Website Shopping? Malls closing!

I have noticed that alot of "Sim Malls" are not making profit and they are closing down or selling their land and project.

Is this because of the new webshopping? like such websites as Slexchange?

I prefer shopping in the world, its more fun.. like i walk into malls and see different buildings and new stores that amaze me and i get a good feeling about shopping and see new things. I love shopping in rl and in SL.. and i dont think shopping off a page is "that much fun" lol

Well im thinking this is one of the problems that SL Malls are having, its easier to shop in a page and buy something, then go to the laggy malls, but where is the fun in looking at a page! lol

Anywayz this is a matter of opinion, But if everyone starts to put shops in websites im afraid im gonna have to too

LOL i prefer shopping on the world, unlike (there.com) where u shop in a website.


Tell me what u think ??

I would say it has to do with TOO MANY malls in the game.. I see more malls in the game then I do homes.

As a seller, in-world vendors are still easiest for me, but times are changing and web sales are the next big thing. Additionally, mall sims tend to have very expensive rent, and they don't perform any better than my roadside or telehub stalls (in fact, often they perform worse).

As a buyer....... well, I don't really buy much SL stuff.

LOL thats one of the problems.. hehehehe but still.. lol

CEREAL!! hehehe milk plz lol


anywayz, yes i agree with you on the rents. one reason that mall sims do not make a profit is that ppl are avoiding rents.. and they need to make a profit to keep the sim

I have been greatly and rapidly expanding my malls. But they are also not typical sim mall but all located at mainland telehubs.

I will always prefer shopping in world to shopping on the websites. I like the emmercive(sp) experience. However I think the website shops are going to make a great addition to the SL world. Especially the ones that mange to merge in world with the web so that I can do most from inside SL.

My personal belief about the reason why malls are starting to fail is because of a few things. One reason is there are just so many, and a lot of them have all the same stuff that another mall has. I prefer malls where some people do exclusive sales in that mall and maybe one other, and then have their own shop somewhere. It makes it more interesting and gives diversity between the malls. Some mall owners are doing it right and those ones will last a long time. In the long run I bet we will have fewer but better run malls with a lot more diversity.

I agree with tya

Yes, this is a vicious cycle that begins with the insane cost of owning a sim. That cost is then necessarily passed on to retailers. The retailer then has the choice of either:

A. Swallowing the cost. For instance, when I was renting in Centre Ville, about 80% of my sales revenue ended up going straight back to Anshe.

B. Passing the cost onto the consumer. I don't think any SL retailer actually does this, because it would kill the already-lackluster sales and you'd end up with a worse version of scenario A.

C. Not renting there.

Retail space for rent tends to work best on the scale of small vendor stalls in prime locations, such as what Blue Burke does, rather than all-in-one megamalls. Smaller malls and more of them is the way to go.

Hey Aces!! How are ya!!

The advantage of website malls is that they bring in people who've never heard of SL into the game.

Imagine searching on google for "<type of weapon here / science fiction vehicle / etc>" and getting secondserver.net's inventory of that furniture.

You might be intrigued and follow it up and get lead here.

However, it is a step backwards in terms of immersive experiences. Hopefully this will be fixed soon..

LOL!!!

Pendari said emmercive!! LOL.


marilyn

(psst... whuts emmercive??)

If anyone does web commerce right it will certainly put a dent in mall sales. SL Exchange is a well thought out and easy to navigate tool -- do some MARKETING ppl!!! 3/4ths of SL doesn't know you exist.

High price of tier.
Silly expectation that renters can carry that tier alone.
Dropping value of $L.
SL population that is getting older, less likely to buy as much
Seasonal variations ...
Poor mall management
Lag
The sheer time required to keep traffic up in a mall

All of these things impact the feasibility of mall sims. Malls and smaller mini-malls... won't go away. People DO love to do the shopping thing. And some of the smaller locations agressively manage their content and lag.. and are established and stable.

What we need:

-better in world advertising and marketing tools
-a script/feature that will let you try on before you buy clothes.

Surreal

I don't expect malls to vanish, but I do expect a much-needed thinning of the herd. To survive, the remaining malls will have to be more attractive, easier to navigate, have better organization, and draw people into the pleasure of browsing shops.

