Prices on Items

Hello,

I notice that (almost) no-one when advertising their products in the new product forum puts the price in the ad!

Then I noticed that even when going around in world, almost nothing has the price tag on the item either. You usually have to right click the thing to find out how much it is or actually start to proceed with a "buy". This was quite the shocker to me and I don't know why I never noticed it before.

I always put the price in the ad and each and ever item I sell has the price printed right on the box. (It's not like the value of either the Linden or of the item changes that much that the price should fluctuate a lot.)

I am just really really curious what the motivation is behind not putting a price on things. In RL it's pretty much the second thing I want to know. I see a nice top, I pick it up, and once I know I like it, the very next thing I do is look at the price tag.

If there is no price on something in an ad, I find that I have to want the thing pretty badly to actually log onto SL, fly to the store and check it out. Is this the case with everyone? Does price not really matter at all if it's a "good" item? If so why all the hand wringing from merchants over "the economy" and the prices of things if the price doesn't matter to the customer?

I'm not sure this is a huge problem. Finding the price seems easier in SL than it does in RL for me. All I do is mouse over the prim that contains the item for sale and I get the price. I know this is a feature that can be turned on and off in client preferences. Wouldn't it be neat if we could touch a piece of clothing in RL and have a price tag pop out of thin air over the item? Most vending systems also display the price above the object with scripted text.

As a retailer I prefer to re-use my advertising textures when I can rather than have to go back into PS, change the text layer, save as TGA, then pay LL to upload it again. Granted, I don't change prices very often, but if I need to, I'd rather not make more work for myself. It also keeps my inventory from cluttering up with unwanted textures. Changing a product forum or classified ad texture would be the same. Personally, I don't rely on the classified ads any more. They are just a waste of $L IMHO.

Normally i see the prices listed in item description pop-up, the one which shows up when you put the mouse pointer over the thing... it's generally faster this way too, than waiting for large box textures to fully load so they become sharp enough you can finally see what the price is supposed to be ^^;

i figure it's also more convenient for seller this way, because changing item prices (for whatever reason, split proceeds, inflation adjustment, event discount, anything) ... doesn't require to make new versions of item posters, then to upload them and edit all boxes etc x.x;

I agree with Namssor it does not sem to be a problem.

simply mouse over the item and you get the price.

having made 100's of clothing and other items i sell I rarely put the price in the texture simply because i know that the price is easily gotten by mousing over the item.

I also try to keep my selling textures as simple as possible large pictures of the item I'm selling so show as much detail of the item as possible and the name. After getting all that on the texture there is little room left for the price any way.

also personally i think having the price on the texture looks tacky but this is purely just my opinion.

as for the forums i rarely use them any more.

I don't usually put the price on an advertising texture as I rarely know how much I want to charge for something when I'm doing the picture (plus I change my mind all the time) but I do have some textures which say "L$100", "L$300" etc which I sometimes put on. I also use floating text sometimes and all my vendors always have price and permissions.

Er, looking around my shop, I'm actually not too good at doing this properly, sorry.

Some people really do not do themselves any favours when posting classifieds. If I see a listing for an item I want as many of the following as possible:

1. pictures
2. the price
2a. the permissions
3. a slurl or secondlife:// link to a shop selling it
4. SLX or SLB links directly to that item

Not just "hay I have a great new pair of shoes, they're in my store". Text and pictures are free after all.

It takes two seconds of effort to find out the price of an item in-world, so I don't see a problem there. I do understand your comments on the forum ads, but it might be a matters of sellers trying to 'protect' themselves against both attracting comments/debates/undercutting from competing designers, and scaring off potential customers. If you see a design you like enough to go see it in-world, you'll probably be a little more likely to not have qualms over the price, i.e. paying 300L for an item after viewing it when you might have been turned off by the same price tag in a forum ad.

Sometimes people don't realize that you can 'Touch' an item to get more detailed information such as price etc. Especially if you don't get the price when you hover over something.

If you don't get a price when you mouse over an object, it's either not for sale, or you knew enough to turn this pop-up feature off in your preferences. I find it hard to believe that Noobs starting out with this feature set on as a default wouldn't at some point notice the pop-ups.

PS. Actually, I just realized this pop-up feature can't be turned off. I was confusing it with chat bubbles.

When I first started selling stuff I put the price & permissions on all the textures, but by doing this a price change means a lot more work than just repricing all the boxes. Also when I sell a dozen or so identical items (save for color choice) I find that having price & perms on every texture makes for visual clutter. Very unpretty. People can easily find out the price of the items by mousing over, and I make sure to include price & permissions in in-world classifieds. I still include the perms on the texture for shoes though, since they're no-trans.

Not many of our items are set for sale, we use a demo item that if touched gives price and note cards about the item, then if they want to purchase they Pay into the demo object which then gives them a copy of what they bought.

I've always put my price on my products. I just consider it good marketing. Answer the customers questions quickly and clearly.

Now what I'm not doing and should be doing is showing permission information. I need to correct that.

I don't add the price onto the box art because 1. I don't want to either be locked into that price or have to redo box art every time I have a sale, and 2. It looks cheap to me.

If someone likes what they see, it takes about half a second to hover the mouse over the item and get the price. If that's too much effort, shopping probably is as well, and I wouldn't bother catering to those non-shoppers.

I agree! Sales and sometimes price changes DO happen
(Knows, just did one )

That's the fascinating thing about marketing and sales. There are always divergent opinions, many times being valid on both sides. There is a science behind finding the right answers, but there is a great deal of 'art' to it as well.

I prefer writing my prices in haiku.

This has many prims/
it is five hundred linden/
Pay this box the sum.

It's kind of a bitch to get that in hovertext properly, though.