So looking ahead... what's the roadmap for the Marketplace?

[Sassy Romano]

There are some major issues to be resolved right now but lets assume that they get done.  That leaves 200 or so JIRA's in the lap of Commerceteam Linden so it rather begs the question "what next?".

Many of those JIRA's will be duplicates or related and some will be things that are either considered fixed but not marked as such or things that will never be fixed but many also have features that the Merchants in particular have been desperately asking for, not just with this team but with the previous team who implemented Marketplace as it stands.

So, given that to the exclusion of all else, the single sole focus for the past year has been on delivering Direct Delivery, which at the end of the day is NOT a feature we asked for, all we wanted was that products got delivered so it's core functionality, what's next?

What does the roadmap hold for the future of Marketplace?  What's coming, what have the surveys indicated that merchants (and shoppers need)?

Bigger question - Is there a roadmap at all?

See, the thing is, for planning, it helps us to know what we're to plan for and to know that, it could be more than a smidgen handy to have a tiny weeny clue as to what might be coming along.  Could it be:-

 

• Multiple store fronts?
• Ability to arrange our own store into categories?
• Proper support for colour sets?
• Effective reporting?

Please feel free to pitch in at any point CTL, it would be a refreshing change to hear something positive about what we can look forward to.

 

[Rival Destiny]

My biggest concern is any deadlines to move over to DD. 

I am still not comfortable in doing so as I know it will take much time to do. 

And if I'm one of the unlucky ones that ends up with a ton of issues, then even more of my time will have to be devoted to troubleshooting.

I do enough of that now on a daily basis dealing with the issues on the grid.

[WADE1 Jya]

My prediction of the roadmap is they will do none of those great features Sassy suggests.

They will launch direct delivery (which yes nobody asked for). It will turn out to be very broken & far less reliable than magic box ever was. The entire roadmap will be based around the concept that countless hours of SL merchant's free labor can always fix even the most sloppy implementation... so like whatever man

Slowly more & more listings will get scrambled by data corruption, but its okay because merchants doing the work of deleting everything and redoing everything over & over again fixes that. Who cares that reviews & relevancy data built up over years is lost forever in the process, its fun to see if the item ever sells again when its sent to the bottom of the pile.

Every 3 to 6 months hereafter, Lindens will isolate whatever function of marketplace is working best and redesign it completely, breaking it in the process. Sometimes, just for a change of pace they will instead add another feature nobody asked for, like why not redo all our storefronts in flash animation so things take even longer to load.

Eventually this roadmap will lead to a dramatic decline in anybody shopping there. Most merchants will also give up completely retooling everything constantly to achieve less and less sales. Then Lindens will announce that since nobody much is using marketplace anymore, they are shutting it down because this is what residents want.

That's my best guess at the roadmap, what do you think they will do next?

[Rival Destiny]

omg I'd lol if it weren't so sad

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I gave up as a merchant when the marketplace was introduce and everything I've seen since has made me glad I saved myself the effort.  I think LL feel the same, espcially Rodvik.  It's not a game, it's not fun, it doesn't work.  Let's do something different.

So, I think the roadmap will be an announcement that "The direct delivery, marketplace and second life beta is now complete.  Will the last one out please turn off the lights.  Linden Lab are excited to announce our new products, which almost work ..."

Of course, we won't SEE that announcement, because they won't bother to make it in-world or in these forums, it'll just be on twit-face.

[Sera Lok]

---

Sassy Romano wrote:

• Multiple store fronts?
• Ability to arrange our own store into categories?
• Proper support for colour sets?
• Effective reporting?

 

 

---

mmm Drool. personally the multiple color sets support would be SO great for the things I create, and would clean up a bunch of issues people have with searching for things (i.,e. scrolling through someone's 100 variations of 1 item, sigh)

Still just waiting for so much basic functionality, i.e. why do we STILL not have email notification upon review? Heavy Sigh! To my knowledge LL has never even commented on this other than to "acknowledge" it somewhere in some JIRA.

