Thanks to Lelani Carver, I have more information on CasperTech’s PrimBay. Lelani has updated her blog post to include a link to the PrimBay Wiki, which has a lot more information than I was originally able to relay.
I said in my previous post that the site looked a bit sparse, the Wiki informs me that this is by intent:
“The front page of PrimBay is simple. Just a search box. Find what you need, quickly and easily.”
I’m afraid I have to give that a thumbs down, largely because it doesn’t draw curious users in. However other features are certainly worth a thumbs up and they include:
- A demo button will be available on listings, no need for a separate listing!
- Ability to share listings in social media.
- Full purchase support, by L$, Credit Card, or PayPal, including an (optional) device which can make payments automatically, similar to the marketplace.
However where PrimBay really gets interesting is with regards to the future (the current roll out is still officially in the beta phase). Some of the proposed future features:
- A special edition of caspervend designed for primbay-only merchants.
- Auctions – PrimBay has been designed with auctions in mind, and we will implement these in the coming time.
- Multiple store fronts – Multiple brands, one avatar.
There’s more to read on the wiki but PrimBay seems to be throwing down the gauntlet to the SL Marketplace team by introducing features that SL Marketplace merchants have long wanted to see. Multiple store fronts and a demo on the listing being two large feature requests that the SL Marketplace has not yet implemented but which would prove extremely popular for merchants and shoppers alike.
Another feature that SL Marketplace merchants may welcome is via the listing process. As I said in my previous post, you need to be a merchant using CasperVend to list your items on PrimBay, but in order for your items to appear on PrimBay all you need to do is have your account set to enabled and the items will, after a period of up to one hour, appear on the PrimBay website. No need to create a new listing on the site and inworld, one listing will make your item appear inworld and on the site.
However some CasperVend customers may not want to list their items via PrimBay, or they may want certain items to appear and others not to appear. This can be controlled from your CasperVend account.
Now where PrimBay won’t have the same ease of use as the SL Marketplace is with regards to customers, whom I think we’ll all agree, are a pretty damn important part of the equation. Customers will need to register via an inworld terminal and pay a deposit into said terminal in order to purchase items via PrimBay. Those of who have been around for a while will remember this was the norm when sites like XStreet, SL Boutique, OnRez and Apez were around.
The SL Marketplace pretty much crushed all opposition by first buying some of them and then merging inworld and marketplace balances. This was a big coup and does make it easier for shoppers to shop. However that doesn’t mean PrimBay won’t be a success because those other sites were a success to a degree back in the day and customers may well be tempted to PrimBay if they can find content more easily than they can on the SL Marketplace and features such as demos not cluttering up search, speed and a decent search engine will go a long way to helping PrimBay.
Then there are those terminals, always a popular option for merchants and they will be available.
The current website is not the finished article and I’m sure with some feedback CasperTech will make improvements, they already have plans afoot to redesigi the site.
Concerns have also been raised regarding the current state of affairs whereby CasperVend merchants have to opt out, rather than opt in to PrimBay. Casper Warden explains the thinking behind that in a post on SLUniverse where he says:
“The thing is, it was necessary. People, by nature, don’t read forms and don’t click options, regardless of what the option means. An opt-in system would have resulted in hardly any products being available on PrimBay at this point, and that would have meant an early death for it. People won’t bother visiting a marketplace if there’s no content.
I do recognise that this wasn’t the most friendly strategy, but I firmly believe it was the only viable one. However, going forward, I am going to change this to “opt-in” for any newly created products.”
Now you may or may not agree with those sentiments, I’m not a fan of opt out but, Casper receives backing in that thread from CasperVend merchants who explain that they received plenty of communication informing them that the initial system would be opt out, so it’s not as if Casper has sprung this on unsuspecting merchants. In another post Casper explains:
“We sent several notecards and group notices informing them about the situation, to give them the opportunity to opt out before we went online.”
It has been quite some time since a venture arrived that offered an alternative for merchants and customers to the SL Marketplace, I wish Casper and his team all the best and it may even invigorate the SL Marketplace team to up their game, because some of the features Casper is offering on PrimBay would certainly be welcomed by SL Marketplace merchants.
Unfortunately, the way SL is setup there is no other way unless, like LL, you have a direct link to the user’s L$ balance.
The only alternative I can think of would be to have a way to get debit rights from the customer (which would not be doable since it would require each customer to have a permanently rezzed object with debit rights) and then use that to take and verify any L$ spent with a way to verify the amount and cancel the purchase if the person didn’t have enough money. I could be wrong but I don’t even think LSL has the fine grained support needed to do the necessary steps, much less do them well.
I wonder if the optional device they mention, which in the blurb says that it can make payments automatically in a similar fashion to the marketplace is along the lines you suggest with regard to the permanently rezzed object. I agree with you that it would be problematic, to say the least.
SL Exchange / XStreet SL didn’t have access to user’s balance though. Admittedly they didn’t have to compete with LL and any competitors they had folded when LL bought XStreet.
Even with a competitive disadvantage I think it’s too soon to say that they’ll fail. If Caspervend can think of some incentive for merchants, and others to keep a balance and they can make their ATMs ubiquitous then they might have a chance, especially if customers and merchants can use their Caspervend balance at any Caspervend vendor and online with one balance. That would be a good way to get people to keep money in the ATM so they could quickly make purchases without paying in.
This has been done before and failed. Anybody remember Slapt or that other one that now escapes me? They had features that were beyond what the MP offered too, but ultimately failed because … like Gordon above says, they didnt have direct access to a customer’s account balance. Paying a deposit into a terminal is one step too far for most customers, I believe.
I predict CV will initially fill up with merchant items and them gather dust as very few customers actually use it. It will linger far longer than most marketplaces though, simply because it is connected to an in-world vending system, so in that sense, it won’t ever obviously ‘fail’ like the others have done.
Also, wasn’t there some kind of LL decree that banned other marketplaces? It was a long time ago now but I seem to remember something like that, that caused the others to also wrap up.
From the merchant side, the advantage CasperVend has here is that the data for the listings is a necessary step to list items in the vendors to sell inworld anyway. That’s one trick the Marketplace missed, the vendor system.
From a customer side, I very much agree with you regarding the account balances, that was a huge win for Linden Lab and it’s one any competitor is going to struggle to take on because it makes impulse purchases and any purchase really, so much more easy for the customer.