Brooke Linden

The deploy this morning contained a much asked for feature by merchants: the ability to sort listings within a store. Here are some highlights: Any unsorted listings will continue to be sorted by relevance. Listings will be updated to be in the format 1, 2, 3, 4 (i.e. if you saved as 1, 8, 10, 14) If you have a listing at a particular position, for example, spot 2, and you make another listing set to spot 2, it will take the place of the old listing and the old number 2, along with everything after it, will be incremented by 1. Merchant/store search results will display the first 3 General listings based upon sort order (which will default to relevance if no General listings are explicitly sorted) Of course the big question is where do I go to set set order? In the Merchant Admin, under “Store setup”, select “Sort products in store”. Note that once you have updated the sort order, you must click “Update” to save the new sort. Please let us know if you see any issues by filing a JIRA or contacting Customer Support. Thank you! Brooke 

Hi all, Thanks to everyone for all the feedback, questions and discussion. I have updated the FAQ with clarifications and additional questions. Note that I have not addressed all questions that have come up in this thread--we'd like to be further along on the implementation and testing process before we share more details on how Direct Delivery will work. As stated in the FAQ, we plan to have this information out to the Merchant community no later than 2 weeks before the Beta launches. In order to make it easier to identify what's changed in the FAQ, here are the new questions/clarifications that have been added (not counting minor wording changes). I’m concerned about unboxed items arriving in my inventory and inflating the size. Have considerations been made to sync performance and potential inventory loss issues? Yes. For products listed on the Marketplace using Direct Delivery, the number of objects per folder will be limited. This will require Merchants selling large numbers of object in the same listing to box objects within their folder hierarchy. What does no copy item mean? It means the item is no copy for the merchant selling the item. Will Merchants need to keep adding 1 unit to no copy item listings each time 1 unit sells? No. We have simplified this process and created a mechanism for combining units that Merchants may choose to use. Will it be communicated to consumers whether an item will be delivered boxed or unboxed? Yes, a mechanism will be provided to allow Merchants to communicate this information to the purchaser. Will a viewer update be required to view and access contents of the incoming and outgoing folders? No. These folders will appear as system folders under the root inventory folder on viewers that do not treat these folders as special. Will Third-Party Viewers need to use the new API to support Direct Delivery? Not for receipt of items delivered by Direct Delivery. If Third-Party Viewers want to treat the incoming and outgoing folders as regular system folders, no development will be required. The API will only be required for listing items on the Marketplace. When will changes to Direct Delivery start appearing in production? Direct Delivery changes will be deployed when the Beta is launched--no Direct Delivery changes will be released before that time. Will Magic Boxes always be available? Eventually Magic Boxes will be retired, but no firm date has been set. We have identified success metrics and merchant confidence levels that will need to be met before we set dates for this step. Brooke

Thanks, Tatiana--very strange. The link is working for me fine logged in and logged out. Is this still happening for you? Thanks! Brooke

Hi all, As you may have seen on the blog, the Search Team has made a project viewer with the new search available for you all to try out. Search has been completely re-designed on both the front end and back end. For more information and to try it out, please take a look at the blog post. While you are free to comment on this forum post, the best place to send your feedback is using the feedback link at the top of the new search page. Brooke

Hi all, We've just posted the Direct Delivery FAQ to the wiki. (I've also commented on this in the May update thread.) Please post any questions/comments to this thread. Note that, at this time, the main questions addressed will be clarification of the data already communicated in the FAQ. I'll check back on Monday, May 23, 2011 for questions/comments and will follow up that week. Brooke

As promised, here are the answers to the questions posted on this forum thread. As an FYI to you all, I will typically group all responses together for this kind of informational post. If there is a time sensitive issue requiring Linden Lab involvement, I or another Linden will do our best to add a response in a timely manner. Can you add a “color” field to Marketplace listings? This is a great idea. It’s now in our backlog. Are Beta Testers under NDA? Yes, they are. Beta testers are currently allowed to share that they are in the program if they would like, but that is all for the time being. Once the Beta begins, they will be able to share additional information. Is this mid-May update on Direct Delivery the one originally promised at the end of April? Yes, it is. Here is the link to the Direct Delivery FAQ. Can you explain why all the links for items on our dashboards in the "Shop" and "Merchant Tools" categories all just go to the Marketplace homepage? Because there is a bug. This is tracked under WEB-3641. I am sure there will be questions on the Direct Delivery FAQ. At this point, clarification of information communicated on the FAQ will be provided, so feel free to add questions to this thread. I'll check back on Monday, May 23, 2011 for questions/comments and will follow up that week. Brooke

