Silly Vendor Tricks (some observations ...)

Summary: Pretend you are your own customer. How would you want the experience to be?

1) Store Layout

What works in RL doesn't always work in SL. Is the camera constantly swinging out behind a wall? Are the aisles too narrow? Do you have so many floating text items in the air that they blur together?

Can I get into the store? Am I limited to a little door in front? Does it make sense to make some of the windows phantom, or allow me to fly in from the top?

And for gosh sakes, stop it with the spiral staircases with steps! Slowwwww to walk up...

1a) Teleport Location

Are you publishing the correct TP location? Is it tricky to find your place? Why did I end
up in the middle of a Vampire Castle while looking for your store?

2) The Price!

Dont make me type in the Price! I cant believe how many times I have been in otherwise well-done stores, only to find that I have to type in the price to purchase something. Are you kidding me? You're the vendor. You know the price. Fix it! Dont put up a last second barrier to purchase.

3) Customization / Clue me in before the sale

Two examples:

A decent maker of skyboxes allows for limited customization of floors and windows. The floor choices are limited, and mostly awful. He/She will not allow the customer to use their own textures. Know what they said? "Cover the floor with your own prims". Uh, yeah...

A maker of sunglasses has one model that has a nice dark mirrorshade. I bought another pair from them, thinking that surely I'd have the same lens options, but in a different style. The new pair did not have the same colors available, and the vendor was unwilling to make the change (not on a custom basis, but just to have a standard set of textures across all of their frames). They also sell shoes with walk animations - same story - can't add your own walks.

4) Transfer

The maker of skyboxes will not allow them to be transferred to a new owner. wtf? This prevents me from using their product to do a package deal of land + house!

Transfer is a good thing. Dont lock all of the permissions down just because you can. Think about how much more desirable your product is if I can transfer it to someone else. Or dont think about it - either I or someone else will do a better product, and beat you at your own game

5) Always Include ...

Always include a landmark to your store.
Always provide an IM contact, or better yet, start a group for your product so that you aren't the only point of contact for answering questions.
Always provide documentation (if relevant), and spell check it ...

6) Greeter Robots

Get that f**king thing away from me! Greeter Robots are the SL equivalent of a Used Car Salesman.

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Ok, have fun with it. Obviously there are more items. What happens is that vendors get so into their side of the project, that they space out on what it's like to be a customer (or simply dont care).

ahhahahaah..You are standing in a one room store and a greeter robot attaches itself to you spamming the channel telling you what is on the right wall, the left wall, the wall in front of you and don't forget the wall behind you. Gotta love not being able to look around yourself for what is there.

1. agreed
1a. agreed
2. Some vendors don't allow that. Like animation vendors. I can't change them nor could I build a new one.
3. agreed. There is a way around it sometimes, just right click->edit look in the contents and check the priorities.
4. Disagree for most things. All of my poses and animations are copy/no transfer so if people put them into AOs or dance machines and loose the object they don't loose the animation. This makes people happy. It seems like you are waning the sky box as copy + transfer. Very few will sell you anything like that because they do not want you to make money off their hard work. Countless times you hear people complaining about people selling freebies and other's work with no changes made. There is enough theft out there for anyone to worry about it.
5. Partially agree. For things out of a vendor this is difficult. Especially for mine. The landmarks change so much as people upgrade/downgrade land that a right click on the object and checking the profile on the creator's name is much easier. Everyone has a tp to their main shop in the picks section. Same goes for an IM contact. The group thing hardly works since we have such a low limit on number of groups.
6. agreed.

Well sometimes that just isn't fixable, I'm not a scripter, I use a vending system made by someone else. But how is that a barrier anyway? I don't think most people habitually buy something without checking the price first and it only takes a second to type it in.

Agreed, greeter robots are evil things.

Real helpers/assistants can be far more annoying that any Greeter Robot. I TPd to one mall a couple of weeks ago after reading about it here. A guy (about three weeks old) was offering his help the moment I landed (bear in mind this laggy mall takes minutes to rez). I politely declined his assistance several times...but he wouldn't get the message and shadowed me around the whole joint. "Do you like drugs Dillon?" "What?" "There is some great LSD in this store!" "What about a suit Dillon....some eyes...hair...." Yap yap. I asked him to leave me alone but could see him still following me on my mini-map...and then he tried to shove me in a store. Presumably he was getting a commission? Whatever, I left without buying anything.

Re transferable items: I appreciate where you're coming from with mod/transferable prefabs when reselling, but mod/copy is *invaluable* to many of us too. Ie. I recently bought a villa that I have extensively modified (prims, textures and even scripts)...and it's some comfort to know that, if I mess up, I can always rez another copy (or even a copy of my a modified copy). Obviously, nobody is going to sell copy/transferable houses, so maybe prefab designers should offer two choices: Mod/copy *and* mod/transfer? Perhaps priced differently.

As for clothes, animations. Copy/no transfer please! Every time. It saves inventory hell when I want to organize outfits...or prevents animations from being lost when I'm transferring to and from AO. (I've walked out of many clothes stores without buying clothes I liked simply because they weren't copyable.)

