Let's share some Stats!

[Domsson Lean]

Latetly, me and a friend (we're running a MPlace Shop together) discussed several aspects regarding statistical data. Since the current MPlace doesn't really supply useful data, we decided to download the CSV files (a useful feature at least!) and evaluated some interesting data from it. What we were most interested in was the question: are there any "Purchase peaks", weekday-wise or time-of-day-wise?

Now that we gained that data, I thought it would be nice to share, so here goes some of our data.

Purchases by Weekday in Percent (overall):

• Mon: ~14%
• Tue: ~14%
• Wed: ~15%
• Thu: ~14%
• Fri: ~11%
• Sat: ~15%
• Sun: ~17%

Conclusion: All days have about the same amount of Transactions, except Friday and Sunday, where Friday is remarkably weak and Sunday remarkably strong.

Purchases by Time of Day (overall):

I don't want to list all 24 Hours with its according values, so let me conclude right away:

• The most purchases happened between 2pm and 2am, where 8pm to Midnight was especially strong
• 2am to 6am, as well as 1pm to 2pm builds the center span
• 6am to 1pm got the fewest purchases

All data is based upon ~2000 sold/purchased Items (~1900 Orders), times are in SLT.

Maybe you want to join in and this way, we can see if there might be a general trend or the values we've gained are only true for our little shop. Also, if you've got any ideas for other useful data that could be drawn out of the CSV files, shoot!

[Freya Mokusei]

Compare with http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/sl-statistical-charts/ to see overall grid concurrency.

Your purchase-patterns match mostly with this wave (low later-weekdays, high later-weekends)

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

I've been tracking the dreaded FREEBIE transactions versus the transactions for other things since I started selling things in SL, first on SLEX and now on the marketplace.

Regardless of the number of freebies I have had listed, the ratio of freebie to $L transactions has been stable at about  1 freebie to every 2 $L transactions. 

[Calamari]

last time I checked which was back in December 75% of all my slaes were from avatars that had been in SL for over 3 years.

 

[Calamari]

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Nefertiti Nefarious wrote:

I've been tracking the dreaded FREEBIE transactions versus the transactions for other things since I started selling things in SL, first on SLEX and now on the marketplace.

Regardless of the number of freebies I have had listed, the ratio of freebie to $L transactions has been stable at about  1 freebie to every 2 $L transactions. 

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any idea how many freebee slaes lead to a L$ sale or not?

[Domsson Lean]

How did you gain these information? Manual lookup?

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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Calamari wrote:

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Nefertiti Nefarious wrote:

I've been tracking the dreaded FREEBIE transactions versus the transactions for other things since I started selling things in SL, first on SLEX and now on the marketplace.

Regardless of the number of freebies I have had listed, the ratio of freebie to $L transactions has been stable at about  1 freebie to every 2 $L transactions. 

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any idea how many freebee sales lead to a L$ sale or not?

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No.  I could set up some sort of a filter that could identify repeat sales to an avatar, and then report those sales repeats that started with a freebie ... but it wouldn't be easy.

Currently, I sort my notification emails into two folders ... one has sales reported of $L0 and the other is all sales with non-zero transactions.  These may include a freebie and some not free product.  One common sales cluster is the free stone shed, and some not free hay and farm animals to go in it. Or polar bears with the free ice floes.

 

[Vegro Solari]

I noticed what seems to be a recurring pattern that might be interesting for somebody.  Usually a marketplace product that has nicely done pictures etc.  will get bought about once for every 10-20 people that click on the listing.

It depends on the product certainly, but for the average impulse purchase type stuff it's remarkably consistent.

 

Also, not really a stat but the Linden listing enhancements where you can put yourself on the frontpage tend to work extremely poorly for getting more people to click on your creations. It's as though 90% of the people browsing have learnt to totally ignore the paid listing strip on the frontpage.

 

 

[Calamari]

For inworld I use hippo visit, for marketplace manual is the only way I know of.

Thought I'd check to see how the numbers had changed since December, in the last 30 days

38% less then one year.

38% over 3 years.

The rest evenly spaced out in between.

It's good to see some evidence of new people in SL and that they are all so shopping.

 

 

 

[Deja Letov]

My time of day sales go something like the report below. It's interesting to see it for different people and I wonder if the differences are due to "WHAT" isbeing sold as well. For example, as a creator, I buy my full perm items more or less at night when i'm building, but back when i actually used to socialize, I would do my clothing, furniture, etc shopping during the afternoons. my highest sales definitely tend to stay between noon and four PM with my lowest sales between 4AM and 8AM. This is a monthly average so it's a pretty good represenation overall. Also, the bulk of my sales is in world these days, so that may also make a difference.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

Hi Deja

I have no earthly idea how to make snazzy graphs to track sales but I wanted to thank you for planting the seed for me to start concentrating on my in world store again based on your post shortly after the whole MP fiasco began.

