Monday, June 2, 2014

Let's Fix the Marketplace

Some time has passed – long enough, actually, that I can't tell without looking – since The Lab surveyed Residents to learn about how the Second Life Marketplace might be changed for the better. Let's review the results.

None.

It is time now to fix the Marketplace and as The Lab takes a commission on sales, it is certainly worth their while. Errors, usability issues, and general maintenance all need to be examined. Here is a brief list of mine just off the top of my head:


Fix the "Cannot Add" bug. It happens some nine out of ten times I add something to my card and yet the item is actually added. Quite often if you hit the Add button again, everything seems normal. How many of us have bought two of one item because we didn't thoroughly check our Cart.

The service often lags harder and more often than Bay City during a big event. Amazon and other shopping services operate on a much larger scale and yet have swifter page loads.

The Lab needs to inject some elephant memory DNA into the system so it can remember my preferences. True, there really is only one preference to set – how many items to display on a page – but it is not remembered between sessions and often not when simply loading another page. The DNA upgrade could also make for a far more efficient Favorites list.

Speaking of which ... at least something never forgets. Items will remain in your Favorites even if they are no longer for sale. This list needs to be dynamic, reflecting not only the item's availability, but any price fluctuations or product updates.

A Wish List would be a great addition to the Favorites list. Or call it a Gift Registry. Any list where others could see items that I would like to own but for some reason or another I have not purchased.

Only two items listed per page of Reviews? Don't be silly. And your place in the sequence will reset if you click on any other tab. Say you are reading a review on page eleven of twenty and you wish to check the Features to investigate something the reviewer wrote. Click Features, read, click Reviews and you are back on page one.

On the topic of the Features tab ... it should be the first up when a page is accessed. Let the Details tab be second for folks who need more information.

A larger font, please, or the ability to control fonts. I'm 8 years old in SL and that means my eyesight is failing in my dotage. Oh, and lots of Residents have vision impairments. Sure, there are nice viewers like Safari that allow folks to easily enlarge portions of a page.

Lastly (for now), a true nit-pick: The interface is just so last century. Time for a refresh.

6 comments:

Tish said...

Make a workable Search. The categories are tiring and superfluous and make you guess sometimes what category your item is in. If write "truck", I get to click first on vehicles, then ground vehicles, then cars and trucks, and then trucks. It's worse still for other items.

Uccie Poultry said...

Gah! How could I forget Search and Categories! Thanks, Tish!

Beth Ghostraven said...

I'd like to be able to sort my Favorites list by several attributes, while we're at it. The same sort that MP uses for searched items would work for Favorites.

Uccie Poultry said...

Sorting Faves would be great, Booklady, and search, too. Maybe suggestions based on favorites, too.

Uccie Poultry said...

Sorting Faves would be great, Booklady, and search, too. Maybe suggestions based on favorites, too.

Unknown said...

the most annoying thing I find is when I sort by price the first few pages are full of Demos with the occasional freebie thrown in

google has a NOT feature so if would be lovely for Market place to do the same