Original agenda:
1 Short update about the Kitely Market.
2 Discuss best practices when creating Kitely Market product listings.
3 Hear your feedback and suggestions about the Kitely Market merchant control panel we rolled out last week.
4 Discussing community growth efforts.
In the meeting, items 2 and 3 were swapped, and item 4 was not discussed because of lack of time.
1 Update
Kitely rolled out a few features and bug fixes before the meeting on 22 May, mainly fixing two known issues listed in the 11 May blog report http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-new ... merchants/
In the item selection dialog in the product page, you can now select and deselect items by selecting the folder they are in; this works recursively and even for folders that haven't been retrieved from the server yet. This dialog streams items in order to be able to handle VERY big inventories quickly. This means you should be able to easily select items even if your inventory has 100K+ items in it.
Another fix that was rolled out was automatically switching to the variation that has missing data when you try to save a product that has a variation that isn't properly filled out.
Kitely also added some code to allow more intelligent handling of content imported via OAR files. People who encounter problems with item permissions can contact Kitely for details -- this isn't automated but is rather a tool Ilan and Oren can use.
2 Feedback and suggestions about the Kitely Market merchant control panel
Alphabetical or chronological sorting of items?
This was a continuation of the discussion that started the previous week regarding the sort order of items in inventory folders shown in the item selection dialog in the product page. See http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=333
The question: How should items be sorted inside folders, newest first (like Firestorm) or alphabetically? Definite answers at meeting: newest first: 4; alphabetical: 2.
However, Ada felt it might be wise to revisit the question at a later stage: not enough people have been working with the control panel to realise the consequences yet. It was therefore agreed to put the question to one side for a couple of weeks.
Maximum length of descriptions
Dundridge asked if it were possible to have extra text for descriptions. Currently descriptions can be up to 2000 characters long. Others in the meeting agreed, suggesting increasing the description length up to 4000 characters (basing this on existing descriptions in the SL marketplace).
Reasons given by Sierra and Ada for a longer description included: the need for "how to" instructions (buyers sometimes lose notecards); descriptions of animations, textures, usage need more details; marketing purposes -- giving people a reason to buy. Coco stated "People won't buy when they don't have detailed info because they can't try it on." On the other hand, suggested Ada, "more description can give reasons not to buy as well, but that could be a good thing, to prevent unhappy buyers."
Cider suggested that "how to" instructions could be included on a product website. Stio agreed that the small percentage of products that would need a longer description are probably by sellers with their own website where finer details could be explained. Ilan confirmed that weblinks can be placed in the description.
A disadvantage of longer descriptions is that: the more text, the more fluff the search engine has to try to weed out, the worse the search results you get.
Dundridge suggested searching just the first chunk of text and allowing the rest for detail. This would help shorten descriptions, and give space to describe properly. (He realised this means adding a data field.)
How search works
The search on Kitely Market uses a combination of categories, attributes, and search strings. The interface is is very much like Amazon's, with filters on the side (for attributes). The goal of attributes and categories is to allow people to browse a selection of items that are about what they're looking for, then they see images and start the fine tuning until they find what they want.
Attribute colours
Coco pointed out that the limited number of available colours meant that current trend colours (e.g. Poppy Red) could not be selected. Ilan explained that colours are grouped as archetypes ("red" in this case) to allow visual search.
Ada acknowledged that artists hate the limited palette of attribute colours, but that she now (with a few exceptions, e.g. blue-green) agrees with the list. "If a buyer is looking for a red outfit, then red is where you put poppy or crimson or scarlet or persimmon. Someone looking for poppy will find it, but most are just looking for red."
Others suggested including "Poppy Red" in the description or the item/variation name.
Image size
Sierra asked if merchants could use their old pics they used in other market -- at least at first, to help speed things up.
[There has subsequently been discussion on the Kitely forum about image size and aspect ratios: http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=347]
3 Best practice when creating product listings
Documentation
The Kitely Market guidelines for product listings are divided into requirements ("rules") and suggestions: https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/displ ... Guidelines.
