Survey Says!

[Deja Letov]

Awhile back there was some posts floating around about marketing methods. Which ones worked, which one didn't, which ones took the most effort, most money, most time, etc. Anyone who sees my posts, knows I'm a total nerd when it comes to my numbers, I watch them constantly and love to figure out ways to make them better. Well, truth be told, I never REALLY knew exactly how many customers were coming from which source. I had an idea of at least "where" but not the "how many". I realize this information is probably only interesting for an inworld store owner, this isn't going to help any of you MP only shop owners. But for the last week, I've put up a single one question survey at the main entrance of my store to see if I could get a much better understanding of where my customers are coming from. One week isn't a whole lot of time yet, and these numbers represent just under 100 responses, so I will share an update again in another couple of weeks or when I hit 200 surveys. But even for a week I think this is a pretty good representation.

So here is the lowdown on what I see so far.

Word of Mouth -26%
Hunts – 23%
Other Group – 21%
Marketplace – 15%
SL Search – 8%
Advertisement – 5%
SL Forums – 2%

There were other options to choose from, but all of those received 0% of votes.

What I’m very happy about is the number for word of mouth. Word of mouth options would include options like inspecting the item elsewhere and seeing who the creator was, hearing about it from a friend, profile picks, hearing about it from an event I was sponsoring or anything else that is just sort of “seen” around SL. I love that this is the highest percentage because it is the least amount of work on my end. In fact, it is pretty much no work on my end.

The other one I’m excited about is hunts. Hunts have always been a huge part of my business and as you can see, they certainly bring people in the doors. Looking at further data on hunt sales, I can see that while a good portion of my hunters come in and grab their item and dash away, a good many of them stay and shop. This lets me know I should continue on with the hunts to keep my traffic and sales going strong. You’ll also notice the third place option is “Other Group”. The reason I’m talking about this one in the same thought as hunts is because most of the people who submitted “Other Group” as their method to finding me, selected the name of the group which happened to be a hunt group. So these two could almost be lumped together into a 44%, but because there were a couple that weren’t hunt groups I won’t do this officially.  but I love that between hunts and groups, these combined are my highest.

The biggest surprise to me is the number for the Marketplace. The Marketplace currently varies each month to consist of anywhere from 40-50% of my total sales. So to see that only 15% of my visitors found me on the Marketplace, caught me off guard. I thought it would be quite a bit higher. Part of this I am sure is because I have really slacked off on my attempts to convert my marketplace customers. In the past I  have always contacted my marketplace customers after a sale, to thank them for their purchase and to invite them to come into the store. I’ve slacked on doing this due to not being able to spend as much time in SL as I would like to, but will definitely pick it back  up so I can make that number climb. It’s not that I want more marketplace sales, my marketplace sales are currently very healthy each month and doing extremely well and increasing every month. What I am talking about is conversion from being a marketplace customer to being an in world customer. Not having to pay SL a commission fee on a sale would be nice of course (I've paid over 6,000L so far this month on commissions), but also, getting a customer in the store hands me a much better chance of gaining a higher sale when they see more items out on display.

Lastly, what number in my results don’t surprise me? The SL Search. I know for me, I rarely use the SL Search, mainly because it’s unreliable and broken. But apparently not many others are using it either, so at least I know it’s not just me. Before you think “oh well that’s just because they aren’t finding you soon enough in the list” let me assure you, even though not many use it, I check it often and I am easily found on the first page for my major search term on most days. But this number does make me feel better that I shouldn't stress out over the whole "traffic" number issues because even if I'm high on the list,it doesn't seem to affect anything.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting to see it in numbers. Has anyone else done this, or would anyone else be interested in doing this to get an idea of what they are doing? I'd be curious to see some comparisons especially of different type of stores.

[Pamela Galli]

Thank you for the data, Deja.

I think everyone should be clear -- as you have implied -- that this is traffic data, not sales data, which of course would be more difficult to come by.

[Deja Letov]

Oh yes, this is strictly a "how did you hear about us" thing for traffic sources. I did capture all of the submissions with their avatar name and I could generate a sales report based on this, but some of the people are past customers and not just from that day, so it would be hard to really guage how one particular method works because while they may have showed up 6 months ago from a Marketplace LM, they may have come back for different reasons and those sales wouldn't pertain. But I definitely could grab sales data for each person if that really helps anyone, but not sure it would really would.

