The biggest shopping events in SL are unknown to most users, never mind the smallest events. The fact shopping events even exist as a concept seems to be unknown to many as well! This means that discovery of the latest and greatest content from SL creators is limited. SL creators themselves also struggle to find events fitting for their products to join. The main discovery for these events are currently through external social media platforms and networks of bloggers, such as facebook, flickr, primfeed, X, bluesky. It's all very disjointed. I think it would be useful to have these shopping events have their own category in search/discovery guide. There are many features people would find useful like... Opening Date/Time: A way to see a list of what event opened when, or will be opening. Currently with event promotion on social media these events mostly get traffic on the opening day and then it tails off quickly. Seeing a list of events most recently opened to oldest would give you a way to catch up on what you maybe didn't notice, increasing traffic through the remainder of the event and with it sales. Sales benefit creators, and the whole SL platform by boosting the economy. Closing Date/Time: Likewise, users will also want to know when these events are closing, so that they can jump in before the end of the event. I've noticed with events that they are most popular on the opening days, and then have a boost towards the end as people jump in quickly before it closes. Visited checkmark: Some SL users like to go to all the events, and even go daily to everything that just opened. Whilst I myself find that idea EXHAUSTING, they do really enjoy it! Having a simple checkmark, or change of font from Bold to Normal, or Normal to Italic, would be useful for these 'power users'. Traffic: The normal 'traffic' metric isn't too useful for these events. What's far more pertinent is seeing how busy the region is, and if it's currently enterable, e.g. (45/50) would show there are currently a total of 45 out of a maximum 50 people. This could be colour coded to show the liklihood of getting in if you try to teleport. Red for no chance, yellow for maybe, green for certainly. This number should also contain attached camsims. (Camsims are sims that you cam into the main event sim from, when the traffic is too high to get into the main sim. This allows users to still shop). Teleporting: Clicking to teleport to an event should put you into the main event if possible, or a one of a number of dedicated camsims beside. The most popular events often have one or two camsims. Tagging: It would be useful to be able to see, search or set tags for them too, like, "female, male, goth, furry, cyberpunk, clothing, furniture, games, nostalgia, 80s, steampunk, roleplay" etc. Description: Seeing the event description could be very useful, perhaps on clicking on an event in the UX. Listing enhancements: Similar to SL marketplace, you might find that events want some form of listing enhancement to increase discoverability, this would be especially useful for new events trying to become known. Similar to google's sponsored results, there would be a chance for monetisation by letting people pay for a chance of appearing at the top of the list, the first spot always showing a sponsored event listing. They could also buy an enhancement that lets them appear at the top for a handful of tags. Sponsored results should be clearly marked as such. It should perhaps be made clear that there's little benefit to doing this when an event is already popular. The enchancements could last for a day, 3 days, a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or 4 weeks. Events tend to last for up to a month. 3 weeks is common for a chance to tear down and build the next event on monthly events. 1 or 2 week events do happen as well. (these lengths seem a good starting point but I'm sure the community would want to discuss these) New Items vs Discount Sales: There are two main categories for these events, where either they are selling new items, or old items at a hefty discount. Discount sales currently tend to be lists of items/stores that have discounts on a given day. "50L Friday", "Happy Weekend Sale" etc. I'm not sure how these discount sales could be incorporated in the UX since they aren't at a set location, but it is worth mentioning here. Perhaps a separate page with a list of these, and when you click on one such event you've an option to click a button to get a notecard, which is often how these are distributed weekly. I'm sure I've missed out on some features people would want, which I'm sure people will comment below here!
