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Then I'll turn that around; why have it still for sale (especially at the full price) if updating how it will look is too much trouble? This is especially when all products are listed as being suitable for 4.9.
Personally I have my doubts on the value of a rating system. Amazon's seems about the best, but only when there are plenty of reviews (I wont alaborate further as I've posted previously).
Because there are still users who will buy it, even if there's no updated promos or materials, so having it in your store is still worth it. Taking time to create new materials and promos though? The vendor would maybe get a few more sales after update, but on the other hand they could have spent that time to create the materials and promos for a new product, which should generate way more revenue.
When you have bills to pay the choice is quickly done....
Indeed. We also need to realize that each additional feature that we request for the store is an additional load on whatever database is behind the system. Without a staff with the knowledge needed to optimize the database queries being used, you run.the risk of corruption of the database and seriously degraded store page performance. This is one reason why I stopped shopping at DAZ's main competition; the performance of that site on my laptop is comparable to molasses, whereas the DAZ site is much snappier.
You ignored the part in brackets, which you haven't addressed. :) I've commented on it elsewhere myself.
Not really; using Victoria 4.2 as an example, DAZ can give it away as a free item or sell it at lower cost because they've already made enough on it to cover what it cost to buy it from the creator. Updating the promotional images likely won't make a significant difference in sales since it's such an old figure now. And, I think most would consider 60% off of whatever the current store price is to be a better deal than 60% off of a substantially lower base price.
With DAZ having sales all the time most people don't buy at full price, especially for older items.
Lowering the base price on older items would be interesting for the PA only if it brings them enough extra sales to offset the money they'll lose on each sale (which will probably made at 60-70% off anyway). And the chances of that happening are rather small, as the DAZ/Poser content market itself is quite small.
Besides just because an item has been released a few years ago doesn't mean it's not worth its original price anymore...
60% of a lower price is a better price than 60 of a higher price.
100 - 60% is 40; 50 - 60% is 20.
Of course if its Daz discount-maths, with the way percentages are calculated, I've no clue; each has to be calculated with the various percentages taken into consideration, whilst reading the promo for what gives what, when and how - for how long: is often a guess.
I might have paid full price for one item, ever; but can't be certain.
I know how Daz sales work, and that there are Sales all the time; but for new visitors, it must look strange, when they realise old items are still quite high; perhaps by the time that realisation sinks in though, they discover the mantra: "there will always be another sale".
I also fully support this idea of ratings and feedback. It will work productively for both the vendor as well as the user. Off course a thread on a forum will work as well but is to much hassle and the info should be next to the product in the store. This way you will find all the right things in one place. I started vendoring this year and I really miss feedback on my product and ratings will help me get the best quality in the store. Reviews and ratings should only be allowed if you own a product, but I guess that goes without saying.
Actually, to me, getting something that's normally priced at $100 for $40 is a better deal than getting the same item priced at $50 for $20; I'm getting more actual savings that way. Yes, it's the same percentage off, but this way it's more beneficial to the person that made the item.
As somebody who sells products on a review-based site, I'd like to point out that 'user reviews sell products' is only true to a limited extent. Another thing user reviews/ratings do is only sell a _few_ products. The top of the list gets more sales, and stuff lower on the list gets fewer sales--and this is completely unrelated to the product's quality and everything about marketing and fanbase. It creates a popularity-based culture, and eventually a review-based culture where popular reviewers become taste-setters, and without being able to get reviews from THOSE REVIEWERS, the creator's product simply sinks to the bottom of the list, right away.
That can be okay for some sites, but I think it would be an incredibly unfortunate direction for a community as artistic and friendly as this one to go.
(And yes I've done my fair share of squinting and searching for more images/reviews/discussions. In the end, 30-days-money-back is the answer there. If you buy way more than you could ever load and test in 30 days, that is a completely different problem and not one I think anybody else should solve.)
This site also has a "What's Hot" chart and pushes those items. The forums will disproportianally talk about their favorite PA's. The popular PA's are going to sell more here, just the same as anywhere else. That's just a fact. A lack of a review system does not level the playing field even remotely in any way. And if the people here are indeed friendly, then certainly these kind users will take the time to help a product they like? That's what a community is all about.