The deploy this morning contained a couple of changes: New merchant navigation bar Fix for marking undelivered orders as failed Please let us know if you see any issues by filing a JIRA or contacting Customer Support. Thank you! Brooke

It’s May and time for an update on what is happening with the Marketplace. We continue to focus on our top goals, as follows: Ensure quick and reliable delivery of items purchased on the Marketplace (Direct Delivery) Increase the number of shoppers (and GMV) through improved discoverability (search and promotions) and a simple, intuitive experience Month in Review In the April Marketplace Update, we tracked some metrics related to maturity. We have seen no significant trend up or down in these metrics during the month of April (a less than 5% overall trend up or down for GMV for each maturity rating). In April, we tested the Dash Deal promotional program. Though we did see some positive results from the first two Dash Deals, we hit some technical limitations which made management of the program inefficient. As a result, we have discontinued the program. In order to support goal #2 above, we shipped a couple of user interface changes. We added some new search options: store/merchant search and search within a store. We’ve had some suggestions for improvements on this feature. We’ll be folding feedback into a survey that we will use identify iterative changes we can make to the new search options. Additionally, we added a join button for users that are not logged into the Marketplace. As many of you know, we had two instances of significant item delivery issues during April. We worked to restore delivery in both of those cases and rolled out a fix for the underlying problem. Direct Delivery Direct Delivery is an engineering initiative that will improve the reliability of Marketplace deliveries. Currently no Direct Delivery changes have been deployed to the production environment. During the month of April, we solicited merchant applications for the Direct Delivery Beta Program and had a great response. We selected 50 merchants and will be getting the program kicked off this month. Merchants were notified via email on April 29, 2011. If you applied and did not get an email, please check your spam folder. One of the first tasks the Beta Merchants will have is to review an FAQ on Direct Delivery, which will be posted by mid-May. Originally, this was planned for late April. In order to release more complete and accurate information, we delayed this until mid-May. The current schedule still has us on target to go to Beta at the end of June/early July. We expect the Beta period to last for a couple of months before Direct Delivery is available to all merchants. What’s Next? Our primary focus during the month of May will be to get Direct Delivery ready for the Alpha phase, which will occur during the month of June. This will be a private test period for Beta Merchants only. In addition, we will continue to work on improving the new search functionality, based upon survey feedback. We will also be adding the ability to sort the items in your store--which will then be used to display product images on the merchant/store search results page. Questions? If you have questions on this update, please submit them on this thread by the end of day on May 16, 2011. Questions will be reviewed and addressed during that week. Brooke

The deploy this morning contained the following changes: Listing enhancements: fixes for double billing and failure to charge for renewals Merchant’s name on store profile now links to merchant’s Second Life profile Please let us know if you see any issues by filing a JIRA or contacting Customer Support. Thank you! Brooke

We delayed the release that was planned for this morning to address the delivery delays. Since this release includes a fix that would have helped to prevent the problem we were seeing, we re-scheduled the release and deployed this afternoon. Here are the items included in the release. Scalability fix to improve performance of the process that manages deliveries Join button is shown to users who are not logged in Additional search options (see below) As you’ll see on the Marketplace home page, there are now additional search methods. Item search: The original search capability, unchanged. Merchant/Store search: Allows users to find Merchants and Stores whose names match the search keyword.  Search results include the Merchant name, Store name, and the first 3 General products in the store. Search within store: Shown only when viewing a Store, this method allows users to restrict their keyword searches to products within that store. Please let us know if you see any issues by submitting a JIRA or a Customer Support ticket. Feedback is welcome on the Search changes as well--please respond to this thread. Thanks! Brooke

These are separate fields. In the first one, put "Marketplace". In the next one (which will appear after you have selected "Marketplace"), select "General Marketplace Issues". Brooke

