Configuring the Visit Sensor

SL Commerce Manager Visit Sensor Instructions
Version: 1.0
Author: Chris Shipman
Date: Jan 28, 2010

The SL Commerce Manager Visit Sensor provides a useful way to determine who is visiting your store, club, or other public place. You can tie this data together with your sales records to produce a complete picture of your Second Life marketing programs. This may help you to determine the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or hunt, how many visits it takes to produce a sale, and other related questions.

The Visit Sensor operates as a hidden prim that you place in your store. As visitors enter your store, the prim records their avatar name and logs it to the SL Commerce Manager web site. In addition, the Visit Sensor can also greet them with a message, and provide them with promotional items, such as notecards, landmarks, textures and objects.

The Visit Sensor can operate in one of two modes: either Collision or Sensor. In Collision, the sensor records a visit when the avatar runs through its boundary. You can place a sensor in Collision mode at your parcel's teleport landing point, or at the door to your store. The Collision mode is good in that it doesn't generate significant lag, and only operates when an avatar comes in contact with it.

In Sensor mode, the Visit Sensor performs a sensor sweep for nearby avatars at a given time interval. The Sensor mode works well for identifying avatars no matter where they may be on your parcel. It also does a good job at recording the visit duration, since the avatar is not required to continually pass through the sensor's field. However, the active Sensor mode can contribute to lag, especially if you configure it to operate too frequently.

The Visit Sensor records visit and avatar data on the SL Commerce Manager web site, located at www.slcommercemanager.com. Please use the Registration Disk to create your SL Commerce Manager account or reset your password. Your login account at SL Commerce Manager is your Second Life avatar name. Once you've logged in, you can see a wide range of reports about all of your visitor activity.

You must have a valid account at SL Commerce Manager for this Visit Sensor to operate.

In addition to Visit reports, you can get a wide range of tightly integrated sales reports at SL Commerce Manager. Please check out the SL Commerce Manager Sales account at SL Marketplace or the in-world SL Commerce Manager store for more information.

QUESTIONS? PROBLEMS?

If you have any questions about the SL Commerce Manager Visit Sensor or the SL Commerce Manager web site, please send a notecard to Chris Shipman. I'll be happy to help you.

SETTING UP THE VISIT SENSOR

You configure the Visit Sensor by modifying a notecard. The notecard settings are covered below. In addition, the Sensor can distribute items to your visitors. To distribute items, you can add them to the Visit Sensor's contents. A Sensor can distribute one of each of the following: Notecard, Landmark, Texture, Object. If you add more than one of these, the sensor will only distribute the first item.

Once you've configured your sensor, click it to display the menu. You must select "Go Online" before any visits can be recorded on the web site! This option associates the sensor with your slcommercemanager.com account.

You should also click "Go Online" whenever you rename a sensor, or take a sensor into inventory and then drop it into a new location. When you rename a sensor, pressing "Go Online" updates the online database with the new information. When you take a sensor into inventory and then rez a copy into a new location, a sensor is created with the same name but a new Object Key (unique identifier). Pressing "Go Online" will give you some options on how to handle this new sensor. You can choose to update your existing listing with the new Object Key, or create a new sensor with the same name.

SENSOR CONFIGURATION

The Visit Sensor stores it's configuration data in a notecard named "Settings". Here is what a notecard looks like, plus a description of the options:

    //SL Commerce Manager Visit Sensor 
    
    GREETING: Welcome to SL Commerce! 
    FOLDER NAME: SL Commerce 
    SCAN MODE: Collide 
    SENSOR RANGE: 20 
    SENSOR FREQUENCY: 60 
    LIMIT SENSOR TO PARCEL: Yes 
    RUN IN SLAVE MODE: Yes 
    NETWORK CHANNEL: -1000 
    VERIFICATION KEY: 1234 
    NEW VISIT WINDOW: 20 
    IGNORE ME: Yes 
    IGNORE GROUP MEMBERS: No 
    IGNORE LIST:

GREETING: <Text>
This is the message that will be "spoken" to new visitors.

The Visitor Sensor maintains a list of the last 50 visitors, so avatars who visit your site frequently will not be continually bombarded by the welcome message.

All visitors to your area will be recorded on the SL Commerce Manager web site, however, no matter how frequently that they visit.

