Digital Downloads - Review of Process from Customer POV

[ColsCreations]

Since we sometimes have options with our own designs/products that a customer wouldn’t, I purchased @Fiorenzo 's 5x7 folded card as a digital download so I could walk through and experience the process as a customer would. With his permission, I’m sharing my experience from a customer POV as accessory info to all the great detail he provided in his review here after purchasing his own download of same card.

There’s a number of things I want to touch on so to keep it from getting really complicated I’m going to do one thing per post, then reply to my own main post here with the next thing. I think that will help the Mods (and anyone else reading in threaded view) to keep things straight as to what is about what. So first thing -

#1 - Pricing & Promos

Pricing as Shown on Product Page

On the product page it showed the list price as $1.70 crossed-out, and $1.28 as the sale price with the 25% off discount applied.
(Note: I took this screenshot today 3/29 but placed the order yesterday 3/28 when the promo code itself was different but still for 25% off.)
When I added the item to my cart and went to my Cart, it did not reflect the discount even though the promo code was automatically showing in the box for it. It was showing the full $1.70 as price. So I deleted the item from my cart, went back to a “virgin” browser with cookies/cache cleared, and added it to my cart again. Same thing. Discount not applied. This time I manually pasted in the promo code in the box above where it shows the default one being applied, and got an error along the lines of ‘sorry, this code has already been applied to order’.

So despite the product page advertising it as $1.28 at 25% off, and my Cart telling me the promo was applied, it wasn’t being applied. It would not let me buy this at anything other than the crossed-out list-price of $1.70.

Purchase Price

Tonight I added a number of random digital downloads (all from the wedding category if that matters) to my cart and none of them reflect the advertised 25% off discounted price as shown on the product pages. It’s not a matter of having to complete checkout to get the discount because as shown below, a paper invitation I added to my cart clearly shows the discount that will be applied. Also notable is that you can see the suggestion to add the digital version of said card to my cart for $8.97 which is the sale price. But using that option, it still ends up in my cart at the full non-discounted price of $11.95.

Discount not being applied to digital downloads

I left 7 items in my cart so you can look and see that yes the promo code is applied but the discount isn’t being given.
I’m wondering now if this is a glitch with the discount not being applied to digitals, or, if Zazzle has acquiesced to feedback to NOT include digitals in sales? In which case it would still be a glitch as the customer is seeing a discounted price but not getting it.

Another note on the pricing aspect - I was charged tax on my digital purchase which brings me back tothis thread here . I don’t think tax will make or break an order but it is sort of a surprise. I know Zazzle’s accountants and tax attorneys know what they are doing but for my own education & curiosity, I am wondering what the grounds are for charging tax on a download when no physical item is purchased with it.

And one last note on pricing - if you buy the paper version, it costs $0.12 to remove the designer credit on the back. If you select ONLY the digital version though, the price does not change whether you’ve chosen to remove the credit or not.

Next up - Placing the Order & Accessing the Download

[ColsCreations]

#2 - Placing the Order & Accessing the Download

I clicked Add to Cart without editing any of the template fields because of the expectation to be able to edit later and download as often as I want. I did not get any warnings/prompts about leaving the templates as-is before buying.

I completed the purchase at 10:33pm and got this order confirmation page:

order confirmation page

Then I went to my Order History page which looked like this

Order History

 and kept refreshing to see when the download would become available.

At 10:50pm I got both an email and an on-site red-bell notification that my download was ready. But clicking the notification and the link in the email both just took me to the regular product page. It took a few minutes more (10:55pm to be exact) for the button to activate for me to actually be able to access the edit/download process, which now looks like this

Order Details

So it took 22 minutes from ordering to get access to the download. Which isn’t instant but is pretty darn quick if, like physical products, the order is going through content review before getting the green-light. So customers just need to know to be patient, it’s not “instant”, and that they don’t need the email so no worries about checking their spam folders and whatnot if they don’t get one. They just need to go to their order history page and wait for the button to become active.

Only other note here is that looking at the Order Details confused me at first glance. I once sent some custom labels direct to my niece so her address was in my Zazzle address book and somehow that shows as the Shipping Address for this order. Seeing a Shipping Address plus the Shipping Method & date shipped at top gave me a moment of thinking “oh shoot, did I accidentally order a paper card to be sent to my niece?”. So minor thing, but maybe instead of a shipping address that doesn’t apply to digital orders, that could instead show the email addy the download link was sent to.

Next thing tomorrow.

[Fiorenzo]

I can confirm, in my Royalty history the sale is listed for 1.70 $ (without tax, which is correct).

Edit: I didn’t check the effective price when I bought my own, because it works differently in that case (and I didn’t focus on that).

About your sales taxes: if it works like our VAT here in Europe, and I’m pretty sure it does, it is, indeed, due also to digital goods and services, not only to physical goods. I have to apply VAT/sales taxes also here, when I sell to privates both in Italy AND the whole European Union. In our case, the taxes MUST be included in the sales price and not separated (we mention it separately in addition, e.g. 22% VAT included 999€). For businesses, these taxes will be deducted from our part, if the customer sends us his VAT ID Number (required). When I sell outside of the EU, I don’t add taxes, it’s then on your end to pay these, either at customs for physical goods or by declaring them yourselves for digital goods, where this applies (not sure if you have to declare international digital purchases and services, in the US). If you are a business, you can then deduct them as expenses right at the same time you add them, so it’s a 0 game.

[ColsCreations]

#3 - Personalizing & Previewing Before Downloading

When I click the button in my order history to ‘Download or Edit Design’, or go direct to the product via a link, or directly from Fio’s store, I get a page that looks like this: (You can probably spot the problem here already.)

Instant Download “product page” after puchase

If I click the “View Details” button under the prompt to get the printed version, I get a page like this:

regular product page

 If from here I click the ‘Download or Edit Design’ button at top of page, it takes me back to the first page above.

So the big issue here is that when on the first page to edit/download the design, you only have previews for the front and back of the card. Even if you enter the design tool those are still the only previews you get. So you can’t preview changes you have made to the inside left and right! The only way I have found is to click  the “view details” button to get to the regular product page with printed version on it, make your edits using the previews there for the insides of the card, then click back on the top ‘Download or Edit Design’ button to go back to the first page with the big green ‘Download’ button to download your edited design, even though from there you can only see the front and back of the card. If I didn’t already know any better, I would take all this to mean that Instant Downloads only include the front and back designs, that the insides are only for if you order a printed version.

Off to work. More things later.

[Fiorenzo]

Jesus, you’re right, customers don’t see the inner pages at editing, with the phone previews up. Did miss this one, I was focused on the front page when testing the editing and template. Ouch. It seems there are quite a few little details that have to be addressed.

[Cat_Ritchie]

I haven’t had time to read through all this yet, I’ve been having WAY too much fun doing my taxes! (She says without the tiniest hint of sarcasm. 😉)

BUT I’m super confused about the sales prices on digital items, and I do think that something is not quite right in that arena. I just sold a digital invitation for 50% off, but as far as I can tell, only 15% is supposed to apply to the digital version. The original price was $11.95, and the customer paid $5.98.

Here’s the invite: Foggy Green Mountain Pines Rustic Outdoors Wedding Invitation | Zazzle

Here’s a screenshot of the pricing because I’m sure it will change:

Soooo I guess the good news is that the customer was able to apply the promo code somehow - the bad news is that it took 50% off instead of the 15% that it was supposed to!