Commerce Team: What if we pay for extra shops?

[Madeliefste Oh]

When the marketplace was develloped the assumption was: 1 merchant = 1 shop. This was not conform how commerce had devellop in world, merchants can have several shops or several brands. Not only merchants with mulptiple brands don't fit in this concept, but also for shops who are run by more then 1 merchant the is current marketplace not accurate. 

In the time Grant and Brodsky Linden were working on the marking place, Grant promised the possibility to have several shops on the marketplace would be a future feature.
When we had to redo all our listings for the new marketplace I had to choose to use several alts to make it possible to have my brands per brand in one shop, or to list everything with my main avatar. With Grants promise in mind, I choose the latest, because it seemed only a matter of time before I was able to devide my merchandise per brand on the marketplace.

This is two and a half years ago now. Still nothing is done to make it possible for one merchant to catagorise products in several shops or devide shops to list for several brands.

Any change that money motivates you to work on this long time need? What if merchants pay to have one or more extra shop for their main avatar on the marketplace?

 

 

[mtwtfss71]

I, for one, would be willing to pay for this feature.

[Darrius Gothly]

What I'm going to say is conjecture, but is based on my analysis of how the Marketplace database is constructed, and more importantly, how the ancillary systems are written. (Specifically things like Direct Delivery.)

The SL Marketplace appears to use the Merchant Avatar UUID as the Primary Key (or as one field in a multi-field Primary Key) to all data tables in its database. Thus a single Avatar's UUID references every product uploaded and listed by that Avatar. There is no "Secondary Link" that would allow them to disconnect the Avatar UUID from all of the products.

In order to do what you want, they would have to add a layer of "abstraction". That means that instead of having the Avatar UUID as an integral part of each product listing, the UUID would instead link to a table of "Stores". Each store would then have its own ID, and then each product would have the Store's ID instead of the Avatar UUID.

Because the Marketplace is written on top of a third-party developed sales platform (Spree), that sort of database rearrangement would show up in virtually every function and module. Probably 80% to 90% were written by the developers of Spree and the Marketplace Devs have no clue what they do or how to modify them.

That sort of change would be roughly equivalent to adding a new ground floor to a 3-story building by cutting the existing floors loose from the foundation, jacking them up in the air, then building the new ground floor underneath them. Possible to do, but unless you are very familiar with every module and function, the likelihood of catastrophic failure in critical systems is just too astronomically high.

When you consider how the Merchant Outbox works, you can see that there are even more problems ahead there. As it works now, opening the Merchant Outbox automatically designates the destination Store because 1 Avatar = 1 Store. If they add the complexity of allowing 1 Avatar = 1+ Stores then you would also have to add an option to the Outbox that requires you to select the destination Store before uploading. Seeing as it took them more than a year just to do the initial development and the Merchant Outbox STILL doesn't work right 100% of the time, having them rewrite it to allow that extra option would I think cause mass expulsions of gray goo from their ears.

When Grant and Brodesky were working on the Marketplace in the beginning, I got the feeling that they had a "fair" understanding of Spree and the database underneath. But now that LL has lopped off the original developers and now has the current team in place, I think they are woefully short of anyone with any competent understanding of the database AND of the Spree system. In other words, they don't have enough expertise to attempt it, let alone accomplish it.

Bottom line? My advice is to bring out your Alts again, spend time moving your products back to your Alts so each one has a single store and product line ... and be content that you can do that. I'm willing to bet RL money in serious amounts (like more than two dollars) that even if you spent a year on the process, you would accomplish it far faster than if the Marketplace Dev Team undertook the process.

[Ela Talaj]

If you're correct in your understanding of the MP database architecture and I think you are, we would be looking at a major development to support an extra key even for a native system not to mention COTS. Modifying tables is a half of the deal. The whole DB would have to be re-optimized, that's another half. So I wouldn't hold my breath awaiting such a feature even though it would've indeed been useful.

[Darrius Gothly]

*sigh* I'm Sorry Madeliefste.

There are basically two "sides" to an application like Spree/Marketplace: The Buyer side and the Seller side. In the middle are the Products. Merchants (Sellers) can look at their Products from both sides whereas Customers (Buyers) see only one.

