Gaming Xstreet?

It is not "Gaming".....which I will point out is an Overused and Abused word.

It's called Customer Service and Effective Marketing. Offering your product in a variety of colors for those who do not wish to fool with modifications. It's a very valuable customer service. At the current time, I do not know of a tool on Xstreet that will allow you to offer a variety of colors, without posting a separate listing.....so if this annoys you...send your comments to Xstreet.

I WISH I had the time to offer every product available on Xstreet, and to offer it in a variety of colors.

What you have there is not a "Gamer" but a Product Creator who has taken the care and time to first, make the product in another color for you, and to secondly, take the time to post it in a format that is convenient for you as a shopper....so that you don't have to go to the inworld store and wander around aimlessly trying to find it.

Please do not confuse "Gaming" with "Effective Marketing and Customer Service."

The word is becoming quite passe in my book.

I'm about to put a chair on Xstreet, being a content creator myself I know how bloody easy it is to change colour, so I have 9 chairs with plain flat colours and 7 chairs with patterned textures, took me 5 minutes after building the initial chair, I dislike mass loading of the same product too, that's basically just tinted differently, so I was going to offer all colour combinations in one or two packages, copy and mod, so you can even tint it yourself. But now I'm wondering…?

I don't really see the difference between having 20 different tints on XStreet and having 20 different tints in-world. One thing about having them on XStreet is that I can skip past them quickly. If I go to the store in-world and they have 20 different images of the same thing on the wall, guess what, I have to wait for all those images to load.

How you present your product is part of the decision making process of marketing. All of us content creators have to do it. It is my least favorite part of being a business owner. I love creating new things, but I often spend more time on the package and the ads than I did actually making the stuff in the package.

So I do not consider it "gaming" the system. We are using what we have to work with to the best of our abilities.

No.

It is products for sale, plain and simple. If you don't like seeing them you can skip pages ahead.

I'm red-green color blind too so I rely on the product description to be sure of the color. Drives me nuts when people names their colors things like "lust" or "acid" or "lollypop".

I don't think it's gaming the system....it's just the way xstreet is platformed. Ya have to list items individually, unless it's a package deal.

What would be really nice is if rather then pages and pages of item listings......we also had the option of vender listings......so, lets say you're shopping for a belt...you can either scroll thru umpteen zillion belts......OR....you can view a vender list and look at each venders page seperately. At least that way you can take a quick look, and if you don't like one vender....you can leave that page and check out another easily. Rather like going from store to store.....but without having to telelport.

I don't like xstreet for that reason too....it's a pain in the ass.....and what's worse....is there's no rhyme or reason. I'll browse new hairstyles....and see the same vender's items pop up pages apart from each other.....very annoying. I do sell on xstreet.....but I don't have all of my stuff there.....just a few.....the rest is in-world.

One reason I can think of is that you end up tinting the entire texture with all its subtle shadings too. Other then that tinting is better then nothing.

We are afraid we will eff it up.

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I am sure it is a combination of gaming and legitimate product differentiation.

As has been pointed out, there is currently no way one could sell something through XStreetSL by posing one product listing and have the customer choose different colors.

Of course, merchants figure out that more colors means more exposure, so maybe they make more versions of a product than they would otherwise.

Then, on the other hand, more choices are better for the consumer. It's better to have access to 3 different shades of green than one.

Personally, when I come up on those pages of listings for one product, I experience annoyance at the product which probably makes me less likely to buy the product. Of course, my experience isn't necessarily universal, but it makes me wonder whether the pages of listings actually help sales. I've learned to skim and mentally tune out the extra listings; it just causes me the annoyance of clicking through extra pages and waiting for them to load.

You could suggest to Linden Lab that XStreetSL add a feature by which a customer could choose different versions of a product on one listing.

Then couple that with a policy on what is acceptable regarding listing similar products.

The latter gets to be a problem though, because then you get into the business of finding some sort of bright line between what is "too similar" and "different enough." It would be tough to define and hard to enforce.

Personally, I find it more annoying that there are so many Demo items that come up when I am looking for free items, and that there are so many listings that are not products at all, but advertisements for products. (A dress "freebie" that turns out just to be a picture and landmark for where I can buy the dress pictured, for example- I hate those.)

Good point!! I am into my silver/black/white mode these days, where I wear only those colors. Boring to some, but it works for me.

Mine is copy/mod so you always have backup.

