Another idea - user images in promos
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,776
I was just downloading some mods for Skyrim (a game I've apparently put over 250 hours into and actually played for about 10) and remembered that many mods show user-uploaded images showing it in action. Many of these are better than the original images put up by the mod's author.
What do you think of the idea of having selected user-created images (chosen by the vendor) placed in a secondary 'gallery' (if possible) under the official promo images on a product's page? In my previous thread about material zone promos, it was mentioned that promo images are often aimed at showing what the product can do in a creative sense, to appeal to the potential customer's imagination. I would imagine that a dozen quality images made by satisfied customers would have the same effect, without the need to go searching in the galleries here and hoping that the customer used the correct keywords or added the exact product in their description. This could also show creative uses of the product, such as hiding walls in environments and combinations with various other props and figures, adding to the appeal of the item.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
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Comments
That would be nice because it's an indication of how easy the vendor's product is to use and whether it's capable of what the ad copy says.
I think this would be good, but perhaps in a reviews or extended preview section. There have been too many times when I've purchased a product that didn't have material zones set up...
Right, it should be very clear that those images are artistic renders created by owners of the product and not part of the official promos. A couple of paragraph-like spaces between the promo images and the customer images would help.
That's what I understood. For me it would be nice to see what novice and advanced users can do artistically with the product. The DAZ Store ad copy is mostly bikinis and doom, weird as it is to say that.
Hivewire 3D does that (or did; I haven't checked lately).
I actually dislike the idea. I have seen quite a few products at Rendo that include actual renders of the product along with the promos and to me they are worthless when it comes to a decision on purchasing. I would rather there be links to a gallery to check them out if so inclined instead.
Can you tell us one of those products so we can see? Although Rendo's biggest problem as a store from my perspective is the way they have it organized, how slow it is, and the search engine. I usually refuse to browse it if the search engine doesn't find it because the filters don't work and it is sloooow.
FSMC, if you got to choose images that showed off your products well, what would you object to? That it makes the product page too cluttered or confusing?
I'm just going to put this out there.
No thank you.
I work really hard to make my promos look like a cohessive collection. It makes the promos overall more appealing when they flow from one to another.
I do think that the submitted user content should be on a sub-tab so that it doesn't interfere with the PA's design of their ad copy.
My experience as a user/customer has taught me that no matter how nice the promo, the chance of replicating it on my end is usually pretty slim, so looking at an art render of the product doesn't really help me in purchasing since it wouldn't be indicative of what my results world be, so I don't view it as helpful. I can totally understand a vendor liking an artists image using their product and wanting to include it since it might put their product in a better/different light that might help in a purchase, but I would rather just go to a gallery to view these types of images. It's all about function, not form with me. Clay renders do way more in my purchasing than art promos.
Now if there was a scene file included with the product that could replicate the art promo image(s) across all users machine pretty connsistantly,. I would be interested in that then
For the second time, yes there should be large separation between the PA's promos and any user-created images. PAs would also get to choose the images that appear, it's not like it's going to be cluttered with newbie default renders.
Now with all that in mind, I welcome hearing legitimate reasons why this wouldn't help.
Thanks for explaining FSMC. Funny how in the last thread, I had PAs telling me they wanted artistic renders and not material zone renders, now I'm hearing PAs say they don't want artistic renders. There is just no pleasing everyone. ;)
I had a thread similar to this a while back, that was simply stating that many of my purchases were a direct result of seeing items used in the galleries. A lot of PAs take the time to do excellent promos, but many are simply lackluster and may even turn buyers off. I know there have been a few promos I've seen where the item interested me well enough, but none of the promo pics really showed off the character or item to it's best potential and I decided against buying it.
Probably things are fine the way they are. If people list the items used in their galleries, and the renders are of excellent quality you still have the same result provided that people are actually perusing the galleries occasionally.
SnowSultan, I think they want their own artistic renders rather than having to hand off a new project to strangers before it is released to make renders that the artist might not like and lose control of whether a product slips out to a third party since there really is no way to screen the people before hand... for me, I have slight aversion to clutter and am not sure if the kitbashers are as large a group as they think they are.
In fact, in the last thread, I was not saying that I wanted artistic renders, I said that I did not want to do pictures with default lighting. There is a big difference.
I would really like a link to images with the "average user" in mind. The more images the better really for me to make a buying decision. Speaking personally I can easily discern the difference between a newbie render and someone who knows how to use daz like a pro so I can easily view those with a grain of salt. Too many images show content without context that it is though to gauge how it will be used. Buildings without people, vehicles without passengers etc. I prefer to see stuff being used and rendered in scenes to see how things really work. Also with clothing promos tend to show the outfits in the best possible light. I need to know if a belt buckle deforms or if my action hero's grenade bandolier smashes or if the sleeves deform in use.
LOL, is anyone actually reading what I said?? Let me try again.
* Product is released
* Customers make nice renders with it
* PA chooses some of the better images showing off the product
* User-created Images are added IN A SEPARATE AREA AND NOT MIXED WITH THE PROMO IMAGES
Lyoness, I wasn't talking about you in particular. There was just a general consensus from most PAs in that thread that artistic renders were more useful than the type I suggested.
Thank you NelsonSmith and Serene Night, you make good points.
