How do you prefer to do your shopping in-world?

Inspired by my thoughts and a comment of Atashis in the similar poll, Where do you prefer to shop?
Vendor selection or fixed posters?
I can understand the compactness and resource saving of a vendor selector but for me a quick glance as I might pass a poster is more tempting to stop and look.

Although I prefer to shop on SLboutique. More clothes / hour and way less bandwith usage (we still have limits to that. )

Posters for sure...

I mean, the give so much more atmosphere to a shop....

And the vendors where you have to browse to seem to lag for me when changing selection.

Morwen.

Hey, that was my poll, damnit!!!

Anyhoo, I do prefer to shop from fixed prims on the wall rathe than vendors, although I don't really have any major problem with vendors either. I like to be able to go into a shop and quickly scan what's around, if shops are set up badly with many vending machines you can spend ages clicking the next buttons on vending machines without knowing which machine has the things you want in them.

I've got a couple of simple, non-server vendors out there, but mainly use prims on the wall

Vale

Generally speaking, I prefer vendors. I've been to too many shops lately where the owner has a HUGE selection crammed into a TINY store, making navigation difficult, if not impossible. While I do admit that done well (Bare Rose and HCT spring to mind), posters are a much nicer way to shop, I think that's got to be balanced against the ability of the residents to navigate through the store. (Prim limts would, you think, eliminate this as a problem, but a small store with posters in the 4x6 meter range can get cramped quickly.)

I've also seen some very nice builds hidden by large posters to the extent that the original textures and walls are completely invisible. Someone puts a lot of time and effort into designing and creating a wallpaper texture, for example, then someone else comes along and covers it up.As an architect, that just galls me.

Kam

Sorry Vale! Yes, you are the genius and author of the original poll!

.. but ..

what I meant was it was a comment Atashi made regards the two display devices

<sheepishly offers Vale a cream cake>

Like Vint, I prefer to shop on external sites (though I know at times I'm paying a premium to do this and missing out on a wider range of stuff) because of bandwidth limitations.
In-world, it does depend on the setting, vendors are great for categorized items, where you know more or less what you'll find in them. For dissimilar items, I prefer the poster approach, so I can easily scan whats on offer.

/me takes the cream cake and runs away

*walks into a store with a huge wall of blank grey squares on the wall and no hover text. Shrugs. Walks out without buying anything.*

*walks into the store next door with 4 vendors, and hover text indicating what each one is displaying.* "Ohh! Shoes!" several fast clicks... "Let's see what the 'brown strappy heels' looks like." Waits for that pic to rez, likes, buys.

Meanwhile, three of the 300 blank rectangles in the first store, that I left before I could even tell what sort of merchandise they sell, have finally rezzed...

*spends ages setting up a nice, clean store. Comes back the next day to find the floaty text coming though the walls because the guy next door is an inconsiderate floaty text prick.

*kneecaps the guy next door, throws him the lake and steals his shop.

Vale

Certainly there are pros and cons to either method, and either method can be done well or done poorly.

Floating text coming through walls is a PITA but that can be alleviated if you don't put the prim with the floating text in it, right up against the wall.

What puts me off about vendors isn't the vendor itself. Its when I'm looking for something, I've come to the shop either by following a classified or a pick in someone's profile, and find a vendor that is indicating '52/99'... I don't want to stand there and page through 99 things to find the one I want. A dozen, I will do. Maybe two dozen if I really, really want something. But every time you click the button, it 'whispers' what it's up to, then if the sim is lagging you might have to wait several seconds for the grey panel to display something.

One advantage that the 'poster' method has, which I like a great deal, is when you click to buy, it shows you a list of everything that is in side it, so you can see exactly what you are getting. It's not perfect, but you can at least see for instance, does the outfit on the poster really include the shoes or not? And (forgive me if I'm wrong on this - I'm not able to get inworld at the moment) I belive it also shows you the permissions on the contents, so you know before you buy if it's mod, copy, or transfer. The vendor machines don't do that, unless the shopkeeper has put that info on the sign or in a notecard.

There are a few vendor machines I've encountered that I thought were done really well and were not painful to use. And there are a few that I fled from. Same with the poster method. But all things being equal, I personally prefer the poster method. The slow-texture-load problem is not the fault of the posters, and it is just as bad with the vendor if you have to page through several dozen pages in a laggy sim.

-Atashi

Fixed posters. I'll wait in yummy places like Little Rebel for all the boxes to load. Barring that, it's off to SLX.

Ads on prims marked for a sale with "contents".

Vendors are too much of a hassle (it's great fun flipping through a vendor when there's someone next to you flipping through it at the same time you are; or it'll automatically advance a page before the texture even finished loading yet), and risky (doesn't refund, doesn't deliver, "Pay" is subject to the bug where if there's packet loss it suddenly debits you more than once) and inconvenient ("Buy" shows you the next owner permissions of everything you're getting, or at worst you can Edit the prim and look at it manually; with a vendor at best there will be a box in it which doesn't tell you that much about permissions, or nothing at all in which case it's anyone's guess).

