Socially Mundane

Repeat after me: “traffic is evil”.

I know what you’re thinking: huh?

There are two kinds of shoppers in real life and in Second Life: the hunter and the gatherer. The gatherer gathers. They are the window-shoppers who browse around. In Second Life, unlike first life, gatherers are likely one in a hundred. They teleport somewhere, usually landing in some market or something, and a vendor image catches their eye. They investigate.

Hunting is far easier. You know what you want, even if it’s just a genre of product (clothing, for example) and so you hunt. Even the gatherers hunt: gatherers will hunt for those merchants (creators) they already know. They go to their favorite shops and once there they then slide into gatherer (browsing) mode.

In short: it is ridiculously rare that you will attract new customers by your advertising (including vendor images) alone. It just doesn’t happen.

So what does traffic have to do with all this, you ask?

Rule number one in business: Make it easy as possible for anyone to give you their money. Gather-browser shoppers do exist. And when that rare one comes within eyesight of your marketing, you need to ensure they spot it first. How do you do this? Read-on…

I know: “anyone can simply click something and throw money at me,” you say? Yes this is true. However, you have to make it easy to find you; get to you; see what you sell; determine quality; digest the price and so on.

Point of Sale (POS), where the buyer actually gives you money, be it on SL Marketplace or a vendor in-world must do all your work for you: entice, inform, sell. Thus my first tip in this mini-series involves the evil “T” word.

Traffic causes lag. It is important when you choose a POS location in world you simply must pay attention to the traffic of the the entire sim. You want zero traffic.

Yes, really. Zero. The less traffic, the better.

Zero traffic is optimal for the shopping experience as what we commonly call “lag” comes fast and hard from other agents (avatars) in the sim. The more agents on a sim, the more lag the sim will have. This slows down not only movement, but also scripts and texture downloads.

You are relying most heavily on your textures (your advertising) being downloaded fast so your potential customer can see it before they get fed-up and leave. It’s just as easy to teleport somewhere else as it was to teleport in.

Shoppers will not wait too long for your product art to appear - especially in “page” vendors. Hunters are impatient - they’re on a hunt! You want your POS to be as low-traffic as possible so your vendor and other textures will rez quickly as possible. Because the hunter’s the mind-set is “I want it now!”

Ensure there are no campers or traffic bots are in the sim before you rent a booth (they are agents and slow-down texture downloads). And, try to rent in a corner or off to the side where as few other booths as possible can be seen (textures in view download first and the fewer, the better). And finally, try to get a booth on the East side, facing west. Whenever you land somewhere after a teleport, you are often facing East. This way, if someone teleports to your booth, they are facing your booth without having to turn around when they land, your texture rez first.

So, Point-of-Sale rule: Find a place with as little traffic as possible in order to get your vendors and textures to rez quickly as possible, thereby giving your potential customer a better shopping experience.