It can be troublesome; while browsing items in shop i keep one eye on the pop ups with prices, but it generally just registers as either 'acceptable' or 'too much'. So if i decide to buy something and it shows me the box with gazillion buttons, i go all like then have to move the window aside so i can put my mouse over the item poster so it shows the price, then go back to the pay window, punch in the price, double check i didn't make mistake... it's rather annoying and i cas see how it could make someone change their mind at the last moment and decide not to bother o.o;

Nope. I dont need to copy it. If the vendor wont provide more of the standard freebie textures, then at least give me a notecard to config - just list the asset id's of the system textures. It's not that hard.

Why dont people do the simple way. Simplicity is the beauty... and all the more safe from different exploits that keep popping up in vendors.

Most of my item are just "boxed". R-click and buy, easy come easy go.... oh yeah and price is mostly on the box

Boxes are nice, but in some cases vendors still make sense (split-proceeds products, animations organized in logical groups, mall rentals where you can have severely limiting amount of available prims, networked vendors for identical updates of multiple locations etc)

I have to agree with the 'transfer/no copy' or 'copy/no transfer', let the buyer make the choice. For a lot of stuff, I prefer to have copy/no transfer because I like being able to duplicate items in my inventory for my own sanity. But on the other hand, like the OP said, if you want to sell 'furnished land', you can't unless the prefab is transfer enabled... but transfer/no copy makes perfect sense in that case, keeps 'em buying more of the things to make their land more attractive.

I suspect that, although the OP has been good enough to not "name names", I'm the supplier of the mentioned skyboxes. I'm slightly disapointed that so much fuss is being made here, as I vaguely remember answering your questions about transferring the boxes and adding new textures in-game, and had no idea you were so upset by my replies.

So, that said...



The skyboxes ship with - I forget, a dozen or so scripted textures in the foor? The textures are switched via a nifty inbuilt console, which also has options for tinting your windows, setting security options, etc. The whole concept of the boxes was to make them as idiot-proof and low-maintenance (read: NO MOD) as possible... mainly because I don't want the support headache from people unlinking/retexturing/breaking the boxes and asking me to come round and fix it. The price point reflects this... L$150 for the basic model. I think you're actually getting a _huge_ amount of functionality for your money.

The store includes a demo room that lets potential customers fully explore the texture/security script and view ALL the available textures. The fact that the boxes are NO MOD is _not_ hidden. I use straightforward "set for sale" prim vendors, so you can verify the permissions as you buy. Alternatively, if you buy from slexchange, the permissions are listed correctly there also. I'm absolutely transparent on this.

Buckley does me a slight dis-service by misquoting my response as a curt "Cover the floor with your own prims". I believe I actually explained my design philosophy, and suggested that if they _really_ wanted to customise the floor further, they could always drop down a rug/carpet.

Had I known that you were this upset by my product (you really didn't seem much bothered when I answered your questions in-world) then I would have happily refunded you your purchase price.



Again, you didn't seem nearly as upset when I pointed this out in-world.... but the skyboxes are set to copy / no-transfer. They vend out of standard "set for sale" prims, so these permissions are in no way hidden from the buyer.

I seem to remember that you told me your plan was to set up a property development business, where you resold customised copies of my skyboxes along with the land. Frankly, I believe it's a bit rich to expect an unlimited supply of transferrable skyboxes from me for an outlay of L$150.



Go for it. I thrive on competition

Shep K

EVIL GREETER ROBOTS???

sheesh...just when i was about to get one for my mall...

:/

Xplorer

Not evil greeter robots! not when you and Smiley are so nice to us mall renters

We use Shep's skyboxes for our new store in Discordia (opening tomorrow!), they've got nice high ceilings (so you can fly around inside), they're easy on the prims (the larger 40x40 module is around 30-35 prims, I think), easy to shuffle around to line up properly, and the texture control unit is idiot-proof to use. And I quite like the bundled floor textures.

Would be nice to have some additional units though - I've seen other skybox vendors have pool units and staircase units, but they don't look as good as Shep's.

Why would you say that? Why not sell for 150 or more a pop, and allow for transfer of each one? Why would I need to copy a skybox? It makes sense to copy clothes to different wardrobes, but this is a completely different context.

Because it's easy to accidentally break large structures, especially if they're made of multiple parts.

aww but they give you such a lovely rose...rose...rose....lol
rain

I'm sure it'll upset you even more if I tell you I sell my clothes as nocopy/transfer-OK

I think the vast majority of my customers prefer the skyboxes copyable - I've seen some *incredibly* cool structures, made from multiple copies of the same unit.

At my prices, the only likely reason I can see for somebody desiring a transferrable C9 unit is because - like you - they want to go into some kind of added-value (/added profit) reseller business. At the present time, I'm not interested in supplying that market.

I set my "greeter" robot to just stand there and look cute unless you click on him for assistance. He then IMs me if I'm online and I can speak to the customer through him.

He doesn't hand anything out either. I hate that.

I created a vendor called SLender Vendor (which I also sell), and it has the Pay window automatically set the price. I too, dislike having to enter in the price for the item. You never know if it will pay you back for underpaying or return change for over paying.