Market Place Problems
Those of us marketing items in the SL Market Place web site are having new problems. I saw where one merchant was suddenly finding a number of their items were ‘Unavailable’. This usually means a problem with one’s Magic Box. But, their box seemed to be working. I decided to check mine.
WEB-4152
WEB-4152 – Fewer listings are shown per page than my pagination settings should display, is a JIRA issue my Merchant’s Dashboard warned me about today. I don’t log into my Market Place Dashboard often. I am hoping some staff will get replaced and someone will come in and fix the Market Place.
I have my Inventory set to show 10 items. The list contains 8 items. Changing to 25 items I see 20 items displayed. I have 25 items.
However, if you click from page to page, you do see all your items. Items are NOT skipped. They just push to the next page. I wonder how complicated this feature can possibly be. Lists like this are a click in Dreamweaver.
Unavailable – WEB-4150
The person reporting the problem of unavailable items saw the number of unavailable items increasing through the day. But, later in the day they all returned.
WEB-4150 – Unavailable and unlisted are incorrect in inventory view. This item is not listed as fixed. So, you may run into it.
SL Wiki
All the Market Place news has basically been moved to the wiki in the form of release notes. See Release Notes/Marketplace Current.
We do have new RSS feeds…
In fact we have a way to make feeds for the Market Place. The idea is one makes a search in the Market Place for the items they want. Then replaces /products/ in the URL with /feeds/.
http://marketplace.secondlife-staging.com/products/newest
Searching for Apparel, all maturity levels, and shoes I get a URL like this:
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/products/search?search%5Bcategory_id%5D=3&search%5Bmaturity_level%5D=GMA&search%5Bkeywords%5D=shoes
Changing it would give me a URL like:
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/feeds/search?search%5Bcategory_id%5D=3&search%5Bmaturity_level%5D=GMA&search%5Bkeywords%5D=shoes
One can then use this URL in their RSS reader. It works about as well as Market Place Search. One gets a working subscription. Included in my feed are dance pants, glow outfit, and other oddball things that include the word shoes in some way. Relevance is not something SL Search does. But, it is supposedly fair. So, Depends will have an equal chance to show in a search for sexy panties.
The feed sort of sucks. No pictures. Plus it is so intuitive…
Also, if you are not logged into the Market Place your, reader can only pull General maturity level products.
So… the feed idea seems pretty useless. Customers are obviously going to be clueless. It’s certainly not what I would consider Google friendly.
I’ve kinda given up on MP. I don’t see ratings anymore, either. Seems everyday something new. People flagging items, too, that seem ridiculous. When you do a search for, say hair, you get everything… So, does someone just sit and flag? I have to wonder about the current system. MP is not only impacting in world sales, but the randomness of how it displays items continues to perplex me. I have tried everything for better rating, but it seems my items struggle for any presence. Really has me looking in to the future of virtual worlds and if SL is the right place to grow a business when the merchants are not important to LL. It seems to me that until they get a group of merchants working with them, our concerns will never be addressed. IMO
Faye, I feel you… Commerce in SL is at an all time low, at least in my limited experience with SL. I think the problems are from deep philosophical beliefs of the concerned Lindens. Some of us think they are unaware of how the world actually works. Search in SL and the market place is a disaster. I think any time a development goal is fairness there is way confused thinking. We see the results and many creators and merchants giving up.
Unfortunately there is no one in management at the Lab that grasps the whole of SL. It may not be humanly possible. But, I do think the Lab’s management is far more myopic than many of the users. But, that is a typical business problem, getting real information from ‘customers/users’ and understanding it is an ongoing challenge for all businesses. Those that do it well succeed.