This system is also more than reviews. I am talking about adding reviews, pictures, direct forum links, AND a method of discovery that helps people find items. Adding a connected forum thread means that extra information is ALWAYS available right on the store page. The connected thread is doubly important because the Daz Forum's search is barely functional. A user may not know they can site search with Google. This leads to them getting lost, and never finding the thread that discusses an item. How is that helping foster the community when you can't even find the forum? Allowing user pictures means people can add their own art, demonstrating a product. Again, this adds to the sense of community, because here is what this person did with this product, just a click away from the store. No searching through user galleries of random stuff. There's also nothing stopping the PA from adding more of their own renders to compliment the store page.renders. A method for discovery will help people find items easier, which helps EVERYBODY, PA's and customers alike. This is not about popularity, it is about giving customers the information and tools they need before making a purchase.
The 30 day return policy is great, but each return must be reviewed before any refund is made. Also, I would guess there would be some kind of limit on how many time a customer returns items, because it must not be confused with a rental program. And the return policy must not be used a shield for a store's lack of accessable product information. This also leaves the door open for abuse of that system. I'd rather not have people returning my product. I'd much rather them to be able to get all the information they need to know it is what they want in the first place.
Many of the vendors here sell at multiple stores, so they would have an increased load on whatever time they use for things other than making products or sleeping/eating if they had to check every product page for comments. Many only come to the site long enough to check their sales data, if that, which is probably why so few post product threads, and sometimes threads for a particular product may get started years before it's finished.
A lot of good points you made. I hope they are listened to.
On the crucial point of "level playing field"...
Merits keep up healthy competition and quality, and ecology longevity. I'll just say this as a content vendor type: web stores with effective rating system and product filters excite me. Stores uninterested in qualitative feedback from their users "worries" me, as a net contributer type user, and as a potential vendor.
Sometimes stores grow so huge in inventory, the creme got stuck got lost at the bottom. So the same old "former best sellers", over and over again. Self-fulfilling outcome...demographics become narrower and narrower...to oblivion valley.
My wish list isn't growing much, because I get bored browsing the store. Due to these compouding issues:
Now I learn which vendor has web site or blog page, how frequent they visit the forum.
I avoid the hassles of returning products. Been burnt, not enough info, won't buy next time! Simple...
Cheers
Implementation of much of this now would put older content at a significant disadvantage, since people that don't realize how old it is would likely down vote older stuff amd up vote newer items.
Old products will be rated by the people who own them, just the same as new ones. There are numerous products that I use nearly everyday, I would happily rate to spread the word on them. And with this community of people, I would believe that many others would be willing to do the same. That's what is about...the community. You sell the community short when you say it can't be done! If an older product doesn't work so well on newer Daz, that is a legit issue. If you are concerned about old items being confused for items that have Iray, that wont be a big issue thanks to tagging. 3DL only items can be tagged 3DL only, or not Iray optimized. Done.
And once again, my proposal is not just about reviews. Its so much more. What do people look at more than anything when buying? Promo pics. Its right there on the FAQ Daz has for new PA's. And my idea adds those into the equation as well. At the other store I have seen products that are several years old that have new user uploads. And for really old products, it is really helpful to see new renders of them, and to possibly even find a review that says "it works in Daz XX just fine!" Sure, there is a return policy, but I firmly believe that many people will just avoid buying things they aren't sure about rather than think of the return policy. I'm one such person.
My ideal system is similar to Steam, with user reviews, tags, and other user content. Steam has 150+ million users, though, and lots of trolls, which complicates things. But Daz has a pretty solid community that can do this right. Part of this is to help lift some of the burden off the PA's and Daz, while simultaniously driving that same community spirit even closer than before. This store is MASSIVE, with over a decade of content. There are tons of products that I will never even know exist, for various reasons. This current system isn't helping those old products at all. With this new sytem, I believe old products have a better chance of being found. That's thanks to the discovery system that works on user generated tagging, the chance of users uploading new pics, the chance of users writing a review, and every item can have its own forum thread on the store page. That's a lot of different ways to find information about something, surely one of them will contain something a potential buyer will see.
