May 2024 SL Web User Group summary

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday May 1st, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and / or text.
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Marketplace Infrastructure Update

• The Marketplace infrastructure update has been completed, although the work did lead to a few “bumps” and some rapid bug fixes. However, the Marketplace team believe things should be running “just fine now”.
  • If any Merchant is experiencing issues with list / updating items, etc., then it is requested they raise a Canny report through the Feedback Portal.
• As a result of this work, the Marketplace should be a lot more responsive in terms of page loading, etc., and the work also opens the door to the Lab adding a “lot of cool features” to the MP.
• Garfield Linden noted that the focus on MP work now is making it “mobile-friendly and making improvements to Marketplace search”.

General Discussion

• Sntax Linden indicated that the request to allow people to be able to Gift items directly from the Marketplace without having the item transferred to their Shopping Cart is “high” on the list of updates for the MP, but will not be available “soon”.
• There have been multiple requests for users to be able to have more wish lists / favourites lists, both public and private. Requests to go with additional lists were also given, including:
  • Provision of sort filters added (e.g. newest first / oldest first)
  • Ability to search lists for items previously added to a list.
  • Ability to give lists custom names / create custom lists (e.g. by selecting items in another list / the Shopping Cart and use them to create a new wish / favourite list).
  • General load time improvements (for those with very large lists).
  • An ability to move items more easily between different lists (e.g. from the Shopping Cart to a favourites or wish list, or between wish lists if there are multiple lists available, etc.).
  • All of these were seen as potentially “good ideas” for improving the functionality and usability of lists within the MP.
• A further request was made for Merchants to be able to respond to poor ratings and / or purchasers to be able to message Merchants through the MP – particularly to help where people have made a purchase and are confused about something and needs a little assistance.
  • A messaging system was seen as particularly beneficial for Merchants who get their IMs capped, as it provides a further channel to track comments and requests, making it potentially easier to help provide customer service support / mitigate bad reviews that are based on misunderstandings.
  • Sntax  suggested this could be handled via a prompt / link could be added to the review option (e.g. “do you need assistance with the items? Contact me by clicking here”).
  • This suggestion was seen as potentially However, there was some opposition to making any message option that “hidden”.
  • Instead, a preference was expressed for a proper messaging system – button, form, an “inbox” for the Merchant to receive messages (rather than them going to e-mail, although this should be offered as an option), etc., – all of which would take significant resource to supply.
• The above led to a broader request to make it possible for anyone to reply to a review – so even if the creator of a product does not reply, someone who might be able to help (e.g. having gone through a similar misunderstanding) can drop an explanatory reply.
• A request was made for LL to provide more header differentiation between e-mails sent to users that are off-line Group notifications and those that are actual off-line IM from individuals, with some claiming Gmail often lumps them together after filtering (which could as much be an issue in how the Gmail filter is set-up).

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, June 5th, 2024.