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Any ideas on encouraging visitors to spend?


Loki Eliot
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I don't have a private island or any venue for that matter but I do visit places. How about a gift shop like in real life? You could sell souvenir clothing like hats or maybe some tchotkes, things for decorating one's house or interesting attachments to show to others. If you can manage it be sure that people end up at the gift shop at the end of the visit.

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People will drop some loose L$ in tip jars, but usually only small amounts, so it's tough to earn much that way.  If you sponsor live musical events, some people will tip the venue, but most people prefer to tip performers instead, so even there tips don;t earn much for you.  Also, people can always cam around and see what's in your sim (unless it's completely surrounded by water), so it's hard to charge admission.  You can script some things so that they only work if people pay, although I don't know of any successful business models like that in SL.  That really just leaves selling tangible goods, or renting space to creators who sell their tangible goods.  I don't know what's appropriate to your sim -- clothing, artwork, toys, vehicles..... -- but you ought to be able to work out a marketing scheme that is compatible with your sim's theme.

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Thanks for the ideas. Obviously land rental is still the best way to make tier for the land But I'm curious to know if anyone has successfully Encouraged spending from visitors. People will not need shops once LL release direct delivery from inventory so I'm reluctant to rely on shopping areas.

 

Paying for an experience is interesting idea that needs testing. would you mind visiting a place shown on destination guide to then have to pay L$100 to go inside the haunted house or enchanted forest? Has anyone got an example of this sort of thing working in SL?

 

 

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Loki Eliot wrote:

People will not need shops once LL release direct delivery from inventory so I'm reluctant to rely on shopping areas.

I can't see why that is likely.  Direct delivery from inventory will just affect the way a merchant's items are sent from Marketplace to the buyer.  As far as the buyer is concerned, it shouldn't look any different than it does now.  There will always be people (like me!) who prefer to shop in world instead of using Marketplace. 

 

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Well if you seem to be getting a fair amount of foot traffic your half way there like other have said depending on your Sim theme, rental spaces (even wall space rentals vendor type) Sky box rental (min 1 day cheap priced)   mini shop spaces in each corner of Simi get them walking around a bit.   A few games machines 10 would even do it.  Basically you have to collect all the aspects of SL that users have come into contact with to increase possible spending habits and therefore providing different kinds of entertainment that will appeal to different users.  Although shopping inworld has been blown out of the water by the web marketplace you may still find a decent inworld shop will do well just run with some ideas and build on that if it doesn't work just keep plugging away until you find one that does.  Go on a rekkie in SL with each idea and see how others are using that idea and see if their is room for improvement.   That's the fun part of setting up a profitable Sim good luck.

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Loki Eliot wrote:

Thanks for the ideas. Obviously land rental is still the best way to make tier for the land But I'm curious to know if anyone has successfully Encouraged spending from visitors. People will not need shops once LL release direct delivery from inventory so I'm reluctant to rely on shopping areas.

 

Paying for an experience is interesting idea that needs testing. would you mind visiting a place shown on destination guide to then have to pay L$100 to go inside the haunted house or enchanted forest? Has anyone got an example of this sort of thing working in SL?

 


While I make most of my sales on the Marketplace nowadays, I still make sales inworld too. There are enough people who prefer to shop inworld with friends that I would never consider closing my inworld store. I also rent vendor space in some high traffic places, mostly for product placement. It's cheap advertising, I don't really need to make sales there.

Other stores seem to use the same strategy. I run into the same logos of some larger adult brands in every sim that I visit, and I really can't imagine that they earn their rent back in all these locations. Like myself, they will probably make 70-80% of their sales on the Marketplace and the remaining 20-30% at their main store location. The rest is product placement meant to keep their brand logos in the back of everyone's heads. There is no reason why sim owners shouldn't cash in on that.

As for pay-per-visit... I don't know really. It's a very unusual concept for SL. People are used to buy content and visit locations for free. I doubt that anybody would pay for a ticket if they can just as well tp elsewhere.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

1)  Do you offer clothing that is suitable to the type of sim you are running, i.e., bikinis and beach related things if you have a beachy themed sim?

2)  Ask some Vendors to put up some fat packs.  Fat packs can be very afforable and tempting to buy that some can't resist :)

3)  Put free T-shirt in your club.  Or give out free t-shirts every once in a while that are different (some people like to collect t-shirts especially if cool, but make two styles of T-shirt 'cuz most women want a T-shirt that will fit to their curves), or offer free goodies every once in a while to keep them coming back.