[Pamela Galli]

My guess is that people who have come to your store to look at something they have seen inworld or on the MP  are far more likely to buy than those who come to your store to pick up some free thing because you are next on the list.

 

[Deja Letov]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

My guess is that people who have come to your store to look at something they have seen inworld or on the MP  are far more likely to buy than those who come to your store to pick up some free thing because you are next on the list.

 

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From a volume stand point you are probably right. The number of people who come to me from the MP are definitely there to buy or they probably wouldn't have come. Hunters are there to grab a freebie item. However, obviously the numbers of MP visitors is low so I'm not sure how that will equate to an actual dollar amount. I guess the only real way to tell if this is actually the case would be to see what kind of revenue numbers are coming out of those who were there get the hunt item. In fact, maybe the best way to compare it is to do these two scenarious.

1. pull a report of all revenue purchased by someone who has bought a hunt item and at least one other item in the in world store.

2. pull a report of all revenue purchased by someone who has bought an item off the marketplace and at least one other items in the in world store.

This would show me how much revenue each marketing method has brought in and still only affect my calculations for in world sales. I will run that tonight and get back to you.

This will also help flesh out those who didn't take the survey. The numbers will show based on where they bought from.

Very good point!

 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

Very interesting, Deja.  Thank you for sharing that info.

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum from you re: number of products I offer, amount of sales, etc. thus, re: in world sales, I can get a pretty good idea how the customer arrived.  In my case the majority of my in world sales (which is teensy compared to the MP) I find are directly related to hunts.  I can tell by my transaction records if a person came for a hunt item and also purchased something in the store in the same timeframe.

Whether someone purchases an item when she is there for the hunt item or not, I do believe that it is great exposure for my shop.  When I'm wearing the hat of a hunter/customer and not a merchant, I rarely stay to shop at a hunt location - BUT - I keep a notecard handy to list the shops that sell the type of items in which I'm interested and that I will return to.  This also works in tandem with "word of mouth."  Let's say I have not gone back to a particular store I noted during a hunt but I hear in group chat someone asking, "Where can I get xyz?"  If I have a store noted for xyz, I offer that in group chat.  Awhile back on the General Forum someone asked where they could get a Medieval gown for rp.  I had just completed The Rennaisance Hunt and marked a shop with which I was quite impressed that sells Medieval clothing/accessories, so I posted the shop name in that thread.

Being a small merchant...*any* method that helps people find my shop is wonderful.  I'll keep participating in hunts because they're fun and it motivates me to think outside the box in creating my hunt gift.

[Spica Inventor]

"But for the last week, I've put up a single one question survey at the main entrance of my store to see if I could get a much better understanding of where my customers are coming from".

Obviously most of your SLM customers are not going to be stopping at the entrance of your store to partake in the questionare when they can buy the product from their marketplace search. I would say that 90% of Merchants are found in one way or another doing an SL Marketplace search first these days. ;-)

[Czari Zenovka]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

I would say that 90% of Merchants are found in one way or another doing an SL Marketplace search first these days. ;-)

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Speaking only for me, I find the vast majority of new stores in hunts.

 

[Spica Inventor]

Speaking only for me, I find the vast majority of new stores in hunts. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt=":smileywink:" title="Smiley Wink" />

God, you have alot of time on your hands don't you, Czari? hehe ;-)

[Czari Zenovka]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

Speaking only for me, I find the vast majority of new stores in hunts. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt=":smileywink:" title="Smiley Wink" />

God, you have alot of time on your hands don't you, Czari? hehe ;-)

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Not really.  We each participate in the activities we enjoy in SL.  I'm not a shopper - shopping to be shopping bores me silly.  However, I enjoy games and challenges so hunts, for me, are a lot of fun.  I've done hunts with another person, groups of people, have met people during hunts that have become friends, etc.  The time I spend going to hunts, and I didn't say I went to a lot of them - far from that - is spent by others doing different things in SL.