I did notice that a "meta" JIRA for Search problems was recently marked as major, so I would guess that some of the search issues will be addressed. 

But I hate having to guess when there should logically be someone at LL telling us what's in store in an official blog post or other official LL communication... We shouldn't have to be combing JIRAs to find out what LL Commerce Team is up to.

Plus the marketplace has been all slow again. boo.  I too would love to hear something positive/promising about what's in store.

[Pamela Galli]

My store is already organized into categories, so never understand that request.

What I would like even above decent reporting tools is this:

A RELEVANCE SORT THAT HAS RELEVANCE, esp for my storefront.

If I could determine what went on my first storefront page, I could double my sales, like that. I know this to be true because when the sorting update got stuck for days, mine got stuck on things I would like at the very top, and those things sold like mad. I tripled my marketplace sales.

Then they unstuck it and it went back to putting at the top of my store whatever happened to sell most recently, regardless of how many actual sales it had ever had -- and MP sales dropped dramatically.

[Rival Destiny]

This is a very basic marketing tool...and IMO shd be a no brainer for LL.

Would be awesome if they did this.

[Sassy Romano]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

My store is already organized into categories, so never understand that request.

If I could determine what went on my first storefront page, I could double my sales, like that.

---

 

You don't have categories that can be presented in the way that you want, just like you can't control what goes on the first page.  That's what I mean, the ability to categorise your own items and create a "store" with your own menus and not just a flat listing of results by that merchant.

I don't want to have to be forced to use LL's categories either, they're fine for generic "womens clothes, mens clothes" etc but can't be unique per store.

I want to structure, with hierarchy, what goes into my "store"

[Flea Yatsenko]

Magic boxes were far from perfect. I'm not the only one who has had problems with them not selling new products, and then switching to DD and having them sell within a few days. They did have flaws, but merchants didn't know about them, because the flaw in the Magic Boxes had to do with how the website where the customer made the purchase failed to communicate with the magic box, which in tern failed to communicate anything to the merchants.The customer saw a failed purchase while the merchant had absolutely no idea it happened.

I think the most important thing for SLMP to do next is to make it easier for customers to find things.

The problems I see when shopping are:

1. It's impossible to find clothing and hair as you get pages of identical products with different colors

2. It's confusing for customers when you offer a copy/mod version of a builder's kit and a full perm version as they are both returned in search results and they don't understand why one costs signifcantly more some times.

3. Search relevancy and keyword usage makes it extremely difficult to find what you're looking for.

Those are the biggest issues I see. Both 1 and 2 could be solved by letting us have different versions of a product on a single product page. One result shows up in search, and then you go to the listing and make your selection there.

Different SKUs from a drop down wouldn't work. I would envision a system where you make a main item and then subitems.

For example, if you sold hair, you would make a listing for the design of hair you've created that was color agnostic. Then, you'd click on that link and you'd get a page of listings that had the colors of that object listed as subobjects.

For builder's kits, you would make one, for example, "3 Pane Window Builder's Pack" that said something along the lines of "available as 3 Pane Window Builder's Pack (copy/mod), 3 Pane Window Builder's Pack (full perm)". It would take you to a listing of these products that worked like search results do now. It would also be easy to impliment because you could take existing listings and parent them to the main listing, and only the main listing would show up in search.

As for 3, I'm not sure. LL needs a better way to determine if customers are happy with a product as opposed to how well they sell. Lots of people buy several cheap things and are only happy with a few of them and throw the others out because they aren't happy with them. Then, those items the customer wasn't happy with still get treated as a good item with the current relevancy system that weighs things by views and sales.

 

 

[Nalates Urriah]

I'm with Flea on several points.