In order to set up Departments there would have to be some give and take. Mind you, the chances of getting the Marketplace Dev Team to do any work on the site is IMO less likely than me winning the Miss Universe contest, but let's examine things anyway. (Maybe if they read this and understand how to accomplish it .. they'll try?)

If as a Merchant you are willing to do without Departmental Accounting ... meaning you don't get any breakdown in sales figures or notifications or reports ... then it could be possible and relatively easy to accomplish. All that would be required is to add an additional field JUST to the Products database table. That field would be used to hold the new "Department" attribute. The best way to add it would be to make it a plain text field that Merchants could use to enter a Department Name into. When editing a product, the default Department Name would be something like "(none)", but if you've previously created a list of Department Names then the desired one could be chosen from the list.

This of course also requires adding a Departments data table and a web page to create and maintain your Departments. You should also be able to mark one of them as the default name for all Products that don't have a specific Department Name selected.

When viewing a Merchant's full Store, the Department Name would be an extra "Order By" clause in the database command that retrieves all your products. The Products would then be listed by whichever sequence they're using now THEN by Department Name, with Department Name being the top level sorting criteria. They *could* possibly add an extra set of selectors (such as you've shown with pushbuttons to select the Department), but by far the easiest change would just be to sort the Products list differently and include the Department Name as a section header or (easiest of all) an extra line of information in each product detail block. (That's another "Give" btw .. deciding how to display the Product Listings.)

On each Product Display page they could add an extra Link on the right-hand side. Whereas now it just says "Visit The Store", they could add one that says "Visit The ZZZ Department". That would then provide the same sort of Store Listing as it does now, except only those Products with "ZZZ" as the Department Name would be retrieved and presented. It would make sense of course to provide a link on the Department Listing page that expands the listing to the full Store, but that might be another "Give".

Basically it boils down to adding one field to the Products table, an extra web page to manage Department Names, some tweaks on the Product Edit page and a few more tweaks in the various listing pages. Overall it's a modification that *could* be easily accomplished in a month or less ... including the Software QA and validation process requirements. (I'd do it on one of my web sites in an afternoon, but that's a moot comparison when it comes to LL's development speed.)

With the above requirements, the Dev Team should be able to accomplish it. It won't cause a massive disruption of the Marketplace operation, could be pushed out without totally destroying sales for a week or two, and won't require intimate knowledge of the Spree/Marketplace system and software to accomplish. It's fairly close to the complexity involved in a change like adding the Mesh/Partial Mesh/No Mesh data they recently created.

But ... will they?

[Czari Zenovka]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

With the above requirements, the Dev Team should be able to accomplish it. It won't cause a massive disruption of the Marketplace operation, could be pushed out without totally destroying sales for a week or two, and won't require intimate knowledge of the Spree/Marketplace system and software to accomplish. It's fairly close to the complexity involved in a change like adding the Mesh/Partial Mesh/No Mesh data they recently created.

But ... will they?

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I would estimate probably around the time they get the "mixed listings" issue fixed.  :matte-motes-mad:

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

Mind you, the chances of getting the Marketplace Dev Team to do any work on the site is IMO less likely than me winning the Miss Universe contest, but let's examine things anyway.

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Never tried is lost on forehand. The chance is small, but still not ruled out.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

Mind you, the chances of getting the Marketplace Dev Team to do any work on the site is IMO less likely than me winning the Miss Universe contest, but let's examine things anyway.

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Never tried is lost on forehand. The chance is small, but still not ruled out.

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[Darrius Gothly]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

Mind you, the chances of getting the Marketplace Dev Team to do any work on the site is IMO less likely than me winning the Miss Universe contest, but let's examine things anyway.

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Never tried is lost on forehand. The chance is small, but still not ruled out.

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OMFG!! I have tears rolling down my face from laughing. HAHAHAH!! Oh good grief! Thank you Madeliefste ... that is just SO PRECIOUS! I think I have a new profile picture now. LMFAO!

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

! I think I have a new profile picture now.

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I did not realise the ambition to win that contest was so serious :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

[Darrius Gothly]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

! I think I have a new profile picture now.

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I did not realise the ambition to win that contest was so serious :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

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*GRIN* Oh, you have NO idea what dark and secret thoughts echo 'round inside the calcium orb that houses my wetware. *evil wink*

Mwaahahahahahaaaaa!!