Poll - Direct Delivery: Folders or Boxed?

[Princess Verwood]

We all have to convert to direct delivery at some point. Prior to me starting I was talking to a friend who was going to keep her items boxed. I was telling her I was thinking of doing folders. This made me wonder what everyone else is doing.

Keeping the items boxed seems much easier, but on the other hand I can see where folders is more convenient for the customer. I created a quick poll about this because I'm sure others might be interested in seeing the results.

Take the poll here DD: Folders or Boxed Poll

It is set up to show results thus far after vote, but you can view results here. Hope it works!

[Darrius Gothly]

Took the poll. Back when they announced DD, I was planning on keeping things boxed. But with the "View Contents" feature, I've changed my mind. I'm going to eventually go with Folders .. when I can convert. Still waiting on ANS though.

[Nalates Urriah]

It is way easier for the custmer. So, it seems obvious one changes to folders.

Complex tools may do better sold in boxes. Or those things one wants to present in an awesome package. Some of the gift items might be nice in a pretty gift box.

But, anything that adds complexity for the customer tends to be a problem. Over time I expect using boxes to become more of a problem. Metaverse has some stats that show the avarage life of an SL user is 2 years. This means that some time before March 2014 the majority of users will not have seen boxed goods and will probably consider them a PITA.

 

[Perrie Juran]

On a related note I did this thread:

Why I Prefer Receiving My Purchases In Boxes Rather Than In Folders

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Why-I-Prefer-Receiving-My-Purchases-In-Boxes-Rather-Than-In/td-p/1455403

 

[Josh Susanto]

I suspect the whole survey is constructed with the intention of getting to you accept one question as already answered in order to answer another question.

Like when the beef industry polled teenage girls on "what kind of beef do you like to eat with your friends". 

[Toysoldier Thor]

I did the survey.  I will be staying with Boxed items.  I think its the more efficient method of managing my product for my customers as would be the case with merchant/creators that sell large packs of textures.

My customers are Master Builders / Landscapers that already have very large overwhelming inventories and having MP merchants arbitrarily dumping unboxed folders with 100's or 1000's of new inventory items is not fair.  By sending my customers the boxed pack.... if they wish to unbox my pack and expand their inventory or if they leave it boxed and only pull out the sculpty maps they need during building.... I give the power of that decision to them.

But unboxing my packs and selling them to my customers as folders with a large number of sculpty maps and textures etc, takes this decision away from the Customer.  Merchants that unbox into folders are making decisions on behalf of their customers when their customers may not want it unboxed.

Unboxing into folders might be a good idea for clothing or immediate use products but not for what I sell.

[Calamari]

Before DD all my marketplace items were boxed and all my inworld were in folders, I never once had a customer complane or praise one or the other.  Yester day I had to do an update and it was much quicker not having to unbox and then rebox it.  For complex copy mod items or large collections of textures I pack them  them in a folder with a back up box included, that way people can use it right away and have a back up at the same time with out any extra effort.   I all so like having my items in folder in my inventory I find it much quicker to deal with customer service.

[JeanneAnne]

When i was new to sl i thot the boxed objects was very confusing. The drag -> open -> take thing seemed unnecessarily complicated & bizarre. I was always forgetting how it worked & wearing the box, or id forget to take the box & id get an irate im about leaving my 'junk' laying around. Id end up w/ multiple copies of stuff in my inv cuz everytime i took something itd duplicate itself. By now im use to all this but it still seems quirky & unnecessary. Just another example of how sl isnt very user friendly to the noob. Then they wonder why retention rate is so low ...

Jeanne

[Ilyra Chardin]

I guess folders.  That part doesn't really concern me.  The notion of putting something into an outbox folder and having it disappear is more disconcerting.  

my 2 cents (L$5)

[Madeliefste Oh]

Actually I planned to leave all in boxes. I didn't want to do the extra work of unpacking for the only reason that LL thinks it is more handy for newbies to get folders. But since I saw that marketplace can show the content that is in the folder, I changed my mind. It is important information for the customer, what the content of a product is. You can write it down in your listings, but the possibility for the customer to check for himself and see each permission on every single part of the product, is nice additional information that I want to offer to my costumers.