I'll also point out that the idea no one asked for Direct Delivery is misleading. We have years of complaints about failed deliveries. We have years of new users complaining about the difficulty of buying things and being able to wear or use them. The Lab's answer is Direct Delivery/Received Items. We asked for improved delivery. If this lesson doesn't teach one to be careful what they ask for, nothing will. How many fables do we have about people making wishes and the genie granting wishes in ways the person never thought of?

I think from a number of other development areas in SL we know what management is doing. They have aggressively tackled the JIRA lists and have been knocking down problems at an amazing pace. In some areas we have seen the development teams disappear and work off the radar. Others work in public, at least to some extent. 

In all cases we are seeing problems falling before a steady stream of changes, fixes, and improvements. Some of the problems are requiring extensive changes. In this complex system we are seeing mistakes and missteps. It is a mistake to think these problems are malevolently intentioned or part of some insane conspiracy to destory their own business or kill a cash cow. 

Search and the Market Place are disasters in my book. But, those were placed on a road map to be fixed. The fixes are not very popular. But neither was the existing system. And the fixing is incomplete.

I think they could have better people fixing the problems, but I don't know that and I'm not arrogant enough to insist I know that as a fact. Whatever the problem with search is, my simple take is: It Don't Work.

The Market Place sort of works. Enough so that business is stuggling along. Management is aware of the MP problems and I think they have a pretty good idea of how frustrated users are with the Commerce Team and MP.

All the information I have says managment is watching the JIRA and use stats. We don't always see that. But, thinking managment uses the same crietia we users find important, is a mistake. Filing and Watching JIRA items has an affect on managment. It's not the closely coupled connection many seem to expect. But, active JIRA items do draw attention. Don't give up. Keep filing JIRA's and clicking watch. Talking about a problem here? Include a link to the JIRA. Get more of us clicking WATCH.

[Spica Inventor]

"Magic boxes were far from perfect. I'm not the only one who has had problems with them not selling new products, and then switching to DD and having them sell within a few days. They did have flaws, but merchants didn't know about them, because the flaw in the Magic Boxes had to do with how the website where the customer made the purchase failed to communicate with the magic box, which in tern failed to communicate anything to the merchants.The customer saw a failed purchase while the merchant had absolutely no idea it happened."

 

How common was that flaw? Was it rare, very rare or extremely rare? I can't back it up with data, but right now it seems that DD has 'that' problem to a much greater occurence as sales seem to be more 'erratic' on a daily basis suggesting that its failing on some days much more than others. ;-)

 

"2. It's confusing for customers when you offer a copy/mod version of a builder's kit and a full perm version as they are both returned in search results and they don't understand why one costs signifcantly more some times".

 

That sounds like a newbie problem to me

 

"3. Search relevancy and keyword usage makes it extremely difficult to find what you're looking for."

 

How can it be done differently from the way it is done now where the merchant assigns his own keywords and be an improvement? My thought is to limit the keywords to perhaps a dozen at the maximum. That should keep the keyword spaming to a minimum too.

 

"As for 3, I'm not sure. LL needs a better way to determine if customers are happy with a product as opposed to how well they sell. Lots of people buy several cheap things and are only happy with a few of them and throw the others out because they aren't happy with them. Then, those items the customer wasn't happy with still get treated as a good item with the current relevancy system that weighs things by views and sales".

 

No no no no. Even though I realize that relatively few people do ratings and especially reviews of the products they purchase on The Marketplace, the idea of pushing 'overpriced' products to the top of relevance search lists is abhorrant to me. The truth is that the "cheap things" are more likely to have lower customer ratings as a general tendency anyway. And it seems that LL already push higher priced things further up on the relevance search list to some degree as it stands presently.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

How common was that flaw? Was it rare, very rare or extremely rare? I can't back it up with data, but right now it seems that DD has 'that' problem to a much greater occurence as sales seem to be more 'erratic' on a daily basis suggesting that its failing on some days much more than others. ;-)

I still don't know how rare that flaw is. I only played with a magic box for a about half a year myself (from september to direct delivery) and had good results. I've also found someone else in a similar situation than me, having magic box sales be mediocre and then DD making them great.