Malls can't continue to be homogeneous grids of stalls. New malls have to be collections of interesting themed boutiques and storefronts and not just bulk repositories of objects.

The web stores -- slexchange.com and secondserver.net -- are the new bulk repositories, and they do a better job at it because they're categorized and searchable.

Oh, they're doing a pretty good job so far. Merwan is a master marketeer, unfortunately.

If no one knows about the web stores, no one uses them. Nothing wrong with spreading the word.

Yeah. I agree. It's a thing of marketshare. There's a certain amount of shoppers in SL, some more or less into web shopping. Since there was none available, everyone went to the nearest server: the malls. Now that Web shopping is on, the two are competing for the same number of shoppers. Obviously there's a cut, and some malls - the least knon or the least competitive - are left out.

Survival of the fittest.

Yeah. I was more concerned by the fact that he's hard to compete with. They are doing quite an impressive job, I have to admit.

I prefer shopping in SL, but not at malls. When I see something I like, I find out who the creator is and go to thier storefront (if they have one). I dislike malls because, after one you've seen em all. They all have the obligitory 32 women's clothes stores, 1 goth/unisex store, 1 misc crap store, 1 tattoo/body peircing shop, 1 dance vendor, 1 penis/vagina/sextoy/sexball vendor... etc

All with pretty much the same selection. I find that going to people's home stores offers me the chance to not only see what else that person sells, but see other parts of SL too. Mall's have never really held much favor in my book just lag magnets imho.

When the dust cleared from the 'you can now sell you L$' bombshell - Malls were one of the 'Big Three' -- the 'fast ways' to get L$ (Club/Casinos, and Land being the other two).

A lot of people jumped onto the bandwagon.. I've seen malls spring up overnight and then vanish just as fast when it became obvious it's not as easy as it may seem.

A good many innovations have sprung up around the some of the problems of running and maintaining a mall (the 'rent cube' being one).. I think it was only a matter of time before some savvy folk addressed some of the 'whats good and whats bad' and came up with an alternative.

I don't think it's going to kill mall shopping - a lot of folks seem to like it.. Just like Amazon didn't kill Barnes and Noble.. It's just going to offer another alternative to people who want it, and a cheaper alternative to folks starting out that want to sell their content.

That being said, I think malls have been on a decline lately anyway. Personally I've used malls only a handfull of times - and when I do I carefully watch how many sales are generated compared to how much I'm paying back.. as a result I'm only currently in 2 malls - and when the rent expires on them it may drop to none.

I've had much better results using a private store - I have a nice little symbiotic relationship where my items compliment the store owners.. People looking for my stuff often stop and pick up items from them - and vice versa.

Seems the old business plan for beginning mall owners was:

1. Build Mall
2. ?????
3. PROFIT!

May be time to revise it.

Siggy.

I prefer website shopping.

When I see items/designs I like, I can almost instantly see other things by that creator/designer.
If I'm only looking for a pair of shoes, I don't have to wait for 100 other items to resolve so I can pick out which are shoes.
When I search for something, it's actually there, and isn't a waste of my time to fly there and find the mall and/or merchant has gone the way of the dodo.
I can see several photos of an item instead of one box front or vendor picture.
I can see a longer, more detailed description.
I can see what permissions are on the item before I buy it.

I hate shopping in RL, and it was only fun in SL for a few months. Malls have never been fun for me, RL or SL, and less so in SL because I can't even grab a coke and a warm pretzel. Just stall after stall and rent cube after rent cube. Very unappealing.

When I do shop in world, it's always at specialty shops, not malls.

Tya speaks the truth!

A mall isn't an easy way to make money - for the owner or the renter. People need a reason to go there rather than any of the other competitors.

I get most of my sales from club based vendors - although slexchange is doing well at the moment.

As a new player without a lot of L$ to spend at the moment, I haven't done much shopping. When I do decide to spend it won't be at malls. I hate them in RL and having been to a couple in SL, have decided I will buy from individual stores.

Another thing I find difficult is not being able to try on clothes. I don't know if its possible to do that for so many items. I did buy a trial skin for L$1 with demo stamped all over it. Could this work with clothes?

Alexa

PS - I now have a premium account and land - how come I am shown as a guest?