Setting up shop in Second Life has many nuances: some best practices are universal and adopted from the real world, such as delightful customer service, while others are specific to the inworld experience — brick-and-mortar stores are concerned with navigation, yes, but fly-friendly layout and teleporter placement go beyond. For example, this pic by way of Rhonda Huntress shows Argrace's simple and clean map:
Alas, the tough thing is: where do you go to learn these best store practices early on? There's scattered info I'm compiling, with your guidance, into the Marketplace Seller's Guide that can expand over time (as has been useful for many other topics, to name a few).
Including...
Recently, I was very grateful to hear — and see — what a number of Residents feel is vital in
this forum thread
Especially pictures and SLurls to help you effectively understand "as-it-is". I was both curious to learn how far things had evolved from the early SL days, and shared that thread with some of our Experience Design gurus because WE NEED TO KNOW. The whole process of "finding an item -> using it" is in our sights.
Shortly thereafter, Suella Ember — who you may recognize as a very helpful face on the forums, cheese is to her what watermelon is to me — sent me an exceptionally lucid letter containing many annotated pictures. I encouraged her to post it on her blog, and here it is:
DeliciouSLy Delightful Shopping Experiences! (15 Tips for Merchants!)
One of my fave parts (friendly greetings back atcha, Suella) is "make your decor interesting and relevant". Time and time again, I've seen adding personality and character distinguish a store from "the rest" by making it a memorable visit, even giving visiting friends something to talk about. Infact, it's a cultural funnysadtrue joke that while boxes can be a pain to open, a few go the extra distance of making boxes look amazing, like these from NOTsoBAD:
Bottom line: if you sell stuff in Second Life, please give the Seller's Guide and Suella's post a read. Then, in the comments, share what's worked well from your firsthand experiences — that other sellers should know. What do your customers repeatedly laud you for? And if you already have a blog post out there I and your fellow Residents should learn from, promote yourself!
(I realize that this info can be hard to come by since competitive forces hoard secrets and many practices are passed from one trusted friend to another, but if you're like me and believe that there are lots of "commerce tropes" that can be shared for the greater community benefit of buyers and sellers alike, I'd <3 to hear from you. Don't hold back.)