I have all my items in DD now, and 90% of them are in folders. The 10% that is still in boxes are items that need land to be rezzed anyway. Apart from that, the objectname is exactly the same as the box name, and the permission is also the same. So in that case unpacking doesn't give anything extra, I will leave it like that.

[Arwen Serpente]

My store had 400 items to migrate..they are in boxes.

I prefer to receive my purchases in boxes so I always have a backup. I also prefer them to keep my inventory to a managable size. I'll see how it goes in the future with regard to listing folders in the future.

[Josh Susanto]

>I did the survey. 

In that case, please note that I do, in fact, apologize for the comment rather than suddenly accusing you of being Malefactor Linden.

I still think you're encouraging people to get ahead of themselves, and I still think it's a bad idea.

But I do not find your motives to be suspect after all your previous contributions here.

I AM SORRY.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Arwen Serpente wrote:

My store had 400 items to migrate..they are in boxes.

I prefer to receive my purchases in boxes so I always have a backup. I also prefer them to keep my inventory to a managable size. I'll see how it goes in the future with regard to listing folders in the future.

---

Ditto for me, both for backup and keeping inventory more manageable.

All of us had to learn how to unbox items at some point when we began SL and probably many of us wore boxes on our hands before we learned. (My first two days in SL had me wearing a very unusual hat - an Alpine Lodge!  I finally ran into someone who advised me on how to remove it.  It did provide an interesting bit of RP, though.  I was still wearing my new, errrr, chapeau when I was invited by a friend to a RP sim.  I arrived to find my friend conversing with another person to whom he wished to introduce me.  Without blinking an eye, the second person said, "That is a most unusual hat, M'Lady.  Is that the tradition where you come from?"  It made a most embarrassing situation more lighthearted.)

Although I do acknowledge that some products, clothing comes to mind, may be more convenient to receive in a folder, as has already been noted, other products are more amenable to being boxed.  I can't believe that newcomers to SL can't learn about boxes as we did.

[Sassy Romano]

Since "folders" is only a feature of Marketplace, inworld scripted vendors and even prims selling content will continue to sell boxed content so the question is somewhat moot.

Now if LL opened up the API that DD uses to LSL that would change things around but right now, there's little benefit from the perspective of claiming it to be "newbie friendly".

I do support the notion of folders though, some outfits comprise many parts that could be logically grouped per piece  but when the same merchant sells the same item inworld, back to square one.

[Josh Susanto]

OK, I'll take the poll.

I'm sticking with boxes because they will make remigration easier. 

[Rya Nitely]

 I voted for folders.

My inworld vendors are set to 'Buy Contents'. As a customer I've always breathed a sigh of relief when a vendor is set to buy contents and my purchase ends up neatly in a folder. I like it when the first thing I rez is the item I purchased, and not a box.

The additional benefit of seeing contents and perms under the contents tab is a plus too.

Only problem with Contents Tab is that if you have an item set as COPY MOD and you have a script or animation that is no mod (to the seller) then the item in the contents list will appear as COPY only, and customers might think the item is no mod. It would be great if we had the ability to override this.

 

[Zanara Zenovka]

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

 

Only problem with Contents Tab is that if you have an item set as

COPY MOD

and you have a script or animation that is no mod (to the seller) then the item in the contents list will appear as

COPY

only, and customers might think the item is no mod. It would be great if we had the ability to override this.

 

---

 

We did before, when you could just specify perms in your own words. Displaying perms of non-rezzed objects that have contents is pointless, and just one of the things about this design that has much greater cost than benefit.

[Darrius Gothly]

They "sort of" provided that, by including a "See Description" checkbox in the Permissions selector. I know it doesn't work the SAME as before, but it's closer.

[Rya Nitely]

See Description? I don't see how that helps. 

My items are Copy Mod so when I list an item I want to choose Copy Mod. Why would anyone with standard Copy Mod items select 'See Description' when listing items.

I'm talking about the new Contents Tab. Nothing to do with what you select when listing an item.

Ask Zanara to explain it to you, she understood the problem

Darrius, you really don't have to come up with an answer or 'sort of' answer to every single problem here. You can just move on if you don't know. 

but thans anyway for trying to be helpful I guess

 

[Jarnz Dench]

---

Zanara Zenovka wrote:

Displaying perms of non-rezzed objects that have contents is pointless, and just one of the things about this design that has much greater cost than benefit.