At this point, we have processed all delayed orders, and order status on the Marketplace should reflect the state of the order. You may still see some lag in receiving email, but those should arrive shortly. If, as Toysoldier Thor comments, you are seeing items as delivered and paid for, but the customer has not received the item in world, please file a support ticket so we can investigate. During the investigation this a.m., we learned that a fix that was scheduled to be deployed this morning would have helped prevent the delivery delays. Because of the problem, we had to postpone the deploy to occur after the issue was resolved. This release will be going out this afternoon between 2 and 3 p.m. SLT. There will be no down time with this release. One other question that has come up concerns negative reviews received due to failed deliveries. Please flag the review using the link provided below the review comments, and these will be removed from your listing if the failure is due to a technical problem with the Marketplace. Thanks for your patience. Brooke

Marketplace is currently experiencing delays in delivery and delays in order status updates on the Marketplace. Here are 2 situations you might see: Orders on the Marketplace may still be in a “Queued”, “Undelivered” or “Being Delivered” state and no items have been delivered. Orders on the Marketplace may still be in an “Undelivered” or “Being Delivered” state and items have been delivered. In both cases, there is a delay: orders will continue to be delivered and Marketplace order status will be updated to reflect this, after a delay. We are actively working to fix this issue and will post an update when it has been resolved. For those of you with customers who purchased multiple times, Linden Lab will refund the amount of your commission on refunded orders. The following requirements must be met for the commission refund to occur: The customer has attempted to purchase the same item(s) in multiple orders after experiencing a delay in delivery and has asked for a refund on all but one of the orders. As a merchant, the full order amount or purchase price of the item purchased more than once must be refunded. Submit a ticket on the web as a “Marketplace/General Marketplace Issues” ticket. Please include the order number and item(s) that were ordered more than once, along with the copy of the entry from your L$ Transaction Log showing the refund or refunds. We do apologize for these failures and are working actively to correct this and to prevent it from happening in the future. Brooke Update post is here. Excerpt: One other question that has come up concerns negative reviews received due to failed deliveries. Please flag the review using the link provided below the review comments, and these will be removed from your listing if the failure is due to a technical problem with the Marketplace.

I just wanted to add a quick response to one of the posts on delivery failures/delays. The development team has been actively working on this. Once the issue has been resolved, we'll remove the alert message on the site. Thank you for your patience. Brooke

We have cleared out the items that were waiting to be delivered. If you are still seeing issues, please let us know by contacting customer support or filing a JIRA. Thank you! Brooke

I just wanted to let people know that the Marketplace team is aware of and currently working on this issue. I'll post an update once it is resolved. Brooke

Everyone loves a great deal, right? So, we’re introducing a new test program called “Dash Deals.” During this test, we will be running one Dash Deal per week, for the next five weeks. Dash Deals will provide Second Life Marketplace shoppers with the opportunity to purchase a specific virtual item for 24 hours at a 50% discount or more. Hand-picked by the Linden team from Merchant submissions, these products highlight the creativity and variety of products available to Marketplace shoppers. We hope that you enjoy our selections and take advantage of the deals! And, if the test goes well, then you can expect to see more Dash Deals beyond the test period. Here’s How to Score a Dash Deal We’ll alert Second Life shoppers when the Dash Deal is available on Facebook, Twitter, and in a weekly email. Just click on the SL Marketplace link provided, take a look at the Dash Deal item, and snap it up while it’s still available. Today’s Dash Deal is an alluring couture gown offered at L$440 (originally L$880). But hurry—this deal only lasts for 24 hours! Keep an eye out on Facebook and Twitter for the official “Dash Deal” badge—and you could score a deep discount on some of the best virtual goods on Marketplace. Happy shopping! Update (April 26, 2011) There have been some additional questions regarding the Dash Deal emails, and we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few points. Although Dash Deals last for a day, they will only happen once a week for the next 4 weeks. For those who don't want to receive weekly Dash Deal emails, just "unsubscribe" using the link in the email. However, this will mean that you are unsubscribing from all optional Second Life emails. I hope that this clarification is helpful and get ready for the next Dash Deal, scheduled for April 27, 2011. Update (May 6, 2011) We have decided to discontinue the Dash Deal program. This decision was not made lightly and is due to several factors, including technical limitations which made the management of the program inefficient. We expect to test other programs of this type in the future, once we have resolved these issues.