As a result I am participating in a hunt with another on the horizon which in turn got my creative juices flowing again.  I've also joined a few more relevant (to what I sell) designer groups, advertising my new 4th of July items, and actually spending more time in my store than I have in 2 years where I have met some customers and had delightful conversations with them.

I have a lot more to do in this regard but I am honestly having more fun in SL since I began this effort and it is slowly starting to show results.  I am getting a handful of in world sales/week whereas I had maybe 1-3 in world sales in a 3-month period prior.

Whatever happens with the MP - I have regained the joy of being a SL designer/merchant.  Thank you, Deja.

 

[Domsson Lean]

@Calamari: So, "Hippo Visit" will give you stats on the age of you customers?

@Deja: How did you create that graph?

@Czari: It's awesome to hear that. I only had an InWorld shop once, for some month - and there were very few sales, so I decided to go with Marketplace only. Maybe I should retry, too.

@All: It's probably not too relevant, but the numbers given in my initial post may be incorrect, because I just noticed that some of my records were in another time format than others (CSV files exported from Marketplace are in UTC, not SLT!). So, here are the correct values as graphs - and this time, all UTC:

T

It's based on 1900 records, where the first record dates to the 2. Nov. 2010.

[Deja Letov]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

Hi Deja

I have no earthly idea how to make snazzy graphs to track sales but I wanted to thank you for planting the seed for me to start concentrating on my in world store again based on your post shortly after the whole MP fiasco began.

As a result I am participating in a hunt with another on the horizon which in turn got my creative juices flowing again.  I've also joined a few more relevant (to what I sell) designer groups, advertising my new 4th of July items, and actually spending more time in my store than I have in 2 years where I have met some customers and had delightful conversations with them.

I have a lot more to do in this regard but I am honestly having more fun in SL since I began this effort and it is slowly starting to show results.  I am getting a handful of in world sales/week whereas I had maybe 1-3 in world sales in a 3-month period prior.

Whatever happens with the MP - I have regained the joy of being a SL designer/merchant.  Thank you, Deja.

 

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Thank you! That is so sweet of you to say. I wish I had time to keep up with it better. I started a SL business blog months ago and I rarely post on it but trust me I have so much to say regarding business in SL. However, my husband and i are expecting a baby right now and my SL time is limited due to decreased computer time allowance 9cause I'm high risk and sitting sucks for me). So what time i do have I spend working on my shop when i really want to rant some more on my blog! but I' m glad something has helped someone!

[Deja Letov]

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Domsson Lean wrote:

@Deja: How did you create that graph?

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I'm a geek...I wrote my own software. I just import my Sl transaction log once a month into this nifty little program I made and it lets me spit out reports for sales, regions, customers, time of day, day of week, best products, etc. It's not as fancy as all that real time stuff that people do but I don't use any scripted vendor boxes, just simply right click and buy boxes. My SL transaction history has everything I need to know, I just needed a way to make it useful. it's written in ColdFusion with a SQL database.

One of my MOST useful reports and the one I love the most is this one....

 

I adjust so much of my marketing efforts based on this report. And if I click on details I get the sales details that actually make up those sales. I also have one for top customers which is great cause I send them little freebies once in awhile if they are on the top 3 for the month. Also my sales by category...it's what helped me determine that I needed to focus more one one area of my store and cut back on another area. I know a lot of people find the transaction logs that SL provides to be pointless and a waste of time, but if you can find a way to just get the data into a useful format it really is ALL you need.

[Domsson Lean]

Deja, that's awesome! To be honest, since ANS is available for Marketplace and Direct Delivery, I wanted to use that in order to get similar reports out of my sales, too. However, there is so few documentation on it, so I spent lots of time only to figure out in which way the data is sent / to be retrieved.

Therefore, I thought: "There are so many Merchants - at least a few of them will have had the same problems, so let's search for their solution!" - However, I couldn't find any useful information or even tools at all. Still, over time, I noticed that there are a lot of Merchants with tools like yours at their hands. So, obviously, people are inventing the wheel over and over, which somewhat is a pitty. So, what I'm trying to say here: your tool looks extremely nice and helpful, maybe you should share.

Currently, I'm working on my own ANS Processor (the graph screenshot is taken from it), but there is still so much to do and I guess I'm not the best coder available. Either way, as soon as I've managed to put a somewhat stable "beta" together, I'll share.

So, let me ask you some more questions on your tool:

• How does it gain its data? ANS, CSV, Inworld scripts? Or a combination?
• Is ColdFusion capable of rendering those charts directly, or how did you implement these?

Hm, I guess I'll continue to work on my tool right now!

