Agenda:
1 Hearing feedback and suggestions about the Kitely Market merchant control panel rolled out earlier this week.
2 Update regarding the ad campaign.
3 Discussing community growth efforts.
1 Feedback and suggestions about the Kitely Market merchant control panel
Update
The Kitely Market merchant control panel was launched a few days before the meeting.
The next phase will be the buyer's interface. This is still under development, but the prototype is very easy to use. A list of categories and attributes that contain relevant results is on the left (with a counter). The results are for a combination of the search text + category and selected attributes. It updates very quickly so when you refine your search you get a good indication of what types of results exist, not just see a list of results.
Ilan asked for feedback on the current merchant control panel so that the meeting could discuss things that can be improved.
Generally people at the meeting thought it "quite clear and easy to use", "very easy to get started with a store", "it's actually fun", "excellent design".
Comments on documentation
The documentation needs expanding in places (e.g. on variations). Where things were initially unclear, specific questions were answered in the forum; "maybe these forum posts will lead to a more detailed instruction manual".
The documentation needs to include "a step by step [guide] for setting up a listing that includes variations". Ada expanded: "I didn't know what to click, nor how to label it. I eventually figured out some of it."
Margarete mentioned that for newbie sellers it might not be clear that the way to add products to the market is via the inventory and whether a brief explanation at that point might be helpful. Ilan explained that once you add a product the dialog that opens shows your inventory, asking whether that was clear enough.
Ada suggested (and Margarete agreed) having helpful tips, along the lines of "Organize your inventory first, then do listings" -- maybe as a link to more details within the documentation, perhaps even as hovertext.
Changing items within a product
It's possible to change items added to a product by removing them and adding the new items from inventory. There's no upload fee once a product has been created but it's good practice to reuse assets and not duplicate them.
Categories, variations and colours
Some expressed problems in finding subcategories of clothing, other than styles. Ilan explained how, when you select a category, you're given a tree; click the arrow on its left to see the subcategories it contains.
Both sportswear and lingerie are under "Clothing". Sportswear has its own category. Lingerie would fall within "Pajamas and underwear" (Ada suggested changing "Pajamas" to "Sleepwear").
There was some discussion about how to classify colours. The general rule is to ignore shininess and use archetypes, so that Yellow Gold is Yellow, Platinum and Silver are White, shades of Red can be Red, Pink or Orange.
Ada asked about the many names for blue-green -- aqua, teal, turquoise, ... She felt there might need to be some way to differentiate them from greens and blues, for example by adding "cyan" as a colour.
Ilan suggested "blue-green" items would be a shade of blue or of green, depending on the particular shade in question. When people go to a store and search for a shirt of a particular colour they may be happy with nearby colours more than the "pure" colour they are looking for. The goal is to show them those nearby colours.
Ada countered that opinions vary greatly. For example, Ilan sees cyan as a shade of blue, whereas Ada's husband sees it as green.
Ilan suggested it might be possible to search for multiple values of an attribute, but he was not sure what the computational costs would be.
Inworld store vs. Online store
Each merchant can create their own storefront like in SL marketplace but they all are accessed from the same Kitely Market. They can also create an inworld store if they wish, where items would be for sale in KC.
People can shop inworld using regular viewer functionality or they might be directed to complete transactions in the Kitely Market if you want them to pay you in USD (via PayPal) instead of KC. A script in the inworld vendor box could point to the marketplace listing for the latter; since each product has its own webpage in the Kitely Market, this should be straightforward.
Inventory order in Add Product
Currently inventory in the Add Product dialog is sorted using the same order it appears in Firestorm -- that is, folders are sorted alphabetically and items within them are sorted by newest item first.
Ada asked whether items might be sorted alphabetically instead. "It's really frustrating to have listings "gleam eyes - blue" and "gleam eyes - green" in really different parts of my Eyes folder."
Folders can be used to organize inventories; otherwise, the viewer's "newest first" logic could make it very hard to find things in a long list. Even then, scrolling through a large inventory can be a nightmare.
Ilan asked:
Currently, the Add Product dialog shows all the folders in the merchant's inventory with the same tree structure they exist in the inventory. Folders are already sorted alphabetically, so it's only items within folders we're discussing.
So which is better, newest first or alphabetically?
The responses at the meeting were:
-- ideally same order as in viewer ... otherwise it confuses people
-- for me, alphabetically so similar items will group together, even if I made a green one a few days later than the blue one
-- for me, newest.
This wasn't a big enough sample size to reach any type of agreement, so it was decided to ask the question more widely, on the forum.
2 Advertising in SLUniverse
Kitely has started advertising in SLUniverse, with five rotating top banners and one side banner. They appear quite frequently. They decided to go for a very clean and clear message -- no graphics, just colour fonts and the logo on a white background.
Ilan has also updated three old threads. Two were dedicated specifically to Kitely and one was regarding SL but Kitely was mentioned several times in it with outdated information and there was a discussion about that outdated information in other posts in that thread as well. "I had to update those outdated threads; people were searching for 'kitely' and getting them in the results."
3 Community growth efforts
For some, being connected to the hypergrid is key, but they understand the delay.
Ada suggested that the Marketplace is a top priority. She was at a board meeting for a nonprofit on Saturday, telling SL folks about Kitely. For nonbuilders and nondesigners, it's all about What Can I Buy. They all agree that SL seems to be circling the drain, but won't move until they see a lot of green dots on a club sim, and places to buy stuff. Others agreed.
Ilan commented on the need to restart the effort to let creators know about Kitely Market -- they now have an action item and a deadline for a limited time promotion. Last time Kitely only promised merchants an horizon; now they can actually create their stores.
Inara Pey's article (http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/01 ... rketplace/) and Kitely’s blog announcement (http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-new ... merchants/) should come in handy as references.
Merchants will be able to target all hypergrid-connected grids via a single Kitely Market store, and get real money deposited in their PayPal account without all the virtual currency problems in other places.
Ada said: "[Getting] my stuff exported, imported, reconfigured, uploaded. It's a lot of work, and I don't blame SL designers for being reluctant. But I am convinced that Kitely Market, long term, is the way to go."
AOB
Putting out seating for mentors' meetings was suggested -- it can be helpful to have everyone sitting in a circle.
Notes from Ilan
- Please let us know how you think we should sort the inventory items in the inventory selection dialog you see when you select which items to include in a product listing.
- If you create a marketplace store then please read the Kitely Market guidelines (https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/displ ... Guidelines) and use them when naming your products, uploading pictures for them and selecting their attributes. Not setting all the relevant attributes, such as color, department, etc., and not uploading images for variations that are visually different, can decrease the chance of people finding your product when they search the marketplace.
- Please help spread the word about the Kitely Market to the merchants you’d like to see in it.