As many of you know, the SL Marketplace has been working for several months on Direct Delivery (formerly AIS Delivery) to replace Magic Boxes. We’re nearing the end of the process and need to identify a group of Merchants who can help us get the rest of the way there by participating in a Beta program. What’s involved with a Beta program? We’ll be asking you to use Direct Delivery (in both test and production environments) and solicit your feedback. For more details, see the application. What time commitment does this program require? You’ll need to be able to spend several hours a week trying things out, providing feedback, filing bugs, and finding problems that are hard to anticipate in a regular test environment. You’ll also need to be available for occasional in-world meetings during extended PST working hours. The Beta plan involves the following phases: Usability Feedback: Our initial meetings will be to solicit feedback on user interaction as both a Merchant and a Shopper. Alpha: During the Alpha phase, Merchants participating the in the Beta program will be given access to a test server loaded with copies of their production data. During this phase, participants will be expected to try out typical Marketplace Merchant activities and see if they can come up with a few unusual scenarios to expose bugs before anyone uses Direct Delivery in production. We expect the Alpha period to last 1-2 months. Beta: This will be the first production testing of Direct Delivery. Beta merchants will be asked to list more and more of their new and existing products using the Direct Delivery method. Listings that use Direct Delivery will be identified so customers are aware of the change. The delivery location for each item will be communicated to the customer. Customers will be able to purchase an item using Magic Box Delivery and Direct Delivery in the same order. This Beta period will last 1-2 months. Launch: All merchants will be able to designate newly listed items for Direct Delivery or to migrate existing items to Direct Delivery. If you’d like the chance to provide input into the next delivery system for the Marketplace, please fill out this application by April 19, 2011, noon SLT. We are limiting the program to a small number of participants, so not everyone who submits an application will be able to participate.

Today’s deployment includes the following changes: Set default maturity correctly for users whose maturity preference is not explicitly set in the Viewer Listing enhancements are not auto-renewed if the item is unlisted or there is no inventory CSV download now works for non-Engilsh locales Search button visible with all browser font sizes Updated help links now point to the new community platform On Monday, our ad server fixed the SSL issue. Please let us know if you see any issues with the above. Thank you! Brooke

The JIRA was prematurely closed. We're still working with our ad server to get this resolved. Apologies for any confusion. Brooke

Thanks for the forward, Blondin. Yes, we do have a certificate issue with our ad server that we are working with them to resolve. The JIRA was erroneously closed--I've re-opened. We are working to get this fixed as quickly as possible. Brooke

Just adding a post for those who are subsribed via RSS. I've edited the second post on this thread to include updates from the inworld User Group. Brooke

Here are the updates on top items form the User Group Survey : Inventory Delivery/Sync: Direct Delivery is the area of primary work by the development team. As indicated in the above post, work on documentation, a Beta Plan, and implementation work are all in progress. Expect more detail mid to late April. This project is still on target to deploy during Q2. Marketplace Search: As can be seen above, search is the main priority besides Direct Delivery. Reporting/History: While we believe analytics and reporting are a critical add to the system, we’d rather approach it more holistically with your input vs. piecemeal at the cost of the priorities. As a result, we will be revisiting this once Direct Delivery has been rolled out. Store Management: Along with Reporting/History, store management is a way that we can help you run your Marketplace businesses more efficiently and effectively. We will revisit along with Reporting/History. Store Customization: Some store customizations may contribute to improving discoverability--those will be addressed in the short term. For example, the ability for merchants to sort listings in their stores has a high priority on our backlog of feature requests. Brooke Hi all, Here is the additional data from the User Group Meeting today. Questions in this thread were addressed, and you can see them in the User Group transcript. One thing of note that I announced during the User Group, is that I am putting these meetings on hold for the time being. I think that using the forums is a more effective way to reach a broader group of people. The data is consolidated into one spot, time zone is not an issue, and no one has to wait for me to type. :-) We'll be trying this out and see how it goes. I'll solicit feedback after a couple of months have passed. Brooke

