Socially Mundane

Informational Notecards.

Always offer an informational notecard for every product you sell.

Always.

Even if you think you have nothing to say. Even if it will be the same notecard for every single product you sell. The reason is to make it easy as possible for anyone to give you their money and often what prevents a purchase is a simple, lingering question about your product, your policies on support, or something else you may think of as “niggle nonsense”.

The notecard should answer that question. The notecard should push the shopper “over the fence” when they are considering your product against a competing product.

First, at the top of the notecard, state what the product is and what it does. Then the price and permissions of the product. Important: if you have the prim permissions on your product set to “no modify” and you include scripting of some sort (color-change, resize, etc.) - do not advertise your product as “modify”. You will only piss-off your customer. If the prims are no-modify, but include modifier scripts, then say so. Be transparent and up-front about your product!

If you do use the same notecard for multiple products, in your notecard state something to the effect of: “All Cuddle Rugs (or products of this line or style) are sold with the same permissions and price unless noted otherwise, Sex Rugs are 500L$ more than Cuddle Rugs” (if this were actually the case, but you get the idea). This way, as a shopper I will not waste my time grabbing all the notecards of every product if this was my main question.

Give lots of detail about your product. After starting with what it is, permissions and price, put the prim-count for each piece here as well - even if it is a worn item. Then, after this information, go into your sales pitch. Tell me why I should buy this product and then tell me why I should buy this product from you and not a version from your competitor. If it requires rezzing tell me. If it is scripted, is it LSL or Mono? How are updates handled - manually or automatically?

And if the prims are no-modify, but it is modifiable through color-changing or resizing scripts: you’d better say so - in fact you should say so at the top of your description. Why? Because it could be a huge deal-breaker. If someone buys your product and this wasn’t made clear up-front, you will earn a lot of bad word-of-mouth and reputation. You do not want that. There is a difference between “modify” permissions and “modifiable” through scripts. Be clear on it.

Include your support options. Not as much about refunds or exchanges - those are almost never requested, but rather how you handle replacement or repair scenarios. How you can best be contacted and invite me to contact you for any reason whatsoever, even just to say hello! Be cordial, friendly, approachable. Most people won’t bother you at all. But, as pre-sales information it is comforting to know I can approach you for the simplest of things - even just to say hi!

If your product comes with any kind of instruction notecard: include it with the informational notecard! I cannot stress this hard enough. There are countless times I have sent an offline IM to a creator to ask a simple question that could have been answerred had they included the instructions before purchase - I continue shopping as I wait for a reply - I end-up purchasing a competing product because that creator answered my question first (again: usually in the pre-sales information that included the instructions on use).

I am a hunter. I am impatient. I want it now!

I eventually get a reply from the first creator I don’t bother telling that I have already purchased their competitor’s product. Ouch for them. Oh, and I am referring to high-ticket items in the L$5000 or more range.

Set your IM’s to go to email. Even if your IMs get capped, they always will go to email when you’re offline - every. single. time. If you get an emailed IM - reply to the email immediately - even if your IMs are capped (it is returned as a reply IM to whomever sent the original). Give that customer service.

Also - SL Marketplace allows you to upload multiple images of the same product. Do this in-world, too. Embed the same multiple images into the informational notecard (remember: 256x256 pixels for fast rezzing). Sure doing all this is a lot of work up-front. However, by eliminating all anticipated questions I might have, and enticing me with more pretty pictures - even a demo version - you are making it easy as possible for me to give you my money!