The suggestions/recommendations are there to help merchants sell more (you don't have to follow them).
The advice about product descriptions currently reads:
Ilan recommends reading all of https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/displ ... ely+Market (including the linked-to pages).If you write a product description then it should be meaningful, accurate and written in full sentences or bullet points.
We will suspend products that spam the description with keywords or use keywords that don't relate to the product.
Using attributes
Carefully look at the attribute values for the attributes that are shown for your selected category -- don't leave things out if they apply (but don't add things if they don't).
Regarding multiple values for the same attribute, use that only if they really both apply equally. A red item with a small yellow dot is "red" it isn't both red and yellow. The goal regarding color is to give the "average" of the item. If the item is black and white stripes than both black and white can apply, but if it is a single white stripe on a black shirt then just call it black.
Setting the maturity level: change to General?
Many people leave their item's maturity level at the default Moderate even though the item's area is clearly family safe (i.e. General). By doing that merchants are losing access to potential buyers.
Upload an image for each different-looking variation
Make sure you upload a different image for each variation that has a different look. For example, some items only show a Black variation but list White and Red as well. Buyers will see the Black image when they search for Red and will not click on it, possibly leading to lost sales for you.
You want to show the buyer the closest thing that they're looking for, which is how attributes and variation-specific images can help you get better conversions. This allows people to find your item instead of the less appropriate one. Not using this can hurt your sales.
Dundridge asked if there was any guide for items that look the same but do different things... for example, new stuff that hasn't been fully scripted yet? Ilan responded: "If they look the same then they can have the same image. Don't upload it twice: the system will select an already uploaded image."
Text on images
When adding text remember that people see images first and read text later. Make the thing they are looking for (the image) take up as much space as possible.
Avoid delivery via boxes
Items are delivered directly to people's inventories, so packing things in boxes makes for a worse buying experience since it adds several steps (people have to take the box out of inventory, then copy the contents across).
Instead, deliver items in folders not boxes; the product you create is inside a folder and that folder can have subfolders. When direct delivering the subfolders are created as well.
This resulted in a lively discussion. Some designers like to use boxes to help keep their inventory neat, or to enhance the inworld buying experience. Others were concerned about the migration of items from folder to folder in their inventory. Yet others were happy with using folders rather than boxes.
Some suggested using boxes for inworld sales and folders for market deliveries. Another alternative is to have an inworld vendor open the Kitely Market product page for direct delivery via a folder.
Since opinion was obviously divided on this issue, Ilan outlined some of the reasons:
- People who buy things in any other type of virtual world can immediately use them and don't have to unpack them first. People who aren't used to the SL way expect to be able to just use what they bought.
- 2 Storing something in unusable form in the inventory makes the inventory load slower without any good reason. Storing both the boxed items and the extracted items creates bloat that slows every TP you make into a new region.
Coco asked how the items she sells might be protected from being stolen -- she uses boxes as some form of protection, and wondered whether the use of folders rather than boxes in the Market might be making extra work for her.
Ilan responded: "The items you sell inworld are protected from OAR export and leaving via the hypergrid by using the Copy+Transfer export requirements: http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-new ... rmissions/. Items sold via the Kitely Market get the Export flag you can set directly so they can be full perm but Kitely-only if you want. [As for making extra work] The items you want [already] exist in your inventory. Just select them instead of the box when you create/edit a product listing. It really isn't adding work for you."
Ada added: "The inworld shops will be limited to KC members buying in KC. The Marketplace allows USD and will allow exports, so I'm reconfiguring for there, primarily." She intends to use links in her inworld shops to direct sales to the Marketplace. "But I sympathize with new designers to Kitely. I've been doing it for a week and a half or so and the initial culture shock is a lot to get through at first, and the instructions at the Wiki don't cover it yet. I know they will, as Ilan talks to more and more designers."
And as Ilan said at the end of the meeting: "Please feel free to reach out with questions" -- answering questions in the meeting and on the forum helps to fine-tune the documentation.