I am not sure exactly if it is just the magic box or not, but I've seen dramatic increases in sales since DD came out, and I'm not the only one.

Conversely, I've seen people who had sales be better with magic boxes.

My theory so far is that there's something seriously wrong with stores that migrated from XStreet to SLMP. I migrated, and so did you (I can tell by your store ID when I searched for you on SLMP).

I know that playing around with magic boxes, re-rezzing them out, etc increased sales dramatically for a few days before I got a TRACKER_DEBUG message and they all went downhill extremely fast.

But, that doesn't mean that's the magic boxes were at fault, and maybe I am jumping to conclusions. It could be the backend that handles communications between the magic boxes and the website, which could be shared with DD. I know this flaw was really, really weird in that it would only affect certain people at certain times.My leading theory as to why this happens so far is that the part of the simulator that runs scripts was ignoring things the magic box was supposed to get, the website was reading it as a timeout, and the customer would get a failure attempt without the merchant  knowing because the attempt to reach the merchant never made it.

But don't misunderstand, this bug I think exists doesn't affect all sales. When I had my magic box, the first few items in the first few box I would rez would sell the strongest by far, then after that they would taper off. The ones to go in last would usually end up being duds.Since DD, that pattern has nearly completely disappeared except for days when LL is having issues. I can usually tell when LL and SLMP are having problems by watching JIRA activity. People like to complain when things aren't working right but when things are working they don't go to the JIRA that much. Don't get me wrong, people go to the JIRA when things are good, but it's a lot more active when things are broken.

Since DD came out, SLMP has had lots of issues. This week has been slow for me, as I'm assuming it had to do with the grid blowing up Friday because of an unknown bug and them trying to fix it.

The erraticism that comes from what I was experiencing was more along the lines of which items were sold. It would fall into slumps where only 4 low profit items were sold from a wide range of products. Resetting the box and everything would cause higher profit items to sell more, and only a few of them. By the time I was done messing with the boxes, I could semi-reliably increase my daily sales by 3-10 times just from toying with magic boxes. Sometimes, all my items would sell, but the boxes would blow up quicker and fail.

I'm still trying to get things together. If it's affecting you, the vast majority of people who sell things should be selling things normally, while you're seemingly getting left behind. The more people that give me input on the situation the better I can draw conclusions. Some people I've talked to thought I was crazy and it was just market fluctuations, b ut I'm starting to find people who have had the same happen to me.

 

EDIT: Also, this flaw wouldn't be for just a few days. Certain products would just stop selling for weeks or months until you reset the boxes and re set them up.

EDIT AGAIN: Further evidence that the migration was a failure for some was the fact that most of these messed up listings happened to people in the 14xxxx product range, which were migrated products. Also, every merchant I have looked up in the JIRA who has commented on it and is having problems has had a store that has existed before the XStreet to SLMP migration.

That sounds like a newbie problem to me

And confused newbies mean lower user retention, less satisfied newer users, and less L$ going in and out of the L$ economy. None of which is good for the grid, SL, or merchants. Apple iPhone is extremely popular because it is extremely easy to use. If Apple designed the iPhone and people were having problems using it, and they said it was just newbie problems, then iPhone wouldn't be such a huge seller right now. Even if you're not a newb, using all sorts of tricks to find what you're looking for isn't as good as just typing it in and finding it.

How can it be done differently from the way it is done now where the merchant assigns his own keywords and be an improvement? My thought is to limit the keywords to perhaps a dozen at the maximum. That should keep the keyword spaming to a minimum too.