FOLDER NAME: <Text>
The items distributed by your sensor are placed in a folder in the avatar's inventory. This setting allows you to specify the folder name.

SCAN MODE: <Collide/Sensor>
This setting allows you to specify whether the sensor runs in Collide mode or Sensor mode.

SENSOR RANGE: <Number from 0 to 96>
Only applicable when running in Sensor mode. Allows you to specify the range in meters for avatar detection. The maximum range is 96 meters.

SENSOR FRQUENCY: <Number>
Only applicable when running in Sensor mode. Allows you to specify the interval, in seconds, between every sensor sweep. Lower settings generate higher amounts of sim lag.

LIMIT SENSOR TO PARCEL: <Yes/No>
Only applicable when running in Sensor mode. When set, the Sensor will only record avatars that are actually standing on your land. This is helpful to exclude visitors to neighboring parcels. On group deeded land the sensor must be deeded to the same group.

RUN IN SLAVE MODE: <Yes/No>
This is currently not implemented and is ignored.

NETWORK CHANNEL: <Number>
This is currently not implemented and is ignored.

VERIFICATION KEY: <Number>
This is currently not implemented and is ignored.

NEW VISIT WINDOW: <Number>
Allows you to specify the window, in minutes, used to determine a new visit as compared to a continuation of an existing visit. For example, assume that you've specified the setting of 20 minutes. An avatar may be detected and then wander to another part of your store, out of detection range. If they are detected 15 minutes later, that would be inside the 20 minute window, and we'd assume that they spent the last 15 minutes browsing around somewhere in your parcel. However, if they were detected again 2 hours later, it's likely that they left your store, and then returned. Since the two hour period since they were last detected exceeds the 20 minute window, this new detection is created as a new visit.

IGNORE ME: <Yes/No>
Allows you to specify whether to ignore yourself, as the owner, from visits. Initially, you may wish to set this to NO, in order to test the sensor operation. Later, you can set this to Yes so that your traffic isn't recorded.

IGNORE GROUP MEMBERS: <Yes/No>
Allows you to specify whether to record the traffic of avatars that are members of the same group that the sensor is assigned to.

IGNORE LIST: <Yes/No>
Allows you to specify a comma-delimited list of avatars to also ignore. This list could include neighbors who sometimes stray onto your parcel, store employees, or others.

USING THE VISIT SENSOR MENU

Clicking on the Visit Sensor prim will present you with several options for managing your sensor:

Show Prim/Hide Prim
This option allows you to toggle the prim’s invisibility. While you are positioning the prim on your parcel, you’ll likely want to see it. Once you’re through positioning your sensor, hide it so that visitors do not see it.

Also, you should ensure that the prim is marked as “Phantom”, especially if the sensor is going to operate in Collide mode.

Go Online
This is an important option, and you should use it when you do any of the following:

Deploy a new sensor
Move the sensor to a new region
Rename the sensor
Take the sensor into inventory and bring it out again

This option registers the sensor and its object key with the slcommercemanager.com web site. A sensor must be registered before it can record visits.

If you have a sensor that has the same name as a previous sensor but a new object key, you will be asked if this is the same sensor. Clicking “Yes” will basically overwrite the existing sensor’s object key with the new one. Clicking “No” will create an entirely new sensor with the same name as the previous one. This is not recommended.

Status
This button presents a few helpful status messages that you can use to see how the sensor is working.

Reset
This button causes the sensor to clear its internal visitor list and re-read the configuration notecard.

USING THE SL COMMERCE MANAGER WEB SITE

In the Visitor Sensor product box you’ll find an SL Commerce Manager registration disk. The SL Commerce Manager registration disk is used to create an account on the slcommercemanager.com web site, and to reset your password.

The Create Account feature can only be used once. When you create an account, it will register your Second Life avatar name, and create a temporary password. The temporary password will appear in the chat channel, although it can only be heard by the owner.

Once you’ve logged in at slcommercemanager.com, you can change your password to a different one, although we do not recommend using your Second Life password.

If you forget your password, you must reset it. Clicking on the registration disk will present you with an option to reset your password, which will again be sent to you over the chat channel. Alternately, you can visit the SL Commerce Manager store in-world and use the self-service terminal.