ArminasX Saiman recently crunched the demographic numbers of customers in his particle effects store, Electric Pixels, and noticed an odd phenomenon: the longer he stays in business, the older his customers get-- not real life age, of course, but account age: "Virtually no newbies come by," says Mr. Saiman (last seen here putting a rocket on a Battlestar Galactican's butt), "as the majority of the customers are now 1+ years old." This seems to be in line with numbers published by Greenies owner Rezzable, and that paradoxical trend I reported last Sunday: monthly active users have remained flat, while in-world activity keeps going up. Of course, the aging trend may only apply to entrepreneurs in the effects and green alien business-- have other business owners noticed this phenomenon with their own customers?
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Great piece. You could infer the following from this....
1. SL gets more engaging the longer you've been a resident - you're in-world more, doing more things
2. ArminasX has created a loyal customer base and increased the lifetime value from customers
3. Electric Pixels generates business from word of mouth and repeat customers more than attracting visits via the search mechanic
Posted by: nic mitham | Friday, February 29, 2008 at 10:26 AM
I've seen the same trends myself on both the mainland and my sim. One thing that I have noticed is that my traffic meter from slbuzz doesn't appear to pick up on newbies. I have a money tree that newbies pull from all the time, but they simply are not reported upon in the results.
Posted by: Dedric Mauriac | Friday, February 29, 2008 at 10:48 AM
*yawn*
Markets get saturated, the new and fresh players grow old and established, become complacent, get replaced by what's new and cool *today*.
One day, everyone on Earth will have decided whether or not SL is for them.
One day, pretty much the entirety of SL's target market will be in SL.
A few years after that, they will have bought pretty much all they want.
Then the silly lindenbucks people will die off, the good ones will become engulfed in some megacorp that buys them out.
There's only so many kinds of shoes and clothes and hairstyles and glasses one can purchase, only so many people/companies interested in joining SL, after which there will only be residual business left, redoing corporate builds for the "freshness", new people coming into SL when they get old enough, with the odd mini-bubble made possible by new features etc.
The universe itself will end one day. Everything ends in entropy.
Posted by: Eggy Lippmann | Friday, February 29, 2008 at 11:07 AM
From what I recall from my marketing classes, this numbers just show that your friend is great at retaining customers but not so good at capturing new ones.
Which makes sense with a growing SL. Products tend to get lost in the shuffle. Most n00bs have trouble getting Lindens so they will take a while to buy something. Also n00bs are notoriously bad at finding stuff so the "young" population won't search too long for your friends good products, they will buy the first thing they see, probably a freebie repackaged for sale by some smart alec ;)
Posted by: Renmiri Writer | Friday, February 29, 2008 at 12:16 PM
I think the number one reason that newbies aren't spending as much is because, unlike a year or so ago, they now start with nothing. I had L$250 when I signed up and another L$250 for giving them my PayPal info, so I was able to buy a few things and upload textures and get a feel for what spending money was like. Newbies don't have that, so they learn to survive on nothing and get used to it. Freebies are much better than they were when I was starting out, so one can shed the newbie look without spending a single Linden.
Plus, there are an increasingly overwhelming number of stores OUT there, so the market is spread thinner and thinner. Think of it like a mall that keeps getting more and more shops added to it--when people have more places to go, they spend less time in each place. Also, when the number of choices gets too large, people reach a certain point where they just shut down and don't choose anything. (There are been a number of psychological studies to that effect.)
The market is going through a bit of a shake-out period. It's no longer enough to just hang up your shingle and put up some salesprims and hope somebody wanders by and buys something. You need to get your name out there and build a reputation that gets people coming to you and keeps them coming back.
Posted by: CyFishy Traveler | Friday, February 29, 2008 at 03:59 PM
After reading dedric's comment, I have to say that I am using the exact same traffic meter as he does. Perhaps there is a bug that misses the newbs? In any case, I am going to keep my eyes peeled for visitors to see myself how old they actually are. And, it would be interesting if any newbs reading this came by the shop to see if the stats actually record their visit.
Posted by: ArminasX Saiman | Friday, February 29, 2008 at 08:51 PM
CyFishy Traveler hits the nail square on the head - SL is completely a reputation-based economy. I take great pains to be nice to my customers, respond to issues and be generous with gifts a freebies. If someone has a purchasing problem or finds an error then they get it fixed and I'll usually give them another product of the same value or more (the exception being people who are out and out rude). People respond well to being treated well and that's rewarding in itself. By contrast I regularly hear tales of designers who are rude and dismissive to the customers and I wonder how they can possibly stay in business - no-one is that good and unique that people won't go elsewhere is they are not confident about spending their Lindons
Posted by: Hiri Nurmi | Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 02:12 AM