I do most of my shopping over slexchange since it's easy to navigate unlink the search tool in SL... However if theres something i know about in world, and already know where it is, i usually just TP to it, buy what i want and head back where i was.

I prefer good execution, regardless of whether or not a merchant uses posters or vendors. Either approach can be badly abused.

There is a very popular hair maker who has ten gazillion posters crammed right next to each other, blanketing the very large store walls from side to side and floor to ceiling. Beyond a general category such as "Flexi hair" there appears to be no organization or pattern to the display.

Even assuming I was patient enough to wait for everything to rezz, my eyes glaze over within seconds of trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. I've given up shopping there because the selection is overwhelming. I prefer a smaller selection that is well categorized so I can actually focus on what is available.

On the other hand, my favorite texture store has a few very efficient vendors to display their large inventory. Ideal? No, because with such a small number of catgories each vendor is stuffed with nearly a 1000 textures (or more) and it takes FOREVER to browse through them.

I would much prefer to have more vendors, with more specific categories, so I can hone in on what I want. A vendor for brick textures, for instance, rather than brick and stone and marble.

The trick is finding a balance that is appropriate for the inventory.

Vendoooooooors! =D

Why? Well, when I find a vendor, I origianlly only see the object that is currently selected, and everything else is hidden, which means there could be pleasent suprises waiting for me. >.>

Also, many of those who use posters use a different texture for EVERY POSTER >.<

Seriously, you could stuff 4 512X512 images on one texture, thus loading four posters at a time, rather than a single texture for every single poster. >.<

Also, posters tend to be small, like at Bare @ Rose, so at that size 256X256's could possibly even suffice...

That's a great idea! I've only just learned in the last couple weeks how to muck around with textures in a creative way. From now on I'm going to be doing this. Save me L$30 in upload fees and make the posters in my store load that much quicker.

Thanks Charmande!

-Atashi

I like to go into places full of grey squares and buy them. It makes every shopping trip like a surprise party.

I agree with the sentiment that organization is more important than vendor versus poster. I hate just having to wander around the store (or wander my camera) just to find the class of item I want.

The best are the stores and malls that have signposts or store directories at the teleport point. If the store has a large variety, it's probably best to expand vertically, and provide an elevator/teleporter. Worst are the malls that are sublet, so that several different retailers have shops selling the type of thing you want, but you have to wander around to find them because there's no easy way to organize stalls with renters coming and going all the time.

Some general guidelines for both vendors and posters:

1. Indicate the permissions clearly.
2. Include the price in the image, so the user doesn't have to click pay just to find the price.
3. For anything scripted, and anything in the least bit complex, include a notecard with details. Complex could mean things like you can resize the shirt but not the tie, or you can only adjust the size in some ways without messing up the look, or even just "this shirt uses the jacket layer to be untucked."
4. Separate out male and female clothing items, even if that means you wind up with one vendor containing 40 womens items and another containing just 2 mens.

For vendors: I like the ones that display 8 or more thumbnails and for which the scroll buttons move by the entire batch, so that you don't have to step through one at a time. I've seen some really clever ones uses for furry avatars that let you narrow down the selection by category (male or female, canine or feline, etc.).

If you do use floating text, make sure things are positioned to be readable. I've seen some places that stack three vendors vertically, but you can't read the text on the bottom two without adjusting your camera because the upper two interfere visually.

And it would really help if each store in the directory had a brief description of what it sells. If a store is title Rita's Shoes, the product is obvious, but what would you find at "Elegant Notions"? Shoes, clothes, furniture, sex anims?

I have no preference for either posters or vendors, either is fine as long as i can find what im looking for.

When i TP into somewhere i generally like to see what i am looking for stragiht away or at least see a sign that directs me to where i want to be. Otherwise i generally leave pretty quickly(i guess this is why im stuck with newbie hair, i just couldnt find an easy place to shop for mens hair).

One thing i am quite impressed with are the mobile vendors created by the creator of the lucky chair, these bring the product down in price the more who enter the store (generating positive traffic not camping traffic), i have seen these working very well at womens stores where all the women will TP in their friends so they can get a cheap or dress or something. Unfortunately like the lucky chairs there seem to be a lot more for ladies, not sure why this is, maybe they shop more than men.

I prefer posters, especially in large stores. I browse the posters using camera controls.

Ummm .. is that G******d by any chance Beebo?

"Posters"

For clothes, so I can see the layers, and (if the pieces aren't named too long- why isn't that buy box stretchable? this is IMPORTANT!) permissions (like mod so I can tint it). My undies layer tattoos are not coming off any time soon. Luckily I can bug fashionista friends about it.
I just won't buy any clothes that don't state the layers- so with most places that means shopping from the Buy-Contents prim where I can see that. Vendors with no details I pull a sad face and leave.

I do like to use the alt-cam also, so that's handy. And I like being able to browse and see something catch my eye, rather than have to click through a bunch of stuff.

I also don't like scripty stuff getting involved with financial stuff. Like when you hit pay and someone else clicks something and it all goes wrong. At least with "buy" it cuts out a lot of potential for SL to take a huge dump on your L$.