I'm aware that the products would have to be something the reviewer owned; my point is that not every person would likely take into account that an item IS old before rating it. And I personally would not expect a plugin for DAZ Studio 3.5 that hasn't been updated to support 4.x to work with the latest version, but others not aware of the specifics of the item might not be so lenient.
Reviews are probably doable now, since the store software seems to support it, but DAZ would need to alter the store database to add that capability. I'm seeing options for user uploaded images, but since DAZ already has a local gallery, an extension that connected to that would be needed.
Nearly 23 thousand items in it, and if the database was altered to support some of these features, I suspect the site would get slower unless they found someone that would be able to constantly tweak the database queries needed to make all these features work as smoothly as the site does now.
How on earth do other places do it then? That place with an R is no bigger than this one. Are you saying Daz only has a part time kid from college handling all their data? Daz can't be that small. Daz recently bought RDNA, if Daz's databases were suspect, they would never have taken on the task of absorbing entire libraries from another store. The store survived that. And if they do all the stuff I am talking about, they would have to properly prepare before launching, just like any reasonable company would. They wouldn't just suddenly flip the switch without preparing first, that would be suicide.
We don't know what testing they did when they switched from their old software to what they currently use, so maybe they did these kind of tests and were not satisfied with the site performance. R uses a different store software package, from what I understand and at least from my perspective, it's not as responsive or sensible in function as the DAZ store is. That's the biggest reason I no longer shop there.
I really do find the Daz approach novel and useful. We're trained to look for consumer reviews, just like we're trained to read the comments. But taking away comments is often a good idea, and so is not having product reviews on a product page. That's simply how it is. Claiming that Daz would do better business by implementing the user reviews comes out of nowhere. Good community management isn't cheap and it seems extremely likely that implementing product-page reviews would cost much more than it earned, for potentially little payoff. I know other niche communities where the vendor does have product reviews on-site, but the community _still_ prefers to keep the discussions happening elsewhere, so that the only reviews that end up on the site are from outsiders and often negative.
You can see what happens with badly managed product reviews on Barnes & Noble, among many, many other sites. Just as you can see on Amazon what happens when reviews become the foundation of store marketing efforts.
Its novel and useful to not have a review? Um...ok. So these products that Daz absorbed from RDNA, most have EXTREMELY vague descriptions, maybe 2 promo pics, and very little information about the product. Its not just RDNA stuff, either. So where do you go for information? Does Daz really want to sell these items? Are people supposed to just open a thread here and HOPE that some kind person responds in less than 24 hours?
Whelp, everything is working as intended, this is how its always been, and how it always should be. So just keep on trucking <.<
I guess I'm just shopping incorrectly then. I still need to learn this novel method.
Figures from Runtime DNA thst have only one or two promotional images most likely had ones with nudity, which is not allowed here. Other items with limited imges may not have had many over there, as the requirements were likely different. I can sympathize with you wanting more information than what is provided, but not every vendor feels compelled to write a paragraph long description and list other information about an item, plus many vendors dp not speak English as their first language.
If Daz is going to pull promo pics because of nudity, then they are obligated to replace those with something else. Or...why not censor the pics with a bar or something? This is silly. If someone doesn't speak English, somebody should be able to write a proper description for them. And I don't care if the description is in Japanese, as long as somethings is there. Google Translate works well enough to get the point across, or maybe somebody could come along and translate it. And again, these situations only speak to my belief that users should be able to add things. If Daz is unable to to take the time to do this themselves, then let the users help them! That is what community is all about! Otherwise, these RDNA items, and PA's who don't speak English are being given the very short end of the stick, don't you think? I wouldn't be very happy about if I was one of those affected by that. Some store comes along and buys out the place you originally uploaded to, and then nerfs your product's promo material and description? Yikes.
Moreover, my idea for adding forum links to the store page can be done right now, this very instant, without adding any burden to the site servers whatsoever. That's because it is simply a hot link. I would hope the store can handle a hotlink! The same could be done for reviews and user submitted pictures. You don't have to redesign the store to add these features! They can be done with links, and a little bit of HTML code can make these links look fancy. This site already has galleries, and these are already able to be sorted into folders. Just make folders for a product and link it to the store page. Boom, problem solved. Reviews are the only thing that might require actually adding anything significant. But if we can simply get links to the threads, that alone gives people improved access to user based feedback and reviews. So if they can do just that and the user galleries, I would be happy. I would still prefer a new system of tagging for discovery, because niche items can get really left behind in this current store.
