When Offered Choice, 5 to 1 Prefer "Fast Track" Virtual World Experience Over Full Registration Process

What's the best way to get people into an immersive 3D world? To get new users into the King Tut virtual experience offered via Heritage Key, UK developer Rezzable (disclosure: a sponsoring partner of this blog) offers two options: Register and create a customized avatar, of choose a "Fast Track" option that immediately downloads Heritage's OpenSim-driven viewer, then launches the user directly into the Tut world as a generic avatar. (Users are still given the option of creating a personalized avatar afterward.)

"Issue is that people don't want to commit to something until they understnad what it is," Rezzable CEO Jon Himoff explains to me. "So Fasttrack is a taster and chance to invite people to full experience."

So is this option working? "I would guess it is," says Himoff. "5:1 people choose Fasttrack right now." He still hopes to encourage unique user registration, but with Fasttrack, "At least they have [the] download which is half the issue." My bias aside, this strikes me as a smart option, taking new users straight to a compelling experience, bypassing the several hours of avatar creation and orientation. Think it would improve usage rates with Second Life, or other OpenSim-based worlds?

Comments

[Loki]

Fast Trackers in SL would need a prebuilt area to arrive at and explore. Not just an orientation island, but whole city with shops and places to hang out, with Linden Sponsored attractions to visit in the city. Then at the train station or bus station they are then offered to leave the Fasttrackers city to explore the HUGE grid.

[Robustus Hax]

I've always thought SL should have an option where you can log in without logging in and be an anonymous gray body that has limited access.

Kind of like in the novel Snow Crash when users at public terminals would go into the Metaverse and were not as we would now term "Rezzed"

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Interesting data. I know that quite a few people are really attached to their avatars but maybe there are more people who don't care. Perhaps entering a single-purpose (rather than a generic) virtual environment has something to do with it.