Ah. perfect for my previous post Id love the wearables spot. Shop size 639. Changing stock atm. Would love to help managing as well. :) Banner opinion: I think its way too big! Its gonna take forever for people to scroll all the way down... Otherwise, things look good. :) Do you have MSN or ICQ?

Hey Nil Took a quick peak at your petpage, looks good, but when I saw the rules section I just went omg too many :( It might be a good idea to try and simplify them. At the very least, I would put a VERY short sentance in bold first, then perhaps leave the rest of the text to explain details. I tried to read through the rules, but honestly just tried to find your main point in each huge text, and skipped the rest. Forcing everyone to stock pbs is weird to me. They can get very expensive very quickly, and not everyone might want to stock them. Someone with a cheap shop (like books), will end up having the first page getting cluttered with expensive pbs and scare of customers. You should let each maller decide this. If they dont want to stock them, let them link to someone else, some default pb person. I also find your drinks/food/sweets division weird. I would either give the drinks to one person, or both. Dont try to specify which types of drinks they can sell. And you should def get to MM yourself before trying to get others to join :P Thats all for now, best of luck with your new mall, Nil :D

Thats really hughe... Oh, and im not prepared to stock grooming... wearables is a big enough category as it is... I price quite fairly, so I always have a lot of restocking to do (already) [quote=Nilrem]Hey always lonely/china I must have been creating the thread as you posted yours lol. I agree the banner is large but imo its not extreme compared to other MM ads. Ive seen many MM ads for popular malls that are around 1200-1400 pixels long. Admittedly mine is longer at 1525 pixels long but not far past others. I planned to play around a little to get it down more. Its just hard b/c if possible I would really like to keep the layout of the buttons. Personally I like how it flows so each category is easy to read w/ 2 buttons per row. Unfortunately that also makes it difficult to make small. Also the banner is currently optimistic. If i decide to combine 2 of the buttons down the road I may remove the mystery button and that would remove a row from the banner which should put it in the 1400 pixels range. Maybe I can rework the faerie section as well.[/quote]

This is awesome for you Sabrina! Hope this works out for you guys :) The banner looks great!