And as I said, those 2 things can be added with nothing more than text based links using site features already in place. So not a single change needs to be made to the store. This helps EVERYBODY. Users get better access to product information, they get the ability to actively participate in the community, promoting a tighter community. And in turn, this helps PAs out by getting more info on those niche items. And it helps Daz, as it helps take some of that burden off of them. After all, you said yourself there are 23,000 items in this store. That's a lot to keep up with! They could use some help! So let's help them!
DAZ doesn't do the promotional images, the PAs do, so if they had problems with the idea of coming here because of the no nudity rule, they went elsewhere. The ones that did come here knew and were willing to accept the loss of some promo images.
Regarding user submitted images, do you really believe that it's as simple as providing a link to a gallery with relevant images of the product? It's not; the link would have to be constructed to search for any image that cross-referenced the item and create a grid of thumbnails for people ti click on to see full sized versions. And with these things there is always a risk of creating situations where people could accidentally be given higher level privileges which could be exploited by unscrupulous individuals.
Why must you be all doom and gloom? I think you are just arguing to argue at this point. There is always a chance something could go wrong, even if you change nothing at all. All tech and all software can glitch and screw up. Using that as a reason to avoid logical change, change that really helps people, is just...I wont even say it.
And you really going to blame the PAs who had their promos removed after getting their previous store location bought out? I guess they should have gone independant then? I am fully aware Daz doesn't do promo images. But they do approve them, and they can request new ones if they want to. It is their store after all, so yes, full responsibilty on promo image quality goes to them. And people have been talking about promo pics and what they show for a while now. Every new major release has people talking about what the promos do and do not show. How many times have people like jcade popped up with a render in a thread that makes people go "Wow," simply because he showed a picture without the heavy makeup nearly every promo does? And there has been more than one occassion where user pics, not promo pics, directly inspire me to buy a product. It sure would be nice if pics like those could be linked to the store page, wouldn't it? Because eventually that thread and those pics will die and get buried. Good luck finding it a couple years from now!
As I said before, the galleries are something this site already has. Galleries can already be sorted into folders. Right now. In your gallery, there is this really amazing little button you can hit that allows you to make folders! Its so cool! You can create a link to that gallery. Right now. I could post a link to a gallery. Right now. This could be done for store pages. If Daz's site cannot handle a freakin hyper link, they got some serious problems besides worrying about hyperlinks. Come on, man. Why are you making this out to be some kind of Herclean and impossible task? Does Daz not have ANY people working this area? Are they so niche that they can't afford anyone to handle this?
You have systematically went after every single thing I suggested. All you say is this can't be done. Such negativety isn't how things move forward.
Try to put yourself into a new user's shoes. A new user who has never used a 3D program in their life.
This program is free. It has a low barrier to entry. But that barrier is raised artificially by all these nagging little things that Daz could and should be doing better that could really help this software and store take off. We are getting to a point in time where even an average PC with a modest GPU can handle Iray in a decent mannor. Any decent gaming PC will be a decent Daz rendering PC (assuming they use Nvidia cards.) And it so happens that gaming is the fastest growing area of PC, its booming, even as regular PC sales go down. Now, more than ever, it is time for Daz to invest in making every possible effort it can into providing the best possible experience for potential new users (and thus new customers.) That is because these new users are also going to be the most fickle. being people who are just interested in this as a hobby, they are the most likely to get frustrated and leave. Don't let that happen. You have to be strong on all fronts. With user friendly software, stores, and forums. Daz is still not there in those areas. It is more user friendly than some, but that still isn't going to be good enough. That first impression is vital, and Daz can still be vary daunting looking to a new user. There are nice people in the forums, but new users need to get to the forums to find them! Without even a simple link on the store page, and a horrible beyond belief forum search, a new user may not find what they are looking for.
