Welcome back WilliamXS
Updating online people and bought items are two different things. It's a technical question. Regarding people online, we had several ideas.
One idea was to receive a message, when a friend/lover/spouse has logged in. Or the GUI needs an automatic refresh every 60 seconds for example.
The refrsh button might work too. But the only difference is on the page you're currently looking at. All the other pages are updated when you go to next page.