Well, looking at amazon, a great way to get people to find what they're looking for is similar items. Amazon has a feature that lets people see what people have viewed after viewing a listing. It crowdsources the problem as relevancy is determined by users instead of an algorithm that needs constant adjustment. I'm not advocating a system like Amazons, but I'm saying that a crowdsourced social solution is probably the best, whether it be similar items, other viewed items, a tagging system by customers, or something I'm not thinking of. It's not an easy problem to fix, nearly 3.5 million items have been listed on XStreet and SLMP and the list grows rapidly.

The bottom line is that the current system isn't good. The Lindens can tweak parameters in the search engine for the rest of their lives, and search isn't going to be that great. There needs to be new tools which give search additional data to work with, and the more people who reliably and accurately use that information and contribute to it the better search will be.

Sorry if there's lots of typos, I feel awful with allergies right now and I can barely function.

[Toysoldier Thor]

For anyone to correlate that DD would noticeably increase sales over magicbox would be - in my opinion - like trying to correlate that because I change engine oil brands in my car - I get to work faster.  DD is simply a delivery mechanism (one that the vast majority of customers dont even fully grasp any value add to it - much less what it is).  If anything, the rollout of DD could explain a potential drop in initial merchant sales since much of the news that leaked out from MP community is that DD caused a lot of grief and risk on purchasing.

IF LL were competent enough to have properly developed, test, and deploy DD without all the major flaws they are still struggling with now then DD had some improvements over MB - i.e.. Flexibility of what can be delivered and more instant delivery after purchase.  BUT... yes the big BUT...

Considering how small the LL Commerce and Development team is at LL, and considering the huge backlog of Merchants & Customer demands for fixes to MP after Xstreet and new simple but highly desired features to MP (like traffic & sales reporting and trending - even if it was a fraction of what you can do with google analytics), any business person has to ask themselves:

Was it worth it for LL to spend over a year of elapsed development, testing, deployment, troubleshooting, migration, and MB retirement time to provide the marginal benefits that DD offers over MB?  Was it worth the (rough guessing) ~ 2-3 person years of critical and valuable LL development effort to deploy DD as opposed to using this same critically rationed LL resources on a slew of much more customer visible, simple, and quicker to deploy MP features?  Was DD worth the risk to the operation, stability, and reliability to MP and all its interfacing systems?

My answer to this....... NO !

But LL has proven time and time again that they do not have anyone in their team that truly understands Business / product roadmaps?  They simply develop new features in SL and MP in the same manner that a horse follows a carrot dangling in front of them from a stick and string.  LL Commerce Management has proven not to listen to their customers / merchants.  On the rare time they do listen - they often hear the message only as a way to convince their own previously defined convictions.

So asking if LL has a roadmap.... they might say they do - but they have proven time and time again - even from Rodvik - that they really are not sure what their productlines of SL and MP will look like in 1 to 3 years.  They are currently on a "keep fighting fires and keep putting fingers in the dike" mode.

Sassy....  how long since the demise of Xstreet has the vast majority of forum posting merchants asked LL to at minimum restore the xstreet traffic/sales reporting and at best make some valuable improvements?  ANDD..... how much of an improvement have we seen since xstreet left us?   ZERO.

 

So asking for NEXT STEPS on the roadmap is like asking to win the lottery.... Wishful thinking... aint gonna happen.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Roadmap

Kill almost of all commerce and shops on the grid, make at least 95% of all merchants depend solely on marketplace.

Find a way to compensate for the loss of tier that merchants used to pay.

Declair MP out of beta and start charging 30% commission on MP sales.

 

(Not that I would like this scenario, but I can see it happen in the current situation).

[Flea Yatsenko]

I'm sorry, but the month when I finally figured out what was wrong with magic boxes, I saw my sales increase by a factor of two from the previous month. With DD, I'm making 2-3 times as much per month. All of this at a time when sales should be slowing down for summer. I have actual numbers to back up that things have been significantly better for me on DD than magic boxes.