My point was that I personally find new stores, since I don't like shopping, via hunts.  Coupled with the experiential evidence that most of my recent in world purchases are from hunters underscores one of the elements of Deja's survey.

 

[Rya Nitely]

I'm a strong believer in Word of Mouth. People tell their friends, or they see something they like and search for creator on MP. Hence why I think most of our sales are MP these days.

For my store and the type of items I sell, hunts are not so great - more time and effort on my part than sales.

Advertising is a waste of money. It's too expensive, which leads to stress when that investment doesn't pay off.

When I list a new item I know that it won't sell right away but sales will gain momentum over time - through word of mouth. So I usually list and forget until I see the sales starting to build - and if they don't then it's the item, no advertising will help that). 

[Deja Letov]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

"But for the last week, I've put up a single one question survey at the main entrance of my store to see if I could get a much better understanding of where my customers are coming from".

Obviously most of your SLM customers are not going to be stopping at the entrance of your store to partake in the questionare when they can buy the product from their marketplace search. I would say that 90% of Merchants are found in one way or another doing an SL Marketplace search first these days. ;-)

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I disagree completely. I rarely find new stores via the marketplace. I am a huge in world shopper. In fact most of my MP sales are with stores I alrady know well. And obviously based on the survey that isn't true since they've stated specifically that they found me via other means.

 

[Deja Letov]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

 

Advertising is a waste of money. It's too expensive, which leads to stress when that investment doesn't pay off.

 

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I've found this exact same thing Rya. I've tried advertising on ad boards, having market booths in clubs, marketplace enhancements, etc and none of them have yielded any kind of real result. The only "market" type stall I get is from now until December in a specific themed sim for the Halloween and Christmas holidays, based around the goth theme, which is what I make. I did it last year and got great results. I think the only reason that happened though was because the owner was marketing it heavily, held regular events and reallypushed the merchants. I've gone to clubs and such here I've rented from and I never hear them pushing merchants.

[Deja Letov]

After hearing from Pamela on weather or not people who come in for hunts are there to spend money versus coming from the MP who most definitely are, I ran the reports I mentioned. Here is what I came up with.

Dollar for Dollar, the hunters have it. They spent more money as a total over people who came to me via the marketplace. I expected this result because obviously according to my survey I had the numbers (quantity) of hunters, versus the very low number of marketplace visitors.

But here is something I find kinda cool. While the dollars spent from hunters was higher than marketplace, the number of people it took to get there was close to double it took to reach that.

For the month of August:

33,303L in world purchases bought by those who also purchased at least one hunt item. - 189 people
28,140L in world purchases bought by those who also purchased on the marketplace - 109 people

I think there are so many possible factors that could be attributes to this such as:

 

• hunters spend less because they are visiting hundreds of stores and want to spread they money out
• hunters come into the store not looking for anything specific and just want to support the hunt by purchasing something small
• marketplace customers are on the lookout for something specific and have already located it in the marketplace
• marketplace customers aren't spreading their money out so can drop it all one one item

The one thing it does tell me for a fact is:

1. I should definitely go back to following up with all of my marketplace sales to see if I can't get more in the door for an inworld sale after the MP sale.

2. I should continue or even increase my hunt participation because it does appear to be a great source of free advertising and revenue.

Oh one last note...my total sales for the month thus far is 251,226L. Which means if you take off the marketplace and hunt purchases, that leaves 189,783 unaccounted sales from a specific source. Some of that is of course regular old marketplace sales that were arrived at from the normal MP search, but there is also a huge chunk of sales from in world sales, that I'm assuming is coming from word of mouth, my subscriber list, or other method that required no input fro me.

 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

While I'm not a merchant, I do find these numbers interesting. They seem to match peoples RL shopping behavior (as far as applicable), including the use of coupons (the closest thing to hunts in RL I guess).

SL Search surprised me. It's very much useless for finding any merchandise, as much as I can tell. Especially since it doesn't tie into MP search... which IMO it should.

[Deja Letov]

I totally think hunts are like coupons, that's a great way to look at it. LOL And you're right SL search is a joke and I never really use it, which is why I never understood why merchants put much stock into it. I'm glad I'm on the pages for my major keywords, but obviously based on my results, it's probably not helping or hindering me.