Ah, Snowsultan, I did read your remarks but 1) bulk of sales are in first week so the product page would have to be revised multiple times (original page when 90% percent of sales are made, and again when when enough people had made renders that both artist and Daz approve of unless the people who make renders have the product beforehand as the people who do the in house renders do), 2) what if the artist or Daz likes none of the renders?, and 3) someone has to find these renders, screen these renders, and then get permission from the people making the renders to use them commercially (do they get a cut of the profits of the product?). There seems like a simpler solution; buy mor products from the vendors whose products you like best and if they crave that sweet sweet money, they will make more product pages like that.
1) It doesn't have to be done in the first week, it fact having them later could help sales of older products.
2) They don't have to post anything. It would be entirely voluntary.
3) They just need to ask for the artist's permission, nothing else needs to be given.
On Renderosity there is a tab on product pages for "Gallery" and it links in pix from user galleries. The quality, of course, varies widely of course but many are really good. However it seems to be rarely used these days. If you look at older products and click that Gallery tab you can see how it works there. In deciding to buy, I've often looked there, particularly for characters. Like seeing how they look in the hands of someone other than the creator to see how it looks. Wish it was more commonly used there, and wish it could be done here.
I think I'm still missing something.... as from other discussions on this board, the bulk of sales happen in the first 3 days and then up to 90% by the end of the week... everything else is a trickle and Daz has years of sales info about who and why those people join the trickle... hence you have sales which are often loss leaders to tap into the impulse buyers of those first three days rather than the trickle which is only a few percent of the final sales. Amazon can swallow the losses it get for having those slow sellers by leveraging other stuff like its server service, prime memberships etc.. but Daz lives on those first three days like a lot of businesses (I once worked in a bookstore and remembered how suprised customers were that the store did not waste loads of space of classics that didn't sell well but had loads of space for disposable romance novel that paid our rent). Since Daz would have to revise the pages for every new product (once when it released and again when it is an old product), have to change the agreement that allows people to post in a gallery to allow them to legally tie them to a specific commercial product (probably with language that the creator can't use the render outside of Daz3d since it is now advertising), have people who would check to make sure that the renders conform to Daz3d"s own rules, and of course, set up some sort of system that requires step away from creation time to screen and okay artwork (or would Daz3d be the screener/decider) since there are some artist who leave product support and questins entirely to Daz3d and ZenDesk.
I think I would actually have see it in action with a test artist and Daz creating the infrastucture.
I do try to cite all the products I do use in a render that I post to my gallery but so far, LOL, that is not much of a selling point for DAZ or PAs.
And what SnowSultan is suggestioning needn't be a difficult or a hand wringing thing - all the DAZ Web team has to do is create a main Product Gallery with subgalleries by PA and DAZ Galleries and that which further have subgalleries divided out by their personal PA and DAZ products. Then the DAZ Web Team code can scan the normal DAZ personal public galleries for references to the DAZ & PA products and in-link them into those Product galleries I mentioned in the sentence above. Then people that want to see what the product can do in all it's amateurishness (me) or all it's professionalishness (DAZ workers have galleries here?) simply need go to the Products Gallery and browse.
The PAs need not to a thing (done) and the posters of gallery images need only cite the entire list of products they used in their images (done). That leaves the DAZ web team to write the search and post and Product Gallery creation scripts which really any of the programmers out their will tell you is one of the easier tasks they could do given they have tags to use for the PAs and DAZ and the products themselves are already neatly categorized.
I like this idea. I've seen some vendors use beta tester renders with their promo images and there are quite a few times the beta testers actually have cooler looking images than the promo images. There have been a couple times when the beta tester images have even been the selling factor for me, rather than the artist's own promo images.
Of course this isn't always the case, but it's very nice to see what other people, other than the author of the product, create with the product. Sometimes they think a little bit differently than the author and take a different artistic approach to showing off the product - and to me that's a big selling point, showing the diversity of the product.
Especially true for coding and similar products.
I love you girl, so please don't take offense to this, but (and of course this is just my opinion), I'd have to disagree. I really love to see a wide variety of image types created with the same product. To me, the versatility and diversity of a product is a huge selling point for me. :) I love seeing a nice variety of promo image types showing the product's ability to fit in different situations or artistic visions. A product's diversity can really be a big selling point. Again, that's just IMO, so I hope you don't take offense. :)
Nope. never.
no offense taken. we're just offering our opinions.
I agree.
But, it is rare I want to reproduce what has been already done; that is reproducing someone else's vision. I have a custom setup that loads automatically when I start Daz, this means I see all products in the same light, and this is going to be different to and quite often unflattering to what the PA intended. It allows me to make some guesses on what I need to do to get what my vision is.
Usually I fail, or am not sufficiently happy to post an image anywhere, but I enjoy the challenge as it is different from what other things I do; I'm more technical minded. :)
Would I find it helpful to see what other users can do?
Not really, because there is no effective way to judge the majority or peoples experience and skills; then there is their tastes (or likes and dislikes).
I can certainly understand and sympathise with Lyoness for her(?) lack of enthusiasm (let's call it
) with the idea.
For me a PA's product is about their vision, their art. And it should not be diluted by what users can do. I like to see what others can do, and there is already a means of looking, the gallery, and the forum where a PA's products can have a thread showing user images.
Speaking of images, it would be nice if source of materials/figure/hair etc was also given in promo images.
Well, from my own experience, I can say that seeing user-rendered images in the product threads helped me a lot in deciding if I want to buy a product, or not.
In most cases, it tipps the scale to the positive, like seeing how Kenji 7 looked dialled in at 50% with other base morphs? Or Snowflake without Aiko7? That totally sold the product for me.
However, I wouldn't want to see these images in the actual sales page of the item. But a link to the official thread, where render results can be discussed? Any time.