If you have any other theories as to why this is happening let me know. I realize there are tons of problems with the marketplace right now, but I don't think they really have to do with DD or magic boxes and more with the actual part of marketplace that we don't see that handles communications between boxes, the DD servers, SLMP website, and second life avatars on the grid. I think that's more of the problem and DD issues and MB issues are a reflection of problems that are far deeper than people think.

I think you do get it that the problems with marketplace aren't really the boxes or DD, but much deeper than that. The commerce team is understaffed and the management of LL does not take the marketplace seriously enough, and the marketplace has done massive damage to the number of in world stores, and the attractions those in world stores funded on the sims they were in.

As I said, I don't know 100% what is happening and why I've seen my sales change like this. Considering I spent the last few months before DD not building anything and just playing with the magic boxes, I don't really think it has to do with products or marketing.

[Sassy Romano]

DD is *just* a delivery mechanism, it doesn't change search relevance, ranking, quality of adverts, nothign to do with advertising or promotions etc. so it's reasonable to say that any change in sales is not down to the method of delivery.

So, that's why I started this thread, not to be another rant about direct delivery or screwed up listings or other current issues but to look forward and ask CTL...

What's next on the roadmap?

[Medhue Simoni]

We, the merchants that create all the products, market all the products, and help all the residents, we are just cogs in LL's machine, hence we won't get any info. LL doesn't seem to think we need to be in the loop.

Weeks ago now, I submitted an email to LL. They requested people to ask to be in the open beta testing of pathfinding. I have yet to recieve any response back. I don't understand how they can run a business like this and expect us to respect them. I certainly hope they don't treat their employees the same way. Going by the Glassdoor comments for LL, It seems like they do.

On that note, I find it hard to understand how any1 can justify the pay of the top management when we see results like this. If I made that much money, I'd expect to work over 60 hours a week. My guess is that they are lucky to put 40 in. Sorry, I'm pretty disgusted with LL's whole operation these days, especially since I've seen their pay scale.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Rival Destiny wrote:

My biggest concern is any deadlines to move over to DD. 

I am still not comfortable in doing so as I know it will take much time to do. 

And if I'm one of the unlucky ones that ends up with a ton of issues, then even more of my time will have to be devoted to troubleshooting.

I do enough of that now on a daily basis dealing with the issues on the grid.

---

Ditto here.  This mixed listing issue is affecting merchants with DD & Magic Boxes alike, so migrating the affected stores to DD will likely not resolve this issue; therefore, until at least this situation is resolved and some feedback occurs from LL, I think it is irresponsible of LL to expect merchants to go through the DD migration.

In my opinion, the MP is burning while LL fiddles. (Or something like that.)

[WADE1 Jya]

I'm disgusted too Medhue.

Thoroughly.

Linden Lab created amazing atmosphere back when I joined in 2006.

Since than it's really changed for the worse.

Actually, they pushed me to sign an NDA about pathfinding very early on (now I am realizing in hindsight that signing was probably a bit of a mistake), but the big turn off for me was the tone of some of the internal communication (i was supposed to be scrambling to work hard impressing the 'big guys' (yes that's a direct quote)... yet to what benefit??? why??? ), and the treatment of some people's IP who contributed (luckily I chose not to contribute) was awful.

Working hard for free to impress 'big guys' who only give fat paychecks to themselves (as you pointed out) I do not see as any route to my success. I see clearly now that we are only regarded as yes as you say... "cogs in the machine". That is why I am now working 50+ hours a week to create my own independent worlds that I have real ownership of.

I am loyal to my awesome customers here & will continue to serve them until whenever we see Second Life's final days... if not for them, I would probably fly away.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

WADE1 Jya wrote:

My

prediction

of the roadmap is they will do none of those great features Sassy suggests.

They will launch direct delivery (which yes nobody asked for). It will turn out to be very broken & far less reliable than magic box ever was.

 

---

I'm a bit confused on this point.  When "a new delivery system that will not involve Magic Boxes" was first mentioned but now seems like eons ago, in fact I think that LL announcement (paraphrased) pre-dates the current forums, I don't recall it being something residents/merchants asked for - it was something LL came up with, iirc.