I'm one of the newest people here. Ive been using Daz Studio for less than a year. Sometimes I feel like an outsider amung all these people who been using it seemingly forever, and I'll probably never reach their level. People who seem to know Daz like the back of their hand. And sometimes getting help is not that easy, not because people are unfriendly, but because they cannot quite explain things to a new person in terms they would understand. Somebody points me to a tutorial, but then I need a tutorial for a part of that tutorial. "I gotta do what to get this to happen?" This is not an easy thing to jump into, and if not for a couple of key moments, I was seriously about to give up completely and do something else. I was about to give up any idea of 3D art as whole because I just wasn't getting it. Its from this direct experience that I can speak to how much better Daz can potentially be...the store, the software, the forums. There is so much potential there, this is something that was previously only available to people who had very deep pockets for the expensive software and hardware required. And if this more instant version of Iray that I have been hearing about makes its way into Daz, there will be even more potential to attract new people.
I've long felt a vague sense of ambivalence about the Daz marketplace because of the essential disconnect between what I'd like to be able to buy and what is served up. This is compounded by a lack of any easy, direct way to communicate, generally and globally, to the people who make products both Daz people and freelance PA makers.. Oh yes, I can spend time and energy trawling through forums to try to find a thread attached to a specific vendor or a specific product and offer my feedback for what that's worth, assuming it gets heard. But that is me, one person, one voice, saying something which on its own probably doesn't carry much weight assuming it even gets heard. And, about a product already made and done with. On the occasions I have tried this -with something already purchased--the results have been hit or miss, and the larger point is, this does nothing to help get my feedback about products, generally, out there to the maker community at large to usefully inform products NOT YET MADE.
Real-world stores work in top-down manner and that's fine: Target gets a range of products that most stores competing with them offer, and there's multiple brands and sizes and colors so people choose the PRODUCTS they want. If folks don't like it when P&G changes their laundry soap they hash that out with P&G not Target. So we don't need to give Target feedback about the products, just about the store and the shopping experience.
But daz isn't selling soap or other commodity products. Daz is selling digital assets for people to use to create art, imagery, animations. Aesthetics and imagination matter, style and subjective preferences matter, but especially, the features and construction details matter in this case. I think it would be beneficial to makers to be able to get the perspective of LOTS of people in an easy, centralized way that would help them be more successfull at making desirable products that sell and earn very happy customers who get what they want and need.
1 example I can offer here: There's a maker who relatively recently has hit the marketplace and has been releasing products at a pretty good rate. They look great in the promos-- by which i mean , first of all, lhey generally look aesthetically pleasing and secondly, look to be well-executed. I like the look of like almost every product released by them so far except maybe 1, and that's simply a matter of subjective tastes. BUT I actually bought 1 of their products and while it looks just as I expected from seeing the promo pics, I won't be buying any more products from this maker until I see there's a fundamental change in their products: I bought BACHELOR'S BEDROOM by Digitallab3d and it is attractive and looks great in renders as expected but the room is a STATIC SET. I knew this when I bought it, so I am NOT complaining about misrepresentation or wrong expectations or anything similar. I just thought it would not be a big deal to me. but it turned out to be a big enough deal to me I won't buy any more sets from them until they change this aspect. THE WALLS, THE ROOM are all one piece; you can't select just one wall and delete it or make it invisible to make it easy to frame your shot the way you want without interference or blockages from walls. The walls aren't individually identified as separate surfaces where you could just make them transparent either. A bigger thing that bugs me, is that NO DOOR, CUPBOARD, DRAWER or SLIDING PATIO GLASS DOOR opens in this set. Yes, it is a fashionable, distinctive room and I like it. But if they'd rigged the doors and windows and closets/drawers, or even just some of them, in their room sets, I'd be collecting them all, instead of looking, drooling slightly, and driving by without buying.
Sure, it takes more time and effort to rig things, I get that. But these kinds of "interactive" aspects of a set dramatically increase the versatility of a set; if the door of this set opened, you could have your character or camera "see" out the doorway into another room, or into this one from outside it, you could mash together different rooms from other sets with this one, and for people who do animations, can have a character open a door or closet or glass patio window and walk out or in or whatever. Having things that can move in a set adds versatility in scene setting and storytelling even in still imagery but especially so for animation creation.
