renting in a mall - what makes you decide yes/no?

Since there are so many malls around nowadays, I would to ask you all the following:

What makes you decide to rent a shop in a specific mall or not ??

a few things that are a deal breaker for me:

-camping chairs
-shitty builds
-abundance of bib resellers or freebie resellers
-lack of walk-by traffic

to add to Nina:

- price per square meter
- other merchants in the mall: Quality? Crap?

that there are people there at prime time. I would work on scripts from my inventory and rezz a person counter of people that walk by me on my avatar.

lets see I need to find the mall from searching for products(not a mall).

when I find a mall that's attractive I'll search for that mall to see if it shows up in places, classifieds, and groups.

it needs an attractive theme.

people need to be able to teleport directly to my shop instead of to the landing point.

and it should be open air. so many times have I had to search for the door to a mall.

currently not looking for a spot though, as I don't have enough stuff made up.

How far away from the landing point my store is.

How bad the lag is, I had a store in a great looking shopping district but the lag was horrendous. Pity that it was a nice setup.

Rental prices, how long you have to rent for. I'm not going to pay 4 weeks up front when I'm new to that mall.

I agree with all of the above. Also, price per prim is a big incentive to me. I needed at least 100 prims, but some of the pricing was outrageous....even for "new" malls with barely any traffic so far. I'm please with where I ended up, though. The price is right, the traffic count was good, prim count was good, and it's a nice little mall.

Also, one thing to keep in mind is does the mall's theme fit your merchandise? I've found it's better to sell say, clubbing dresses in more club like malls with similar merchants than to try to squeeze it into a Victorian theme

I picked locations in sims I enjoy. I have one near the Crescent Moon Museum in Taber, where I spent many hours solving the Mata Hari Puzzle, one near the VKC Dog Park in Turing, where I train my Lab, and one at Lindman Beach Designs, a new sim by a very creative builder. I'm not really in SL for money... I just like to build... so I take a very relaxed approach to selling what I make.

Themed
Traffic
Associated with events
Cost to rent

And I watch my numbers. If it is a great place, but I'm not making money, I go.

I say no if I see blatant camping, high prices (more than 300L for 25 prims is pushing it), poor theme. High lag is a negative. And while counterintuitive, I often say no to areas with very high traffic. If a mall has 90,000 traffic, Something isnt' quite right (hidden campers, or a club on site that inflates the numbers but contributes 0 to sales). I find places with realistically high numbers (2k-3k) tend to be best.

I forgot to add: two big nos for me are a LOT of camping and casinos/gaming (supposedly no longer a worry.)

i have a brand new mall where i am offering $350L/week for 60 prims or $300L/week for 40 prims (or the whole floor for 100 prims), and that includes a 16m spot for landing, TP to your store, and search listing. it's next to a very busy art sim, and a huge shopping store just west. i seem to get between 500-1000 traffic daily, yet i have only one renter. no campign anywhere, and i offer 1-4 weeks.

like the OP, i also want to know what it is about my place that's not desireable, and what makes a place more desireable.

Does anyone have two stores and can see that the store near a heavily trafficked area generates more sales?

I generally look for a good prim/price ratio and a good open mall design where the customer can TP directly in front of the store. And no lag...

Your ratio of price to prims would be a huge deterrent in my book. This is without looking at it. After that.. people expect places to have traffic... and if you don't have any, you're screwed.

I know what makes people leave who rent, nothing being sold.

so, what is the correct ratio. and, like i said, i get a lot of traffic, as do the places around me. two sims beside me (i am at sim borders) are both very active, and my sim has a lot of shopping to my west.

so, what should i do different? relocate completely? and wut about my ratio?

I definitely say no if they ask for more than 1 week rent upfront.

Also if they are a new mall and try to ask a high price with no traffic I will 99% of the time not rent there. I am only willing to pay a high price weekly if their traffic count justifies that. And I don`t mean camp traffic.

If someone spams me with a notecard advertising their mall that usually causes me to not rent there as well.

It has to...

Look good
Quality stores
Priced reasonably
No campers
No genitals

I also look at the banned av list. If it's chocablock, something is wrong.

1. Traffic.
2. Quality of location.
3. Owner's reputation.

Whatever works for you. If you have a very low number of takers then you're probably too high. If it fills up in next to no time, you were probably too low.

Knock down the rent by a little overall (so it's on the mid end of competitive), and offer a move in special for a couple of weeks seems to be the usual for filling up a mall.

What does chocablock mean?

3ring i havent seen your mall in quite some time. but i wasnt a fan of the closed in building, the landmark routing, and the use of tp's. and unless a mall is an exceptional example of all things good i'd be hard pressed to justify spending more than 2 or 3 L$ per prim each week.

--'chocablock' means crammed full

I look if the mall has any well placed ads. Also it seems that campers are something of a deterent. Lag and the speed at which things rez. The stuff around me and if there is anything to do. In all honesty at present i have only 1 mall i rent in simply because I was getting way too many requests to open spaces and I got tired of spam lol. If a mall doesn't give me a single sale in the trial period I give it which is usually 2-4 weeks then I leave. If I can't find the group owner to join the group before I pay .. I leave because past experience has taught me to never ever rent in a mall without first making sure the owner of the group is online and able to invite me the minute I pay.

The theme has to fit and in all honesty most places I rent in are not malls if I do rent they are usually mini city type deals with some other reason for people to show up.

If the mall is filled with content that will drive a customer away I leave

and if they have the mall set to a central landing spot I expect there to be a very very high tech system to show off my place and I expect them to put a lot of money into advertising to draw customers. Only cases I might consider not doing this is if i manage to get a spot right beside the landing spot set.

If i have to put money into advertising I want my customers to land where my store is not so far away that they get distracted by everything or give up looking for my stall

L$350 for 60 prims is too high. I charge L$400 for 80 prims, and L$600 for 125 prims.

500-1000 traffic is not much. I just moved to a new parcel and I have over 3000.

I think if you lowered your price, you would attract renters. As for traffic, anyone who is savvy knows that high traffic is meaningless. I know someplaces will have their friends park their avatars to inflate the numbers.