Now, especially from merchants who like DD and haven't had their shops borked, the attitude seems like it *was* asked for.  Did I miss something?

---

WADE1 Jya wrote:

That's my best guess at the roadmap, what do you think they will do next?

---

Based on past experience, when residents ask for broken issues to be fixed, LL usually releases a new viewer. :matte-motes-angry:

 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Spica Inventor wrote:

"Magic boxes were far from perfect. I'm not the only one who has had problems with them not selling new products, and then switching to DD and having them sell within a few days. They did have flaws, but merchants didn't know about them, because the flaw in the Magic Boxes had to do with how the website where the customer made the purchase failed to communicate with the magic box, which in tern failed to communicate anything to the merchants.The customer saw a failed purchase while the merchant had absolutely no idea it happened."

 

How common was that flaw? Was it rare, very rare or extremely rare? I can't back it up with data, but right now it seems that DD has 'that' problem to a much greater occurence as sales seem to be more 'erratic' on a daily basis suggesting that its failing on some days much more than others. ;-)

 

 

---

This ^^  I was very active on the forums that pre-dated these current ones. (Another LL decision that was highly unpopular and sent many of the regular forumites to third party forums - but that's another discussion altogether.)

At any rate, from reading the forums since 2007, including one thread that lasted for well over a year in the former Resident Answers forum ("Advice on Sales" - can be found in the archives) as well as reading many posts by/from merchants, I honestly don't remember this huge outcry about failed deliveries.  *Now* I'm hearing about it on these forums from people who like DD.  Does anyone else see this starting to turn into two camps - the Magic Box vs DD groups?  Now I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but kinda makes me wonder.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Flea Yatsenko wrote:

I'm sorry, but the month when I finally figured out what was wrong with magic boxes, I saw my sales increase by a factor of two from the previous month. With DD, I'm making 2-3 times as much per month. All of this at a time when sales should be slowing down for summer. I have actual numbers to back up that things have been significantly better for me on DD than magic boxes.

 

---

And I can produce sales figures that show the exact opposite for me, with years of data vs half a year's experience with Magic Boxes as you stated.

There were always ups and downs in sales, but over the past 4 years I saw a general pattern develop for my MP sales.  Since DD was introduced that pattern has been totally askew with periods of no sales that are highly unusual.

So we each have quasi-empirical data for and against Magic Boxes causing issues.  (And yes I have taken items out of MB for updates, put them back in, reset the boxes, etc., etc. over the years.  I never noticed any particular sales fluctuations based on that.)

[PeterCanessa Oh]

My memory [of requests for help/complaints on the forums] is that failed deliveries have grown exponentially since marketplace replaced the systems that worked.  XStreet SL (forgotten what it was called before that) introduced the magic boxes and they worked, or there was prompt support to fix things.

If Direct Delivery is a solution to failed deliveries, it's a problem that marketplace introduced, not magic boxes.  It's a good idea for its own sake, I think, but the website that fails to communicate is marketplace.  It's more than 3 years since LL replaced the working ecommerce properies and there have been major, growing, problems ever since.  However, it is possible that it's just a victim of its own success, since LL have promoted its use so much and so many in-world stores have shut down.  We don't have the current or past transaction statistics so this just has to be anecdotal.

[Pamela Galli]

We had failed deliveries with magic boxes on Xstreet / SL Exchange, too. We were told to ALWAYS report these to Xstreet support so they could keep track of both 1) failures and 2) who was making the claim, rather than handling them ourselves.  IOW they involved themselves to some extent in combatting  fraud by people who buy trans things then instantly report a failed delivery in order to receive another. This of course goes on, which is why we can only guess what percentage of deliveries reported by the software as delivered, actually were delivered. Of course if we are talking about the ones reported as failed, at least we know that the transaction did not go through at all.