Why does this matter to the maker? Because there are currently more than 24,000 products on Daz marketplace today and more on the way. If you want to stand out and make a brand for yourself as a maker you need to be making people happy with attractive, imaginative designs and thoughtful features. Sets that have thoughfully built in some value-added versatility make for more sales, and can leads to happy loyal customers. Something to also note is that, for me at least, it is not simply the fact of 24,000+ choices in the Daz store, it's also the fact that I have like 2400+ products in my library (just from Daz alone, per the Daz Installer count) and so increasingly I'm becoming more specific and cold-blooded about what I will and won't buy because of the glut. I won't buy another random room set, because I have so many already; so a room set needs to have style, quality execution and or features like swappable parts or opening doors and windows etc, there needs to be some compelling aspect to the set or for me, it just won't be a buy. If it is a room in the same nondescript style as dozens of others with no distinctive aspect or features, what really is the point of buying it? On the other hand, I've seen sets that look interesting style wise, but the windows look like cut-out shapes in cardboard, with no dimension or depth, as if in the real world walls had the thickness of a sheet of paper and glass sheets just magically were fused to the edges of the paper over the cutouts, as if perhaps the maker had not ever looked at or out of a window.
The value to me of a global feedback system would be that these sorts of observations about what is desirable and what is not appreciated in products would be accessible to ALL makers, and they'd get clear ideas about what people want from their various types of assets. The closer you come to hitting commonly expressed wants and needs, the more likely you are to be successful at selling your wares while earning happy repeat customers. Basically, I think feedback and comment systems could potentially become a source of design/best practices guidelines by crowdsourcing via the consumers who buy -or don't buy-your works.
On a somewhat related and wholly subjective note, I'd observe that in the Daz store, there's plenty of product replicating real-world stuff in a pretty literal fashion, and recreating historical stuff, and doing sci-fi and fantasy riffs based on the whole cultural global stockpile of tropes, myths and cliches.... but what to me is a strong potential of 3d seems largely missing: with the power to build worlds, why aren't more (or any?) makers being more inventive and imaginative? Old London is stunning bit of modelling and at a hobbyist affordable price, but I'd be 100% more interested in London ca 2042. Where buildings might be fractal-iterative shapes clad in stained-glass solar cells with wind turbine slots rimming the parapets, say. Self-sustaing mega-city structures built above the old, now underwater, waterfronts in Venice or Miami. Science fiction starships that look different from the same old same things that are all echoes and pastiches of ships from games books and movies from the last few decades. Do we need yet another random dirty t-shirt/hoodie/sweatshirt and pair of generic pants outfit for the guys? How about contemporary, fantasy or near-future clothes that aren't armor warriors and which are different from the numerous shapeless, embarassingly unsexy, uninteresting and uninspired stuff. NOVELTY should never be underestimated as value-added in terms of digital assets; we all love those products that once in a while come along and are so surprising and distinctive and compelling. I think comments or feedback systems are a way that we can effectively communicate these sorts of inputs, easily and globally, to makers. The feedback system could even be a way in which people who have technical skills and can model can organically find and work with people who have design and fashion sensibilities (who don't spend their waking hours in the forums but will comment/feedback on the products they buy and over time build up a visible body of input) but who can't model to build collaobrative partneships which can enrich everyone via products that sell well, make people fans, and bring more visual vigor and diversity to the product roster at Daz.
Also, nowadays with Iray (and esp with Nvidia cards) the cost to render, in resource terms, a given product is a potential issue to buyers/users and it can not be guessed by looking at promo pictures. I have several very extensive sets which I was afraid I would be unable to meaningfully use with my 4gb nvidia graphic card to have reasonable render times, but they were okay, surprise! Not as good a surprise, were a few things I bought which I didn't even guess would tax my system that hard and which don't seem usable for me at present without ditching a lot of the stuff. in the set. and curtailing human figures severely, like maybe 1. :) These sorts of feedback data would be nice to know pre-purchase. Vague nonsensical notices like "a reasonably robust machine" which show up on a few scattered products aren't actionable information. But feedback from people saying "I rendered this product's full load with a Mike7 and a Vicky6 on my 4gb gpu machine with no problems," does give potential buyers USEFUL info, as would someone saying "My 2gb gpu couldn't render this set without falling back to cpu."
