The Attention Required of Vendors

I tried to buy a tree last night from an interesting-looking shop. At first there was no response at all; I walked around and looked at other items. When I came back and tried to buy another tree, I got one message from the new attempt that I didn't have enough Lindens (and believe me, I had plenty), and another message, evidently from the first attempt, that my purchase attempt had gone "stale".

So I left, and bought the trees from someone else's shop.

Now, it may sound as though I'm in a snit. Actually, I'm just busy. I didn't have the spare time to figure out who to IM and write and IM to that person and wait for an answer.

So there was really no emotion involved here. And that's what people who want to sell things need to understand: if your shop isn't set up correctly, or if something goes wrong and you don't check on it and fix it, you will lose sales.

Practically speaking, I probably won't go back to that shop again. And again, that's not because I'm in a snit....it's because my time inworld is short. So I'm much more likely to go back to places in which I've successfully transacted the business I came in to conduct.

All pretty basic Business 101 stuff. But what I'm curious about is, how much do problems such as the ones I describe depend on the vaguaries of Second Life? To what extent can these problems be attributed to factors over which shop owners have no control?

(My interest isn't just academic: I do hope to get a shop of my own up and running, as soon as I've created more items to sell. I'm making great strides in creating the shop itself....oooooo, it's great-looking! All false modesty aside..... ^_^)