Drop in sales since update?

Interestingly, my sales were actually better in the middle of the week than last weekend. Wednesday was my peak, with the most sales I've ever made in a single day. Why would my sales have been lower over the weekend? Usually (and as one would expect) it's the other way around, with slow selling during the week and most sales on the weekend.

My sales are also down .

yay

My sales haven't dropped since the update and have actually increased some. I guess that there is now more of a benefit to do business in a PG rated sim.

As a consumer, what has affected by purchasing has been the poor rezzing-it takes forever to rez and when it does, it still is hard to see.

And I have a bleeding edge system I built myself with up to the minute drivers.

As for weekend sales, I don't buy on week ends at all anymore because I'm afraid my transaction won't go through and I'll lose my money.

As for the Mature filter, when I look for something, I know enough to make a thorough search especially in SL when so many people selling XXX stuff make sure to have their ads at the top of the list.

I wish they would change the Mature designation to XXX because PG sounds like an afternoon program for my kids and Mature sounds like me but in SL it isn't. IMHO XXX is not in any way Mature...reminds me more of when I was an adolescent...(blush)

Interesting point. The higher concurrency on weekends is causing all sorts of problems, so yeah I imagine that would be affecting spending habits.

Though the un-checking of the mature box may have caused an initial drop in sales, I'd expect that to be very short-term. It only took me five minutes to figure out my searches didn't pull as many responses as they used to, and that the culprit was the mature box. I wouldn't believe that it would take anyone else much longer than that after the first time that they try to search for something that they want to buy.

Though a drop in sales might have coincided with the update, you should still see if there are other possible factors at work.

(For me, as a consumer, I came in six weeks ago as part of the huge user-base boom that Second Life has seen. Within that six weeks, I've purchased about anything I'd want, and I just have nothing else to buy.)

I dunno if this is a trend, but the last time I had a big drop in sales for a few days (no idea why - I assume LL did something), it was followed by a record day - 3x as much as my previous high, and then it dropped to "normal" levels afterwards. Could be a coincidence, but it might be that in times of badness, consumers put of their buying for a day or two, and make up for it when things are better. Hopefully... crossing my fingers for my mature, crowded-sim store...

Sales are down for me as well. Hardly sold anything at any of my locations for the last week.

Mari

yup...when search isn't working right (although this is nothing new, really, it's been months now) and textures aren't rezzing, teleports intermittantly working, etc...stuff just doesn't sell. To be honest, I can't tell much a difference between this faulty update and all the previous months' faulty updates.

also...

since inventory has been iffy the past week, i've been afraid to buy anything only to lose it again. just an observation from a (potential-still-unrealized) customer.

i've had one customer lose two items this weekend right after she bought them. i replaced them for her, but not all vendors are that generous.

If this can help you... as a buyer, i won't buy if:

- textures don't rez or rez fuzzy (and no, this is NOT worse since the update, it has been for monthes, and in my experience, 1.14 is faster and crisper);
- sim lags because too many campers/dancers/singers/washers;
- i can't find my way to your shop atfer tp'ing because lack of directions;
- i can't find the advertised article in your shop (jeans were advertised, i'm in a shoes shop and don't want to wait for the 1000 textures to rez to find my way);
- i have not enough space to move my camera around, there are too many obstacles, walls, stairs, low ceilings;
- the mod right and/or clothe type are not clearly advertised (will I make these pants fit in my boots? why this tee or tank is indeed a *jacket*, damned ?);

It's not clear to me if the "Mature" setting "unsetting" itself was intended or simply a bug. But if someone feels strongly about it, open a JIRA and get votes.

-peekay

Take a look at the auctions: at the time of writing this, every single one of the 17 mainland regions currently being auctioned is Mature. Traditionally, Mature sims have sold for a higher price than PG sims, so this maximizes LL's revenue.

The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. How soon before the land barons catch on?

It was a deliberate change to the interface, not a bug, and was announced on the blog at least a week ago.

Yes... it was announced in Rolling Update… New Search Default, although curiously it was not mentioned in the 1.14.0 release notes.

The announcement also says: We plan to add a more granular parcel-level mature identifier in the near future to further distinguish mature content from content merely residing in mature regions.

So in addition to Havok 2 and Mono we have something else to look forward to in the near future.

If they don't handle this right, it could be a new telehub-land fiasco.

As for being a "professional" shopper as some of my friends refer to me as, i can truthfully say, that since the update on the viewer, i have found shopping to be almost impossible. As i enter a an area by TP, it takes almost twice as long to rez the prims or come up with more than gray blobs around you. By this time you can move into the store, and within a couple minutes, the FPS go nuts and you cant move, your stalled..its really quite frustrating. As far as the search engine being reset to PG each time, now that's just ridiculous, if i set mine at mature, why cant it stay that way?? No wonder i cant find my favorite stores anymore, i think i missed the memo on that one..so if sales are down, if i am any indication, everyone that's a vendor should be raisin' holy hell with SL.

The slow texture loading probably was caused in part by the new viewer clearing everybody's cache. The new code uses a different cache scheme, so it has to clear everything that you had from before 1.14.0. Not only does that mean that you're loading a whole bunch of textures, it means that EVERYBODY ELSE is also.

The slow loading seems to have settled down by today.

How did you manage to get your sim changed to PG?

I'm guessing she owns a private island.

The problem is that there were so many issues at the time of the viewer release that it's hard to know what is correlated and what is coincidence.

The viewer release not only changed Search results, but it also just completely borked the game for a sizable number of computers that were not configured to work well with the new graphics demand or settings. As if that wasn't bad enough, there were numerous server-side meltdowns that resulted in yet another block of people being locked out of SL.

So at the same time that you changed your sim to PG, people were either reverting back to the old viewer, updating their graphics card, or finally getting through to customer support and getting their accounts back.

The steady growth back could have been from any one of these issues, or a combination of all issues, but it's probably not solely related to Search.

I was really glad to see this thread. The last two days have been significantly slower for me as well. I really hadn't remembered the change the search default (yeah I'm blonde) and with the horrible probs with the update I guess that explains it.

I posted the problem with the unchecked Mature box 2 days ago, immediately after the update, in this thread:

/142/8e/174025/1.html

Nobody cared at first. Now, all of a sudden, people have woken up. I already sent an e-mail to support that this measure is hurting shop owners bad. I am glad that others see it now too and hope you will send an e-mail too. If very many people react, then maybe, maybe, maybe LL will do something about this fast.

It's crazy that shop owners with non-sexual products are being banned like this. In the real world a 'governmental' measure like this would have lead to many law suits.

I just noticed the new mature checkbox setup. Tried to do a search and six items came up instead of the usual 100. Was quite obvious something was funky. Clicked it, now back to normal. Everybody will catch on sooner or later.

I experienced the same thing this past week, for whatever reason....