Also, not related to your post jenni but the thing people have to remember, especially if people are making assumptions on the marketplace numbers, this survey was done purely to track in world traffic. I know what my MP sales are and obviously MP comes from nowhere except the marketplace. This was a way to track only in world traffic...even if they came from the marketplace.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

While I'm not a merchant, I do find these numbers interesting. They seem to match peoples RL shopping behavior (as far as applicable), including the use of coupons (the closest thing to hunts in RL I guess).

SL Search surprised me. It's very much useless for finding any merchandise, as much as I can tell. Especially since it doesn't tie into MP search... which IMO it should.

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There are market niches that depend heavily on In-World Search for their traffic/sales. That's very much not the case for personal appearance items (fashion, hair, skins, etc.). However for Land Rentals, Adult venues and entertainment and certain types of gadgets/devices, In-World Search is the only way to find what you're looking for.

I think the reasons vary. For example with gadgets and devices, the number of stores is relatively low and it's hard to know which store sells what. So folks turn to Search to find someone that sells what they're looking for. Land Rentals again, it's not an overly saturated niche and thus people use Search to find a quick list of candidate rentals. For the Adult stuff, I think it's most often because they're either new to the pursuit of an adult place or they're bored to tears with their regular haunt, so they turn to Search to find something in that vein.

But personal appearance items are niches that are so chock full, you can't swing a dead breedable without hitting 20 of them. Thus Search just doesn't really have anything in its benefit to warrant its use. Thus it's my impression that people don't fall back on Search when they need only ask 1 friend to get 20 LMs to places that fulfill their needs fully.

[mtwtfss71]

I'd be very interested in how you went about this survey actually. I've been thinking about doing that for a while now but didn't know where to begin. I'd certainly share my results.

[Deja Letov]

The setup of it is actually easy, I just did a search on the marketplace for survey and looked through the different products for one that had easy setup and let me give away and item at the completion of the survey. I also wanted to results emailed to me. If you want to know the exact one just shoot me a message and I will send you a link to it.

Then I just made a graphic, slapped it on a box and dropped the scripts inside the box. It has floating text over the box plus I sent the notice out to my groups. I'm going to tally it again here in a few days but I've been watching the results are staying pretty consistent percentage wise for what I originally posted.

[Spica Inventor]

"I disagree completely. I rarely find new stores via the marketplace. I am a huge in world shopper. In fact most of my MP sales are with stores I already know well. And obviously based on the survey that isn't true since they've stated specifically that they found me via other means".

 

Like I said, the vast majority of peeps who purchase things on The Marketplace don't even bother to go to the inworld store to take surveys or look at things on display or whatever. (But they still find merchants for the first time using The Marketplace). This is a fact that the Lindens can't stand (thinking that's the reason why the SL economy has stagnated) and it is understandable why they would continue to try to push propaganda to the contrary (in another futile attempt to get peeps to return to inworld overpriced shopping and particularly the prominent well known stores since they tend to be by far the most overpriced). ;-)

[Spica Inventor]

"Not really.  We each participate in the activities we enjoy in SL.  I'm not a shopper - shopping to be shopping bores me silly.  However, I enjoy games and challenges so hunts, for me, are a lot of fun".

 

Yes, I know. And I can see how it might be fun at times, but this goofy study is pushing ideas of inworld merchant finding/shopping preferences that are totally not valid. The only thing useful about the study might be the relative ratios of different methods for INWORLD merchant locating. Any idea that it is hard to find merchants via a Marketplace search that this study implies is pure nonsense.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

"Not really.  We each participate in the activities we enjoy in SL.  I'm not a shopper - shopping to be shopping bores me silly.  However, I enjoy games and challenges so hunts, for me, are a lot of fun".

 

Yes, I know. And I can see how it might be fun at times, but this goofy study is pushing ideas of inworld merchant finding/shopping preferences that are totally not valid.

The only thing useful about the study might be the relative ratios of different methods for INWORLD merchant locating.

Any idea that it is hard to find merchants via a Marketplace search that this study implies is pure nonsense.

