Do the KM categories matter?

[Tess Juel]

The pedant in me is rather frustrated right now. I'm working on some new listings on KM and trying to find the right categories to list them under. But for so many items there simply isn't any category that fits and I understand from Ilan that he's not going to do anything about it. What I'm doing is list pretty much everything as "Landscaping and Plants" since everything that is rezzed in a sim is arguably a part of the landscape but that's not a solution of course.

However, it is what it is and there's nothing I can do about it. The important question is: does matter? Does anybody actually browse Kitely Market by category or is it jsut a redunant function?

[Tess Juel]

Hi Tess,

We had multiple Kitely community meetings where we discussed the various Kitely Market features while we were developing our marketplace. Building a category tree that minimizes categorization uncertainty isn't simple and required us to make compromises.

Marketplace categories in some marketplaces, such as SL Marketplace, contain multiple different subcategories that people are forced to browse in order to find all the relevant items that match what they're looking for. While also forcing merchants to decide between equally-fitting subcategory options. We aimed to minimize such cases.

There is also the issue of overfitting which causes many subcategories to remain almost (or completely) empty when there aren't enough listings. Big category trees only work when you have a lot of buying options in each subcategory.

[Tess Juel]

There is also the issue of overfitting which causes many subcategories to remain almost (or completely) empty when there aren't enough listings. Big category trees only work when you have a lot of buying options in each subcategory.

Yes, this is the classic dilemma for a growing collection of any kind. A large collection needs a different system than a small one so what you started with may well turn out to be insufficient in the long run.

I do understand that and everything else you say, Ilan, and we've discussed it earlier anyway. The question here that I'd like to hear the community's view on, is: how important is it?

Perhaps I shuold explain why I suddenly ask this. I've been working on getting all my builds listed on KM for a while now. I don't know if I'll ever manage to finish that job, it's a HUGE one and there's no money worth speaking of in it. But if I ever do, my store will have somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 listings, depending on how much I can manage to bundle up the builds and use the variants feature. There are slighlty less than 19,000 listings on KM right now so my store will end up accounting for more than 10 percent and maybe as much as a quarter of the total number of listings. In some of the broad catch-all categories I will have more than three quarters of the listings (and in one category more than 90 percent but that's one that probably shouldn't be split anyway). Such a big increase in the number of listings will of course seriously affect how effective the category structure is and that's why I want to know how much this matters and if it matters at all.

[Tess Juel]

Just one note, there are currently 20,799 product listings in Kitely Market (in all 3 maturity ratings combined), containing 40,880 product variations.

[Kimm Starr]

Hiya, I don't really think it's all that important. There's no Animesh category but if people are looking for it, they find it. I was hung up on that as well when I first started my shop. I think naming your products well with key searchable words is the clincher.

[Chris Namaste]

Yes, what i try to do as much as possible is put 'really clear info' in the title of the product & as much as i can
when i dont find the category
for exemple 'biker' (would cover rock, street, etc, those styles), i sell them good despite the fact that there isnt that category,
so i do my best to put all in 'title'
maybe this helps