I have little gadgets that float at side of screen that tell me what amount of memory, cpu activity, gpu memory and gpu load etc Daz is using when rendering, so why can't makers TELL THIS SORT of INFO in their product information texts? Like: "Loading the full preload scene from this set requires 3187mb of graphic memory peak during render time. A gpu with less than 4gb will not be able to render this scene via GPU."
Anybody, everybody, please feel free to put your 2 cents in here, pro and con, to what I've mentioned....
-Gen
I haven't been around long, but have always wondered why there is no rating/review system here. Yes, the 30 day return policy is nice (thank you). However, I think ratings and reviews would benefit everyone. The consumers, the artists, and Daz.
I didn't see it mentioned above, but Envato Market has a rating/review system. I can say that great ratings and reviews definitely influence my decision to purchase something, but I have also purchased things with no reviews or ratings.
I have also been thanked many times by the artists there for my constructive feedback, both good, and bad. They appreciate the opportunity to not only improve their exisiting product, but to deliver great products in the future.
I'm going to have to ask what activating the ratings/comments system that was deliberately left disabled when they changed store software packages is going to do that they cannot already accomplish with the existing forums? If you say it will help by giving users a way to directly influence future products, this has actually happened in the forums on more than one occasion. The same with reaching vendors here; though not all do comment in threads, or create ones about their current or future products, they do quite often read them.
Daywalker, for me, the advantage over forums, is that instead of me having to track down threads related to specific vendors and products, buried in forums, and trawl through all that on the faint hope that my one input will be heard or matter, in a very easy moment or two, right on a product's page or vendor's page maybe (not looking, trawling, searching, wading through posts to see what is germaine to what I have to say etc) I can make a comment and or put a rating. Support issues and technical things can be dealt with via forums and support. Feedback would be cleanly gathered together with the product itself or at least the vendor's page even, and not threaded in with reams of support/troubleshooting stuff. I find it tiresome searching for anything in the forums, because you get lots of results and then have to winnow down to the appropriate, relevant thread. It's not fun or efficient to me. Also, if feedback or comments are done via forum, they'd be therefore dispersed, randomly distributed through all that mess, which would make it harder for makers to see ONLY product feedback, all together, in one unadulterated stream, which I feel would best easily convey the overal perspective of the feedback received. "...though not all do comment in threads," to me as an end user translates to, or at least suggests, they aren't reading or don't care what I have to say. That's not an inducement for me to spend my time/energy going through the forum crawling lifestyle. But feedback/ratings systems do predicate a certain expectation (which may or may not be met, but still) that someone WILL READ and CONSIDER since those feedback/rating systems will to some degree influence sales. If it is there people can and will use it, at least a number of people will. What percentage know or want to crawl the forums to try to mention something? I suspect the folks doing so are a tiny fraction of the buyer base here at Daz. I don't see that as optimal, personally speaking. The process of watching new releases day after day over years leaves me convinced that there's many makers that could benefit from hearing about their products.
Last, I'll observe that this is, primarily, a store to me. Not necessarily a lifestyle website/haunt-- though I am engaging somewhat with others in posts in a community sense at times--so in terms of products and shopping and buying and selling, all that, uh, store stuff... I don't want (to have) to live in the basement at the forums. I sure don't on Amazon or iTunes for example. I do however post reasonable, considered reviews and ratings designed to be fair, and give input to manufacturers/distributrs and other purchasers. at those 2 shops . I don't feel that would be a bad thing for Daz, its makers or buyers. I think there's a worldview preference maybe showing itself here in this issue, at least for my part, much like iPhone versus Android: iPhone people don't want to tinker with the phone and endless settings and adjustments and tweaks, but simply want to use the thing. Techies and others enjoy wading in hip deep in Android, tweaking, adjusting, changing, modifying etc and reject iphone for the walled garden and streamlined approach. So, here it's iPhone users (lets just have feedback/rating system right there tied to the product/maker) versus Android (let's just keep using the very comprehensive but user-offputting unstreamlined process that haphazardly may or may not result in effective upward communication from users to makers/daz). I see the feedback/rating system, versus reliance on informal forum trawling/sifting with very limited participation from buyers at large, as being much like the difference between my 2 year old Android tablet being 3 versions behind now with no update available versus my 8 month old iPhone 6sPlus already having jumped up from 9 to 10 and 10.01 -- the diff between direct, easy, effective and fast versus uh, the other not-so-good stuff. :)
------So this is my answer to your question, daywalker03. I hope that others will provide their own responses.
