Camping Chairs and Traffic Boost (or: Did I just make an expensive mistake?)

I've been looking to expand my business outlets, so I've been hunting around for new retail venues. After doing some searches related to my business and looking at traffic in the returned search results, I checked out a few places, mostly malls.

The first place I looked at had a traffic figure of over 67,000 so of course I went to check it out. There were dance pads EVERYWHERE - on top of stores, outside stores, IN stores... every where.

I finally settled on a mall with a traffic figure of 30,000 and no camping chairs. I rented the few available stalls. I started to setup shop. And then I found 20 camping chairs politely tucked into a clearing in the woods. They were all full at 8:10 am game time, too.

In no way am I suggesting the owner of this sim is being deceptive or anything - buyer beware, I should have looked all over the sim before I rented out in the mall. But now I'm curious - with 20 camping chairs and anti-idler technology, how much of that 30,000 traffic figure is likely to come from campers and not actual shoppers?

Obvioulsy, a retail establishement with high traffic and high search results is what I (and most retailers) really want. I understand camping chairs can be used to help retail outlets climb the popularity list by bumping traffic, so yes the people who rent may see some benefit from that and that's fine. I'm just curious how much of that 30K figure might be generated by campers vs shoppers.

My guess would be around 95% and the other 5% being shoppers and 2.5% of those shoppers will leave at the site of camping chairs, lag and other reasons...

That sounds about right.

Maybe there is a career opportunity here. In a situation such as that described by the OP, would it be worth some additional L$ to hire someone to monitor a mall? Do some actual head counts; and maybe where shoppers are going in the mall? Some basic, in the field, market research?

Perhaps someone looking to earn some money would be interested in spending some time watching. Counting the green dots as it were.

Would this help sort out what is contributing to the traffic figures we see?

I have long wondered whether any enterprising SL residents were considering producing some usable market research, both in-world and regarding the SL web shopping sites. I know I'd pay for it. However, the amount I'd pay would depend upon the quality and reliability of the research data collected, which means it would take some serious work. Consequently, like any other SL enterprise, the amount of money to be made off this sort of business might not be worth the amount of time and effort it would take to produce the product.

The other point to consider is that things change so quickly in SL; people often sell land, give up on running clubs, malls and private islands and reduce their gameplay time in a matter of weeks. For this reason, market research data could potentially have a very, very short shelf-life, thereby contributing to the ultimate lack of profitability inherent in this sort of SL business venture.

It would be fairly simple to automate. You could have volume detects set up at strategic points - the telehub, entrances to different areas and so on - and have them send time and key (and perhaps direction of movement so you'd know whether people were going in and out) to a central server, either in-world or outside. Or short-range sensors that checked how long people were spending in each area, for a more open-plan layout. One would probably have to then process the data offline though; it would be rather a lot to do in SL, and the tools are far far better outside of it. "Clickstreaming" is common on websites, and RL shops do this sort of thing, just using a lot more money and technology of course.

When I say "simple" though I don't mean "easy" - it would take quite a while to set up and learn how best to analyse the data. It would only be worth it for the larger emporia.

Another thing to watch for is shopping areas with multiplayer games. Now this is strictly our experiences when we ran them and for that reason other might have very different data.

When we were in Jouppi we typically ran 3 hours of games daily. With an average attendance of 7 - 15 people. This added approximately 1500 to our daily traffic.

When we first started running games we had about a 20% increase in sales from our shops. HOWEVER because gamers tend to frequent the same places to play that 20% within a week dwindled to about 2%. Changing which games did nothing to get the sales up.

Between the lack of a sales boost, the time investment to run games, and the general nasty attitude towards hosts we decided 2% and 1500 traffic just were not worth it.

A side note removing all the games went a long way to our lag free environment.

I hesitated to mention automating market research like this for a couple of reasons.

First, people keep saying there are no jobs in SL. LL seems to be saying we should make some jobs. So my thinking was that this is an opportunity to create some jobs.

Second, I think I would be more willing to rely on information like this if I could talk to the person who observed it. See if they noticed anything while watching, etc. Particularly with the factors already mentioned that would lead to a short-shelf life.

I dont know if this sort of automation would be lag-inducing?

Anyway, when it comes to my own choices about where to rent market space, I look around the mall and decide if I like it or not. Or if I want to be in the general area. Maybe that is why I rarely even make the rent in some malls.

But what is the metric used to calculate that? The 95% I mean?

One sim, 20 chairs, 30K in traffic... how would you calculate how much traffic 20 chairs occupied (for arguments sake) 24/7 generates?

Sort of off topic, but I can think of two ideas of jobs I'd like to see in SL: Bike Messenger & Bounty Hunter

Hi ya'll,

I'm a recently created alt but have been on SL a year as a business manager for Nage Prime, working constantly to create an environment that most meets our needs, helps encourage the support and literal payment of bills, and by all means, fun!

I think everyone has to create a world that works best for them, and the bills and bottom line motivate people like few other things will do.

What I can share about my world, and what we provide... we have a mall area, a wonderfully new set up, and it has no camping chairs. When Nage built the original club at Badger, he decided to steer away from the gimmicks and work with people instead.

I think we all have our own marketing strategies. The largest single most effective tool at Nage Prime is the people. We work together, as a huge cyberworld unit to make ends meet, and we have fun doing it.

I've been reading the forums a lot recently, relating well to the fears and anxieties presented about monies and Lindens and all the other choices.

My personal opinion is that the "people factor" makes the biggest difference in success. Camping chairs work with the current set up, but camping chairs really have no long term impact on your population in Second Life.

I found a place that people connected. People make the difference. If you as a business can capture "repeat business", you have solved the economic needs for your location. Good designs. Good builds. Good poses. Good things. Whatever YOU'RE marketing, market to people.

To me, that's the solution.
jessika

Another issue to consider is whether the clientele at that particular mall would be interested in your specific products. In the mall that I run, we have had several vendors attempt to sell items that just make no sense relative to the island or the mall clients. Needless to say, they get frustrated with the lack of sales and end up not renewing their lease. I've even had one go so far as to claim I did something to hurt their sales, because the shops around that one were always busy and his wasn't. I had to point out that selling clothing designed for human female avatars probably isn't a good match in a mall with mostly male furries running around.

On your list of information that you are seeking before renting space, I would suggest evaluating what other merchandise is there, and possibly even just sitting around and watching the mall for a while to see what traffic shows up.

Repo Man.

The life of a Repo Man is ALWAYS intense.