Hi all, Here is the promised April Update for the Marketplace. Please read and submit questions at the end--or bring your questions to the April User Group. Month in Review: Metrics March experienced an expected seasonal dip and some shift in purchase dynamics resulting from the maturity related changes. Here’s high level what we’ve seen: A downward seasonal trend in the growth of General and overall GMV -- common during this time of year. An increase in Adult sales. Daily GMV in adult products nearly doubled over the course of the month. A decrease in Moderate sales.  Since inception, Moderate goods have accounted for less than 5% of GMV, so while the net effect is minor, we have seen a decrease--nearly 30% in daily Moderate goods GMV (please note that this decrease has not been normalized against the seasonality). The Marketplace is still on track to exceed last month’s GMV (excluding money raised for Japanese tsunami donations).  Especially in light of the expected seasonal changes, the Marketplace continues to grow at a rapid pace. In addition to these overall metrics, we have seen comments on the forums about outlying merchant drops in revenue. For some, we expect to see this level out more for merchants who have been affected by a bug we discovered last week: preferred viewer maturity is not correctly pulled into the Marketplace for a small percentage of users. We plan to deploy the fix the week of April 4, 2011. As you’ll see below, we are spending time improving search (a common merchant request) as well as writing up some additional documentation to help guide merchants when listing items in relation to Marketplace Search. (Similar to the search Second Life Search Guidelines.) Please do note that the only changes in search and ranking behavior made during the month of March were related to Maturity. What’s next on Marketplace? We have two objectives driving how we prioritize work on the marketplace and overall merchant experience: Ensure quick and reliable delivery of items purchased on the Marketplace (Direct Delivery, which is what we will be calling AIS delivery moving forward) Increase the number of shoppers (and GMV) through improved discoverability (search and promotions) and a simple, intuitive experience Any urgent issues will change prioritization, so I’ll only be communicating target time frames.  If, for example, some percentage of new users are not able to log in to Marketplace, other items will get delayed due to this urgent need for a fix. As development work continues on Direct Delivery, the first objective above, we will be working on the Beta Plan and more detailed documentation on what exactly Direct Delivery is (including an FAQ--which will include answers to common questions). Feedback points will be identified as part of the Beta plan. Expect to hear more about this in mid to late April. As for the second objective, increasing the number of shoppers (and GMV), here’s what the development team is planning to work on over the next 2 to 3 months: Search related work: Evaluation of best selling sort order to determine what changes may need to occur and when. Additional search options (search within a store, search by merchant/store name). Continued work to ensure search has minimal downtime if a failure occurs (so people can always find Merchant products), as well as improving logging for future search evaluation. Usability and Conversion Improvements: we recently completed some usability tests on Marketplace, and we will review those findings to identify simple changes which will help shoppers successfully complete their purchases.  Update on Marketplace Promotions What are typical Marketplace Promotions and why run them? Promotions typically highlight one or more product listings on Marketplace with a goal of acquiring new shoppers on Marketplace and re-engaging previous shoppers on Marketplace. The overall goals, both of which grow GMV, are as follows: increase the number of shoppers on the Marketplace increase the amount of money those shoppers spend on Marketplace For example, with the Valentine’s Day Linden Bears, we saw many first time buyers purchase a bear. In addition, shoppers who purchased a bear spent more money on Marketplace in the few weeks after the promotion than they had prior to the promotion. We’ve got a new test promotion coming up soon, the Dash Deal. We’re trying this out to determine if this model makes sense for the Marketplace. We have high hopes that it will. If the program is successful, we will consider adding this functionality to the Marketplace. If it isn’t successful, that is good information as well; it will help us when identifying future promotional models to increase the number of shoppers and shopper-spend. Our engineering resources are not involved in this test and remain focused on higher priority issues, as indicated above. User requested topics will follow in a response to this post. Thank you all for reading. Please submit questions as responses to this thread or bring them with you to the April User Group. The User Group will focus on a topic at a time with time left at the end for general questions. Responses and the transcript will be posted back to this thread. Thanks and hope to see you all at the User Group! Brooke

We had a light release today. Our advertising vendor has moved to a new platform, so we have updated Marketplace to point to the new ad server. Please let us know if you see any issues. Thanks, Brooke