Yes!! If I want a formal, there are many great dress designers around.

I agree that it's not gaming, but I disagree that it's either customer service or effective marketing. It's the SL equivalent to crayon companies selling their crayons one color at a time.

Good customer service would either sell items whose colors can be changed or packages of items with a variety of colors. It might also sell individual items in single colors at a lower cost - but not list them all on Xstreet.

As to whether it's effective marketing? Perhaps for others, but for me, the odds of me looking at the details of an item on Xstreet are inversely proportional to the number of essentially identical items I see on the listing (where "essentially identical", for me, means differing only in things like color). The only reason I use Xstreet is that it can be easier to find things than in SL search; vendors who ruin that experience annoy me, so I avoid them.

Thankyou for your replies and keeping them civil.
I was just curious if others felt the same as I do.
I can and do skip over them but it is annoying.
I understand why people do it but I was wondering if people do it on purpose just as a form of advertising...

Sometimes I will release a fatpack on XSSL with a note that individual colors are available in world. That's just pure laziness on my part tho. On the other hand, it is extremely rare for me to release anything in more than 4 or 5 colors.

I had a dress once that I sold in four colors, plus also offered a 'tintable' version of. No one EVER bought the tintable one.

Sometimes people get the idea that creators can just upload an outfit in one color and use SL tinting to create the colors for sale...and you can, IF your creation has no special detail. If it does, when you tint it, the details get tinted too, which can spoil the intended effect.

Please note....before any of you start thinking that you are offending by offering different colors separately.

I hate fat packs. I don't need 10 other colors....(redheads can't wear most colors, you know)....and I don't want 10 other items clogging up my inventory.....and I don't want to pay for 10 other items I'm going to delete. And I want to purchase each individual item on Xstreet, as a convenience. I don't have time to wander around a store for half an hour. So this shopper wants each item available in an individual color, on Xstreet.

I don't want to fool with changing colors on an article of clothing. Even though I am in the business of creating items in different textures and different colors....I don't want to have to do it in my free time, on items I didn't create.

I'm not the only person in SL that feels that way. I've listened to many friends complain about fat packs over and over again.



Advertising is NOT Gaming. Yes....people "advertise" on purpose.

Not nearly as much, in my opinion, as the people who put an entire freaking dictionary of keywords at the bottom of each product listing.

I can't tell you how many times I've searched for a knife, sword, belt, etc., and half the listings are sex beds or other assorted bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm searching for.

XStreetSL's search is functionally useless because of that, and you'd think that the operators would have a vested interest in fixing that, but it's been that way for as long as I can remember.

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This

Ditto

Agreed...puts me off too, wading through nonsense!

Indeed, should be the first upgrade XStreet (and SL Search / SL advertisements for that matter) should get:
A seperate input field for tag words. If someone then still adds tag words at the bottom of the description instead of inside the proper field, or adds unrelated tags, follow a one-strike-you're-out system, by just removing the entire XStreet listing without warning or even a message telling that this happened. For SL Search and adverts, just turn off the "find in search" or delete the advertisement without explanation or return of advertisement cost. This should teach people to not abuse the system pretty fast.

You sound like you work there already.

I predict that SLX will become a dumpster full of worthless freebies and 10L junk before you know it and only you will be there all alone to hand out strikes.

Huh? I just clicked weapons in the left hand column, then selected Melee Weapons, typed knife into the search box, check the "Search within current category" box, and not a sex bed to be seen in the results. (And yes, I enabled mature content first.)

The category list on Xstreet, though simple and limited, is the biggest search win on around when compared to SL search.

I agree with Mickey, I often buy just one color because I only WANT one color.

I also agree that it would be a great help to shoppers if Xstreet would add a sub-menu for colors/sizes/permissions/other.

/me wanders off to look at Eclectic's tintable stuff...

There are items where tinting works and some where it doesn't. Shadows and highlights that work on light colors can get blown out if tinted dark. If you want a deep red item with realistic shading, you can't start with a white version of it. Plus, the alpha halo effect can affect a tinted item much more than one with the correct color to begin with. I use the Flaming Pear Solidify B filter on most of my alphas with the final correct color applied. The easy way out would be to just layer 50% black on the background but that leads to weirdness too.

Anyway -- back to the original topic -- I hate wading through mega pages color variations of one item too. Usually it's for junky stuff too. It would be nice if XStreet offered a drop down for color choices or some user selectable variation.