4) Research top selling items on Marketplace and then talk to some of the top selling designers if they want to rent a booth from you at a good price say for a 2 to 3 week trial (low price rental) to see how their stuff sells there. 

 

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I'm not too sure people would pay 100 linden to go inside a haunted house or enchanted forest.  I sure wouldn't.  I'd teleport out of there right away. 

If sim owners start charging for entrance into any sim; SL will suddenly become a whole lot less laggy and soon a ghost town.  I'm not paying admission to any sim period and I'm sure a lot of peeps would feel the same way.  In short, no way. 

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Loki Eliot wrote:

Thanks for the ideas. Obviously land rental is still the best way to make tier for the land But I'm curious to know if anyone has successfully Encouraged spending from visitors.
People will not need shops once LL release direct delivery from inventory
so I'm reluctant to rely on shopping areas.

 


I agree with Rolig in what she said about this. This will only affect how items from the Marketplace is being delivered. Many people, myself included, prefer to go to stores in world to do my shopping. Not only do I get to see what else is on offer in the store, but I also get to see a few places I might not have seen otherwise.

I think the trick to get people to spend money is to sell things they want, of the quality they want:). Simple as that. Find out what people want, make it and tell people where to find it. This is obviously a bit more to it than that, but in essence that is what it takes.

- Luc -

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Although I personally try to eschew Marketplace purchases altogether, the fact remains that the Lab (foolishly) has been promoting Marketplace commerce over Land-based stores for the past couple of years.  It's had a very real effect, with many sellers now hosting only their Magic Boxes in-world -- and for those, direct inventory delivery will cut them free of the grid altogether.

There are some things that one would have to be a complete idiot to purchase except after trying or at least seeing them in-world.  Some subset of those are best experienced at the seller's location, rather than getting a demo unit poofed in from Marketplace.  (Vehicles are an obvious example, although there are vehicle merchants with in-world locations who don't offer demos -- a pretty sure sign that their products are intended for those aforementioned complete idiots.) 

Seems to me that the best current and future bet for in-world product sales, in light of  the Marketplace pressures, is with clusters of theme-related stores gaining from "foot traffic" drawn by sim-hosted experiences (events, etc.).  This is basically the RP sim "mall" model, although of course some do better than others at attracting / enforcing theme.

If, however, one wants to go the direction that the Lab is pushing with Marketplace, the future of Land is to be overwhelmingly residential, serving only as a place for people to rez their Marketplace purchases.  It's all rather depressingly retro, reverting to an era of the Montgomery-Ward catalog and strains of "The Wells Fargo Wagon" from The Music Man.

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Loki Eliot wrote:

Well they left, so i guess not very well. Although they may have left because they were perusing greater ideas that they could not do in SL Grid.

They left in one of the usual temper tantrums people have over random unwelcome changes by the lindens.

 

And I think you're part right that direct delivery will kill a lot of shops - and by proxy result in a lot more unsold land. LLs will see the money they make on tier drop through the floor when you don't even need a 16m spot with a magic box anymore.

There are people who like to shop inworld, but I suspect we're in the minority. When I got active in 2009 I'd always see other people when I went shopping - was a good way to meet people. Of late when I go shopping even to what seem like popular merchant's spots - I see only a few people here and there. The only exceptions being large places that don't use Marketplace like Bare Rose - but even there I see half of what I used to.

Marketplace has already dealed a viscious blow to the use of the actual Second Life platform - and removing the ability to need a presence inworld to run a place on Marketplace will just cripple things. You'll start seeing shops from people who don't even have avatars that have ever logged in (especially when Mesh comes along and more of the Renderosity/Daz3D crowd starts selling here).

 

So I think that pretty soon you're just going to accept that people won't spend money inworld. A model based on getting visitors to pay for anything is doomed.

LLs wants commerce in SL, but they don't actually want anyone to log into SL, and they don't seem to understand that without a world, there's no reason to buy anything.

 

 

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Loki Eliot wrote:

People will not need shops once LL release direct delivery from inventory so I'm reluctant to rely on shopping areas.



No one "needs" SL at all.

If direct delivery kills inworld stores, SL will lose a lot of its appeal -- for me, at least.

People who don't shop, people don't like shopping, just don't understand.

One thing you can't do on the Marketplace -- or can't do as easily as you can inworld -- is shop with other people.

 

But apart from that... if you are going to have stores on your sim, you could try to make it interesting to you.
If there are stores you love, maybe you could convince them to set up a small presence on your sim.
Places you wish other people knew about... you can pull a part of it to your sim.  Don't treat it like
an economic exercise. Try to find a way to really care about it and be happy you have those stores there.

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