The public beta of the Second Life Marketplace appears to be up and running. I had some concerns when the beta was confusingly announced. Are they valid? Here’s a brief tour and initial reactions. More will likely come when I’ve had a chance to digest more, unless others get there first.
- It is SL website bland, with the theme introduced with the “new look” website out in force. It’s not actually bad – just bland
- Pretty straightforward for the shopper:
- The search bar is at the top of the page (once you have logged in), and is hard to miss (there is an “include mature content” check box beneath it, which I assume will need to be enabled on a log-in by log-in basis)
- Shoppers can also take pot luck and click on the large “category” picture that updates periodically (so you can get a direct listing of clothing, furnishings, etc., according to the image displayed) – which I assume links to paid item listings, although I’ve not investigated this
- Or there is the Featured Items listing that scrolls along beneath the larger “category” picture
- A My Marketplace option at the top of the page provides access to an individuals account and – most importantly for creators, access to one’s “store” (what were “listings” in XSL).
As I sell through XSL, this store option was of primary interest for me. Clicking on it took me to a rather long-winded ToS page I that must be accepted before one can access one’s store the first time. Some terms here may well cause ripples among those taking the time to read them, such as clause 5.4, vis: License. When you submit Content, you remain the original copyright holder. However in doing so you also grant
Linden Lab a non-exclusive, world-wide, royalty-free, sublicensable right to exercise the copyright, publicity, and database rights you have in the Content. These rights allow us to promote, sell, and distribute your Content. While this is intended to indicate that merchants are giving permission to linden Lab to actually host their goods in order to be sold, the License does imply a lot more than that, particularly given the inclusion of the words worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable right to…., which given the angst around things like the TPVP and new SL general ToS may well cause gnashing of teeth as people take it to mean LL are claiming the right to sell what they like where they like (when in fact I would humbly suggest that the wording is intended to cover them should they opt to hive-off the Marketplace to one or more third parties to run on their behalf at some point).
There are other niggles within the ToS, which is the usual one-sided affair one tends to otherwise expect. However, I’m not going to get bogged down in minutiae here.
Once past the ToS page, one is confronted by something of a blank page, with a menu bar towards the top (beneath the banner) and a series of additional links down the left side of the page that mimic the top menu bar headings and include sublinks to the categories within each menu heading. Between them, these comprise:
- Inventory: add new items to your store; manage the items in your store, perform bulk uploads, manage something called “coupons” (coming soon!) and generate reports
- Orders: cancel a sale, redeliver an item and view transaction history – all of which intermittently and inconsistently kept flashing a “Coming soon!” pop-up at me when the Mouse hovered over them
- Reports: also appears to be “Coming soon!”
- Store Set-up: with Manage Assistants (“Coming soon!” ), Edit Store Information, Vacation Mode (Coming…you guessed it…), and View My Store
- Help Resources: with links to the Merchant’s wiki, etc.
Looking a little more closely at some of these:
Edit Store Information allows you to enter limited info about yourself and your store. The boxes are free text, so it’s up to you what you use them for (within ToS guidelines). There are also boxes for you to include a link to a website and to an in-world store SURL.
View My Store displays your listed goods in an XSL-style format (images, name, price), with some degree of configuration in terms of the number of items displayed on a page. & limited sort options. Bland to look at, but actually smarter than XSL’s View My Listings format. As with XSL, clicking on an item takes you to its sale page, which includes an OnRez-style Revise Your Item button at the top right.
Manage Inventory takes you to a clean (i.e. no images), paginated list of your goods, giving the name, number available, price, and options to Preview, Unlist and Edit. From here, Preview takes you to a Preview of a listing, similar to the image above, while Edit, rather unsurprisingly takes you to an editing screen where you can amend items….
The Edit page itself is vastly cleaned-up and easier to use than the old XSL – but is not without niggles. It would be nice, for example, that if a store SURL is entered in the Store Information page, it is by default carried over to all listings associated with the merchant. After all, the majority of people, I would guess, will have a URL to their flagship store – and having to re-enter the SURL over and over again seems to make a mockery of including it in the Info page (which is likely to be little-read. Of course, there will be some who’d like to send people to their different stores in-world – but by including a default, LL would save the majority additional copy/paste work.
I’d also like to see any website URL from the Store Info page carried over to individual listings, particularly as we’re limited to 2,000 character descriptions, so it would be nice to point to a web page where more info can be given.
A nice touch with the edit screen and the item display page is the inclusion of a FEATURES list, which appears on the finished listing as a tabbed item. This allows you to list specific features of the product for easy reference. Just a shame it is limited to 5 features, which really isn’t enough in this time of feature-rich products.
There are niggles, however: permissions set in XSL don’t appear to be carried over – all my listings came out as being set NO COPY, NO MOD, NO TRANSFER – so I had no option but to edit every single item and reset the permissions. Also, the price of feature listings are now recorded on a page of their own, rather than in the listing options themselves. This means one is has to inconveniently open up a separate page and check the prices rather than simply reviewing and selecting when creating a new listing.
I’m sure others will find more and have deeper views on the merchant side of things, but this is enough for now.
On the customer side of things, Search still seems as hit-and-miss as ever….but again, if my listings are anything to go by, people will have a lot of tweaking still to do, so sharper keyword usage may help.
The new shopping cart is liable to cause some angst. No more quick visits to XSL, find your item and click to purchase. Now you have to follow the “web standard” of dropping things into your cart and then going to the checkout…
This arrangement does have its advantages – especially when buying multiple items – but how many of us do? Be prepared for grumbles. Certainly, having more flexible payment options is a good step forward – but those paying in “real” currency, beware the hidden charges!
Overall, it’s not a bed attempt. Again, I really cannot see why they couldn’t allow so text formatting in the shape of BB code or even HTML formatting – or why animate gifs have been banned. Neither would do a lot to damage the new layout; indeed, one could argue they’d actually brighten what is otherwise a terribly flat, bland affair when browsing.
There is a lot still to be done, given this is only “Beta” – and I hope LL have learned their lesson with Viewer 2 and won’t suddenly start ramming SLM at all and sundry. Certain things do need fixing & explaining, such as the “find your fav stores inworld” link….which currently takes you to the SL sign-up page *Ahem*. There are also rather a lot of “coming soon” items – some of which I would have thought would be “here already”, given they are needed by merchants (transaction histories, as an example); but providing they come along before SLM is declared “fit for action”, they shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
ADDENDUM
Since starting this piece, I got sidetracked into fixing my own listings….as such I missed the emerging thread on the Beta, wherein several major issues I’d overlooked have been raised.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 