear to have no effect - I do want the ebooks to be integrated. I rarely think to look there but I've found several useful titles not in Logos that are available as eBooks. Integration is essential.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
0 -
Adam Cody said:
I do hope though, you'll offer discounted upgrades to books that will later maybe get the full "Logos" treatment.
Better than that. You'll get a free upgrade if an eBook is converted into a Logos edition (assuming it's the same edition from the same publisher).
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
0 -
Perhaps it would help Faithlife to know what people are searching for when they find lots of irrelevant results. My own experimentation (for fairly specific search terms) gave better results that I expected.
I searched for "cessationism", "gift of prophecy", "agabus" and "evangelicalism", all of which returned highly relevant eBooks and Logos editions.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
0 -
Mark Barnes said:
Perhaps it would help Faithlife to know what people are searching for when they find lots of irrelevant results. My own experimentation (for fairly specific search terms) gave better results that I expected.
The Logos Home Page has a link to "See All" of the On Sale books at its site. I click on the See All link.
After filtering for Unowned and English, I go through 3000 titles (50 pages x 60 titles/per page) and still haven't found a single title that is on sale from the Logos website.
Try it for yourself.
0 -
Robert Neely said:
After filtering for Unowned and English, I go through 3000 titles (50 pages x 60 titles/per page) and still haven't found a single title that is on sale from the Logos website.
It does depend on what you have the "Sort By" field set to
With it set to "Savings" I see similar results to those you describe, with it set to "Relevance" I see a range of Logos titles.
Not claiming this is how it should work....
0 -
Graham Criddle said:
Not claiming this is how it should work....
Of course that's how it should work. On logos.com, when we have the FBOTM and the +1s, the next savings will be for special sales of 50% (homepage deal, currently Best Commentaries) and regular monthly sales of up to 40%. On ebooks.faithlife.com you will often see savings larger than 90% and lots of those (fiction titles sold for say $15 in print going for 0.99 or 1.99 as ebooks). Thus sorting by savings will naturally crowd out the Logos stuff. Unless we get a filter by edition, that's exactly what is to be expected.
Have joy in the Lord!
0 -
if FL intended the On Sale link on their opening page to work this way, so be it.
0 -
Chi Shun Cheung said:
I don't understand how this was a good idea.
It's actually discouraging me to browse through any searches because of the countless irrelevant results that come up. I really think most logos users don't care much for non-logos products and those that do would have gone to the faithlife site to check those items out. Now we are given countless irrelevant items just to see what logo items are on sale. This is really bothersome and this was not a smart decision unless the desire was to lose sales.
i share your frustration.
0 -
Liam Maguire said:
Seeing the Logos store results clogged with fiction and crazy books on dating seriously harms the logos brand.
It does seem that FL Ebooks might be the better place for an Everything search. Logos seems to me just the place for serious Bible books...etc.
- Don't miss a FREE Book, COUPON, or OFFER! Join the Free Faithlife Books Group
0