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(Emphasis mine)

The first post in this thread states: "I realize this information is probably only interesting for an inworld store owner, this isn't going to help any of you MP only shop owners."

Deja clearly indicates that her survey was to determine, in your words, "the relative ratios of different methods for INWORLD merchant locating."  That was precisely the point -  to get an idea of how her inworld traffic found her store.  I don't see anything that suggests it is hard to find merchants via a MP search. 

The first post also says: "The biggest surprise to me is the number for the Marketplace. The Marketplace currently varies each month to consist of anywhere from 40-50% of my total sales. So to see that only 15% of my visitors found me on the Marketplace, caught me off guard. I thought it would be quite a bit higher."

(Emphasis mine)

The bolded part might be where the confusion is.  I don't read this as it was hard to find Deja's MP store.  If that were the case 40-50% of her sales would not come from there.  My interpretation of the MP inference (and Deja, please correct me if I'm off on this) is that, considering a healthy chunk of Deja's sales are from the MP,  she was surprised that it only translated into 15% of that number coming to her in world store as a result.  Based on my own experience with MP sales of my products plus my own shopping habits (when I shop...lol), I would say many MP shoppers, especially those who shop exclusively on the MP, rarely go to in world stores thus not being present to take the survey in the first place.

With this info, Deja's post went on to say that she used to devote more effort into inviting her MP customers to come check out her store inworld, and that, based on these figures, she plans to do so again.

 

 

 

 

[Deja Letov]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

"I disagree completely. I rarely find new stores via the marketplace. I am a huge in world shopper. In fact most of my MP sales are with stores I already know well. And obviously based on the survey that isn't true since they've stated specifically that they found me via other means".

 

Like I said, the vast majority of peeps who purchase things on The Marketplace don't even bother to go to the inworld store to take surveys or look at things on display or whatever. (But they still find merchants for the first time using The Marketplace). This is a fact that the Lindens can't stand (thinking that's the reason why the SL economy has stagnated) and it is understandable why they would continue to try to push propaganda to the contrary (in another futile attempt to get peeps to return to inworld overpriced shopping and particularly the prominent well known stores since they tend to be by far the most overpriced). ;-)

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Edit: I removed my long wall of text because I just noticed Czari pretty much said everything I was going to, no need to repeat. The only thing I will add is that your other statement saying people wouldn't come in world to "look at things on display or whatever" is totally wrong by a long shot. I get several messages per day by people asking "I saw so and so on the marketplace and was wondering if you have it rezzed in your store so i can see it in person before I buy  it." I hired 2 assistants who hang out in my shop to direct people to products because this happens that often. Spica, I get the feeling based on your posts, that you have an obvious dislike towards merchants. or at least against SL business in general..I think anyone who reads your posts can get that, I can tell you also don't like LL, but making statements just to be negative as many of your posts seem to do, with nothing to back them up is complete nonsense....about as much nonsense as replying to a post without having actually read it first to see that it isn't even trying to do what you think it's trying to do.

 

 

[Deja Letov]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

"Not really.  We each participate in the activities we enjoy in SL.  I'm not a shopper - shopping to be shopping bores me silly.  However, I enjoy games and challenges so hunts, for me, are a lot of fun".

 

Yes, I know. And I can see how it might be fun at times, but this goofy study is pushing ideas of inworld merchant finding/shopping preferences that are totally not valid. The only thing useful about the study might be the relative ratios of different methods for INWORLD merchant locating. Any idea that it is hard to find merchants via a Marketplace search that this study implies is pure nonsense.

Uhm ok...Again I say...have you actually read the intent of this survey? Obviously those who read the original post can see the only point was too track in world traffic so how exactly are in world results of an in world study totally not valid? And how does it relate to a marketplace search at all? I know I havent made any guesses as to how easy it is too find me via a marketplace search.

[Pamela Galli]

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Deja Letov wrote:

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 I get several messages per day by people asking "I saw so and so on the marketplace and was wondering if you have it rezzed in your store so i can see it in person before I buy  it." I hired 2 assistants who hang out in my shop to direct people to products because this happens that often. 

 

 

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OT but -- I just include the  inworld Slurl of each item, since there is a data field for it in the listing.