-Gen
Genaris, let's look at this from the vendor's point of view. Which is easier for them; checking possibly several hundred store pages for comments (here and at any other site they may sell at) or checking a forum section devoted to the purpose of vendor item discussion?
Absolutely I'd agree with you, Daywalker, that IF the system worked as you describe, that'd be burdensome to merchants. That's so not my intent-- I'd like to help merchants and users both be happier by improving products and sparking more interesting and imaginative products to make happy customers who buy more so vendors earn better and also are happy,.
The system DOES NOT have to work as you describe. I'd expect it not to in fact, and certainly I'd never advocate such a messy thing. Naturally as we are in 2016, soon 2017, and automation exists, all feedback/ratings on every product should be available in the merchant's centralized "dashboard. One feed to rule them all. Products, by that vendor, that is.
I'm so not a code-monkey or website construction worker or anything remotely like. I am simply a reasonably tech-literate or aware user, and I can manage to aggregate info from various sources and sites on the internet without manually shopping it up at each source myself, and can also click an rss feed button etc. I think anyone who can, like, uh, read, can import data from an excel sheet or access database into a word document to populate placeholders :) so I think the geniuses who manage to shift prices and crazy sales-combination calculations accros the entire daz store on a daily basis can probably decipher how to stream the feedback/ratings component data to the individual vendor's dashboards. Because, skills!
Yes, merchants would derive no value from the system if they don't bother to read the feedback, so that would take bits of time, no matter how efficiently material was compiled and distributed to them. I say it would be potentially valuable, and worth that time over time.
US automaker General Motors ruled the world once. They became deaf to critics and customers alike and like most large organizations do, grew rotten with groupthink to the point where even critical viewpoints from within were shut out, and they saw the iceberg coming beginning in the 70's but still could never break the momentum of bad habits, especially that of not being open to input from outside the bubble. As you may or may not know, it took their bankruptcy to begin chipping away at their ossification. This is of course not on that scale, or in that degree or anything, but I do personally see resistance to input as unhealthy long term.
There's lots of insipid, uninspired products in the marketplace, and some that have some nice ideas or design elements but which are badly executed, so much mind-numbing near repetition of standard substandard things as t shirt and jeans outfits which all seemingly blur together as generic careless throwaways and a few distinctive, well executed items here and there; however much is selling, one thing seems pretty clear: the things that are distinctive and well done get more energetic response. I do feel that formalized wider-scale conversations directly to merchants can help bring better, more interesting and desirable products to market and more income to makers. If more of the products were more exciting, daz wouldn't have to tie pork chops to products to induce people to buy them. I can always sense what products released on a day Daz seemingly has less confidence in, by which item or items are singled out for the most desperate pitch/inducements. They're often the products I won't buy, period, because they are simply not intersting or well done enough or don't have the features, functions or aspects I want from that particular product type. When enough people communicate this stuff clearly to the makers, they can make informed decisions about their creations going forward.
Or, certainly Daz can keep going as it goes now, racing to the bottom, relying on 34 cents per item bundles and complicated neverending states of clearance sales to move products and engaging in a non-stop leaning out of value, and slapping more of the same old same old on the shelves with an attitude of buy it or don't, whateve. Artists appreciate novelty and given a choice would prefer not to keep buying newer, better rendering versions of the stuff they bought last year, and year before that and year before that. :)
Just to clarify here, as I read myself... I'm not trying to go off on you, Daywalker or offend or anger you. You have valid point about burden. I just have strong feelings about the lopsided dynamic at Daz which I don't experience at other stores, probably because, to me at least, there's no pretense at Amazon or itunes etc of being anything BUT a store, which are inherently top-down, closed sorts of systems, but Daz sorts of straddles, blurs the lines, it's a store (to them) but also sort of poses as a community. That last part implies to me an actual meaningful sense of participation, which is where my disconnect always kicks in. :)