 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Domsson Lean wrote:

Deja, that's awesome! <snip>

So, what I'm trying to say here: your tool looks extremely nice and helpful, maybe you should share.

 

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I was going to make the same suggestion, except that Deja sell that script to merchants - I would SO buy one, not being a coder at all.  (In my defense, I have probably taken 10 various types of LSL scripting classes in SL and know just enough to tinker with written ones...a little.  I am in awe of you coder types!!!)

[Deja Letov]

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Domsson Lean wrote:

Deja, that's awesome! To be honest, since ANS is available for Marketplace and Direct Delivery, I wanted to use that in order to get similar reports out of my sales, too. However, there is so few documentation on it, so I spent lots of time only to figure out in which way the data is sent / to be retrieved.

Therefore, I thought: "There are so many Merchants - at least a few of them will have had the same problems, so let's search for their solution!" - However, I couldn't find any useful information or even tools at all. Still, over time, I noticed that there are a lot of Merchants with tools like yours at their hands. So, obviously, people are inventing the wheel over and over, which somewhat is a pitty. So, what I'm trying to say here: your tool looks extremely nice and helpful, maybe you should share.

Currently, I'm working on my own ANS Processor (the graph screenshot is taken from it), but there is still so much to do and I guess I'm not the best coder available. Either way, as soon as I've managed to put a somewhat stable "beta" together, I'll share.

So, let me ask you some more questions on your tool:

• How does it gain its data? ANS, CSV, Inworld scripts? Or a combination?
• Is ColdFusion capable of rendering those charts directly, or how did you implement these?

Hm, I guess I'll continue to work on my tool right now!

 

 

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I have thought about offering it out as a subscription service because honestly it pretty much runs itself and unless SL changes something in the transaction file itself, I rarely have to touch my code. It would have to be a paid service because I pay for the data storage, but there are NO scripts in SL to share for it cause there are none, it's all done on my server. But I'm not a pressure oriented person and I know how people can be. Some people are just plain mean or think the world revolves around them and I don't think I would do well in a situation like that. So the thought of supporting a customer base plus trying to maintain a real life, just is a lot to take in. I do have a few friends on it, mooching off my talents for free. They are a joy to work with cause I just tell em hey it's free quit your bitchin. lol Who knows, maybe on day...maybe after I pop this kid out and stress don't matter any more.

As far as how I get data into it, I just upload the XML file from transaction history and voila there it is. And yes there is also a ANS script to hit when a sale happens via marketplace so I know what it is, since transaction history data sucks in the way of MP sales, gives you no details at all. Other than that, nothing, I don't use any scripts in SL to do any of this. I was going to use a whole sales system but the whole vendor setup process from all of them...and yes I own just abou all of them...is cumbersome and a pain in m neck. I just like to fill a box and set it for sale. I'm a simple girl

It really is so basic and SO NOT FANCY at all. The charts are done via an integrated tool in ColdFusion, I just feed it the dynamic numbers from the database and it generates it.

 

[Deja Letov]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Domsson Lean wrote:

Deja, that's awesome! <snip>

So, what I'm trying to say here: your tool looks extremely nice and helpful, maybe you should share.

 

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I was going to make the same suggestion, except that Deja sell that script to merchants - I would SO buy one, not being a coder at all.  (In my defense, I have probably taken 10 various types of LSL scripting classes in SL and know just enough to tinker with written ones...a little.  I am in awe of you coder types!!!)

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I totally would if it was just a SL script. Unfortunately it's all hosted on my own webserver using a SQL database back end. There is nothing SL related at all about this except I import a SL transaction history log file.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Deja Letov wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Domsson Lean wrote:

Deja, that's awesome! <snip>

So, what I'm trying to say here: your tool looks extremely nice and helpful, maybe you should share.

 

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I was going to make the same suggestion, except that Deja sell that script to merchants - I would SO buy one, not being a coder at all.  (In my defense, I have probably taken 10 various types of LSL scripting classes in SL and know just enough to tinker with written ones...a little.  I am in awe of you coder types!!!)

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I totally would if it was just a SL script. Unfortunately it's all hosted on my own webserver using a SQL database back end. There is nothing SL related at all about this except I import a SL transaction history log file.

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Ahhh, ok.  Even more in awe of you coder types.   I had no idea it was run on a server, etc.  I agree with staying stress-free during your pregnancy...and after. *Smiles* 

[Deja Letov]

Hey Czari...I've actually been talking to Dom a lot about my software, I'm trying to actually put it together to make it available. it's always just been for me, so it's weird having someone else in it, but Dom has been testing it for me with his own transactions for a couple of days now. I never really thought I'd have the nerve to do it, people scare me lol, but if you're interested in testing it along with Dom, contact me in game (anyone else for that matter is welcome) and I'll get you instructions plus I would LOVE feedback on it so I can make it really user friendly.