[quote=Nilrem]Hey Mel, thanks for all the feedback. As for MM I guess I was viewing this a mainly seeking an assitant and gaining some preliminary interest. I fully planned to make the last 2.5 mil upgrade before really getting serious. Thats one of the reasons I kept mentioned the mall would open soon. Since I wouldnt use my position as owner to be hypocritical and skate into the mall w/o the shop requirement. I agree on the rules feedback. Im sure it all sounds defensive but the page is a work in progress, i still need to link the navigaition and improve other things to make it flow better. Improving the rules was actually on my mental list to do. When I wrote them down it was kind of just get the points on to the page, then improving the flow would come later. There is a mention of your paintbrush concern in the rules (easy to miss since the rules are long as you mentioned). I did say that the people can specify if they would like to opt out and link someone else. Also its asks the mall for feedback on this category as a community spot. I thought most would like it since its a popular category to add a 2nd selling point to their shop. I am open to suggestions from the mall if they would prefer anything else instead. The food / sweets division is also on my mind. Just the goal of the mall is to obviously get a decent number of shops to increase hits for the mall. I thought i would see if anyone wouldnt mind sharing it this way since its a big category. Its one of those paradox things. People say they shouldnt be seperated but people also say sales drop after several pages, so I thought maybe each could sustain itself along w/ paintbrushes. Ive never personally stocked food/sweets so thats something i was open to feedback for. As i mentioned in my reply to China the banner was made optimistic with the realization that one or two spots might be combined or altered.[/quote] I found the comment about you getting to MM a tiny bit snotty (though I know it wasn't meant that way--there was a smiley face, also I don't take friendly banter well). 2 - point - anything million away from being MM is virtually there! The argument could be made that not being in MM would give a manager more time to manage the mall since a barely in MM shop probably takes tons of work due to the jockying for hut position. But yeah, there will be others who think this so good on you for waiting to start your mall until you get there! I get that this is a very early representation of your mall page and the details of how long the rules are, who stocks pbs, etc. will be worked-out so from a graphic design perspective your page/graphics look great minus one suggestion: I would change the font size. I had difficulty reading that gorgeous font so just make it a little larger for the 30-somethings and older. I too like feedback early on so I do not waste my time on something that later gets edited-out completely; people shouldn't be too nit-picky atm :) My opinion on pbs is there is a precedent for this with X-mart - they have the pb/faerie floating category and it works for them. I would word it: "Everyone has the profitable opportunity to sell bottled faeries and paintbrushes. Those who do not wish to take advantage of this will have those buttons linked to another shop." Stating things positively instead of as a requirement (negatively) gets a better reaction from people and is really the intent, I think, of doing it this way. Paintbrushes will not take up anyone's first page and buyers know they are expensive. I would be more interested to look at a book shop's stock who carried paintbrushes instead of frightened away. I don't think splitting drinks is a bad idea, however, smoothies are healthier than slushies. Smoothies generally contain fruit/veggies with yogurt/milk and slushies contain fruit & ice. If you specify which drinks each category sells logically smoothies should go with the healthy food and slushies should go with bakery/sweets. I have a food/drinks shop and someone else in my mall has sweets and yet another shop has slushies (weird combo battledome/neggs/slushies) but my point is this: there are a ton of drinks to stock and it's nice having guidance when you are ALWAYS having to choose one item over another in foods/drinks/sweets. I like the division because it keeps the overlap to a minimum. I have seen malls where everyone is selling basically the same thing and after visiting 2-3 shops with a lot of overlap, I get frustrated and go to a different mall! Who wants to compete with your own mall members?! As for the coffee/tea situation...uhhh, I don't know about that one. *unsure* *angry* Now for a brief interlude of ranting about something generally unrelated... *angry* I hate MM food/sweet shops that stock full pages of <100NP foods (packrat food). It's okay if it's interspersed throughout your shop but a full page of it is a waste of valuable shop space and makes shops look junky. I am of the opinion that if you get to main market without quality stock it was just a waste of neopoints! Yes people will visit your shop but they won't buy much if your shop looks like a MEGA-HUGE newbie shop. Just leave some spaces blank if you can't afford to make all of your stock look good. A real-life example is the feeling you get when you walk into a fine furniture store vs. a thrift store. The physical structure can be exactly the same but the vibe from the stock is totally different! I will spend 1,000 on a chair in the fine furniture shop but I'm going to get an attitude if they try to charge me $1,000 for a chair in a thrift shop (even if it is a great deal). There are many food / sweets shops that have it right in main market but you have to look for them! I don't think getting to MM with 2-3M in stock is ever a good idea! Here's an awesome sweets shop that is only size 400 and also has faeries/pbs/codestones: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=queen_faerie2000&mall *lol* END OF RANT *lol* As for the banner: it looks GREAT! Good job! Yes it's a little large but the bigger the better in your hut as long as it's a good graphic and not just space-hogging. It will always be a catch-22 as long as shop descriptions show up in the huts. To be successful in a hut requires that your shop be an annoyance to the shoppers in your shop. What can we do? And no one need scroll through a banner when there is a page down button on everyone's computer & adding page numbers that take you to the stock portion in your shop work wonders (use an anchor)! EDIT: You can always resize the image and you won't have to change anything about it other than it's size. 700 width is large-ish. Keep us updated and best of luck! ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=Nilrem]Hey always lonely/china I must have been creating the thread as you posted yours lol. I agree the banner is large but imo its not extreme compared to other MM ads. Ive seen many MM ads for popular malls that are around [b]1200-1400[/b] pixels long. Admittedly mine is longer at 1525 pixels long but not far past others. I planned to play around a little to get it down more. Its just hard b/c if possible I would really like to keep the layout of the buttons. Personally I like how it flows so each category is easy to read w/ 2 buttons per row. Unfortunately that also makes it difficult to make small. Also the banner is currently optimistic. If i decide to combine 2 of the buttons down the road I may remove the mystery button and that would remove a row from the banner which should put it in the 1400 pixels range. Maybe I can rework the faerie section as well.[/quote] i swear someone (or maybe it was you) said that exact same thing elsewhere... cant seem to find that quote though