---

Yeah this has gotten me rather POed and spoke out about it back in the old Office Hours days asI knew it was going to be agressive and only show the permissions that are common to every bit of content and the object as a whole, glad they didn't add the Script Count idea they had at the same time.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Rya Nitely wrote:

See Description? I don't see how that helps. 

My items are Copy Mod so when I list an item I want to choose Copy Mod. Why would anyone with standard Copy Mod items select 'See Description' when listing items.

I'm talking about the new

Contents Tab

. Nothing to do with what you select when listing an item.

Ask Zanara to explain it to you, she understood the problem

Darrius, you really don't have to come up with an answer or 'sort of' answer to every single problem here. You can just move on if you don't know. 

but thans anyway for trying to be helpful I guess

 

---

I understood what you were talking about .. I was pointing out their "solution" to the problem. I remember being able to specify unique attributes (perms, prim counts) for products with multiple items of import on XStreet. That's one "feature" of XStreet that they did not understand when they coded MP. Everything in MP is based around the "one product, one item" model. XStreet understood that a fair number of products often have several items that need to be specified and described via the "standard" details.

[LillyBeth Filth]

If I am to  understand this, I have to transfer 3700 boxed up texture packs into folders... we have about 30 customised versions of the black box containing all of these so we have to rez every single box drag the contents to our manager account (TRU Timeless) Outbox folder?

We had to write a program to get them all set up into boxes in an automated manner, placed onto the SLMP with the keywords for each texture collection and  now I guess we will have to write another program that will undo all of that and put them back into folders...(?) Great...can't wait.

I personally have 400 texture collections all boxed up in my 3 black boxes which I will do manually....cant wait!

This direct delivery is not for the benefit of merchants that I can see... it wouldn't be TOO bad if it was optional as in "boxed or folders"

Nightmare

[LillyBeth Filth]

ahh so you do have the option of leaving them in boxes?  I have just watched the Torley video which demonstrates how to take the boxed up items from  the black boxes, then empty each one into your inventory and then drag that folder into the Merchant Outbox etc...I was nearly weeping...lol....close to 4000 SLMP listings.

[conrad Evanier]

Lol its a lot easier than people think realy all you have to do is drop your items into your market out box and send them they CAN STAY boxed if you like, i have sent all mine boxed as i didnt want to un pack them and why should you theres no need to over complicate things.  Im just sending new products unboxed to try it out . Im likeing the new way to do this as you dont have to go and drop stuff into your magic box i for 1 am glad to see them burn lol

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

LillyBeth Filth wrote:

If I am to  understand this, I have to transfer

3700

boxed up texture packs into folders... we have about 30 customised versions of the black box containing all of these so we have to rez every single box drag the contents to our manager account (TRU Timeless) Outbox folder?

We had to write a program to get them all set up into boxes in an automated manner, placed onto the SLMP with the keywords for each texture collection and  now I guess we will have to write another program that will undo all of that and put them back into folders...(?) Great...can't wait.

I personally have 400 texture collections all boxed up in my 3 black boxes which I will do manually....cant wait!

This direct delivery is not for the benefit of merchants that I can see... it wouldn't be TOO bad if it was optional as in "boxed or folders"

Nightmare

---

As conrad already said, you dont HAVE to unbox your packs and in fact as I mentioned earlier in this thread, your business / product would be a perfect example of when a merchant WOULD NOT unbox their products to folders.

My packs only have 30 to 40 items in their contents and I am also NOT going to unbox my products to folders.  It doesnt make sense.  For a builder, its nice to have texture and sculpty map packs kept in a single themed box and only pulled out when they need it. 

It also makes it easier for me as a Merchant to support my customers with after sales service.  I have had several situations where a customer has contacted me with some issue where I needed to send him / her another instance of my pack... all I do is give him the one box.  It also keeps things consistent as my inworld store sells and distributes my packs as the exact same boxes that my MP store delivers.

So.... you dont have to and I would strongly advise you DONT unbox your texture packs.  Keep selling them as boxed packs.