Question regarding putting purchasable items in boxes

Hi all,

I have just setup my boutique on Lotus Island and I have created a nice little retail bag to place my items for sale in, and then place the bag into the advertisement for purchase. This is turning out to be a rather decent overhead for me, to set permissions on, rez the bag, add items etc, and I can't easily change the notecard in the bag either. Would it be better to have all items in the bag object? Or unboxed in the advertisement with sell contents set? I'm leaning towards having the items, landmark and notecards unboxed.

Hi Siddean,

I've seen things done in a variety of ways, and my guess is that different people prefer receiving their items in different ways.

For me, I don't care much for the special gift boxes or gift bags, but that's because I'm a practical person who doesn't give a hoot about flair.

For items that have COPY permissions, I like it when they are delivered in the box (usually the ad itself) because I can just make a quick copy to tuck away in my backup folder. If the contents are delivered without the box and there are multiple items, I need to go through the extra step of rezzing a box myself and putting the stuff in there (to keep my inventory size down).

If something is TRANSFER/NO COPY, I prefer just getting the contents rather than the whole box (because there's no advantage to having them all in a box).

I'd say, leave it unboxed. I sell all my newer wares unboxed in unscripted Linden vendors (= simple prims set to "sell content), and no one ever complained. But a lot of people got confused about my sales boxes before. Newbies who couldn't figure out how to unpack it (box on the head / hand problem), people who claimed they didn't get their wares because they expected to find a new folder and customers who got the dreaded "failed to rez object, server ate it" message.

Linden vendors with unboxed wares are not only stress free for the seller (no IMs from confused newbies, store not cluttered with empty sales boxes), but also for the customer. Direct access to the ware, no need to mess around with a sales box. Conveniently viewing the contents of the set and the permissions on all items before buying. Cleaner inventory, just one folder without redundant copies in a box that gets lost somewhere in the Objects folder.

Ok thanks! I guess I'm just trying to get a feel for what shoppers prefer to receive when they purchase an item - what's easiest for everyone, including me And tips on packaging items for sale are most appreciated.

The only reason to use sales boxes at all is to either allow the transfer of no-copy items as a gift, or to use scripted vendors (needed for networked systems and vendors that pay a share to someone).

That's a very good point. I'm not selling transferrable items yet so I think I'll remove the bags from my advertisements and sell the items unpackaged.

That and the huge, scary objects folder is a real turn off for me, and I don't want to cause people the same headache.