We’re excited to share an update on the recent Zazzle design tool experience! After extensive testing, and customer feedback, we’re officially moving forward with rolling out the new design tool experience to all customers on select product types.
Customers have mentioned they love the new design experience - especially being able to customize their products directly within the tool. From colors and fonts to design elements, this more upfront, hands-on customization sets Zazzle apart from brick-and-mortar stores and other online retailers. We’ve also seen a strong lift in conversion rates, confirming that this update benefits both our customers and our Creator community.
Two important notes to help you make the most of the new experience:
Optimize Products and Templates
It’s now more important than ever for products and templates to be set up correctly as this helps ensure a seamless experience for customers and increases sales opportunities for Creators. Our research shows that most existing products are already well-optimized for the new design tool. However, some products may require updates to improve usability for customers. We’ve created a new help article with key tips to help Creators optimize products for success in this new environment. Properly configured products not only look and function better, but will also play a role in how products are surfaced on Zazzle in the future.
Product Edit Access
To maintain site stability during the busy holiday season, product edit access will be temporarily paused starting November 14th, and will reopen in the new year. Early next year, Creators whose sold products may need adjustments, will be notified directly. In the meantime, our team is enhancing the product edit tool for better performance and access.
While the “Post for Sale” process will remain unchanged through the holidays, we’d love your feedback on what features matter most to you in the new experience. Looking ahead, our goal is to create a unified design experience that benefits both Customers and Creators. Please share your ideas, thoughts and questions through our feedback form - it’s the best way for us to collect feedback at scale and prioritize Creator experience improvements.
Thank you for being part of the Zazzle ecosystem and for your feedback as we continue to grow and evolve together.
I am still getting different versions of the customer-interface in same anon browser during same session, depending on product type. Can you confirm if this is just a lag in the system updating or if the “new design tool experience to all customers” only applies to select product types?
Also, in the new “Best Practices” guide linked above, the very first tip is about how to write your template field labels. But on the products where I am getting the new customer-interface, field labels aren’t even displayed? As was illustrated in many prior feedback posts, our custom field labels are very important. While the Help article suggests you chose to keep our labels (yay!), I’m not seeing them on products with the new interface? Can you confirm if including our template field labels is or is not part of the new customer-facing layout?
Since SVG images are preferred, could we please have the ability to tile them?
You said: “Properly configured products not only look and function better, but will also play a role in how products are surfaced on Zazzle in the future.” Could you please provide more detail about what that means for Creators? For example, if we choose not to allow customization (i.e., we don’t enable the “Show customize it” button when posting) — whether it’s due to a licensed image that can’t be used in a design tool by a third party, or simply because we don’t want to expose our own image for some reason — will that affect our placement in the marketplace? Or are you only referring to products that aren’t configured correctly according to the new help article?
New Help Article: “11. Try to avoid using large shields with cutouts.”
This affects quite a few of my designs. I don’t have the “Replace Product” feature that would allow me to revise the design and lock the ‘shield’ covering my photos — this would solve the problem quickly! You mentioned “some products may require updates to improve usability for customers.” Does that mean we will all have access to the revise feature for designs with strong sales? Please, please!
It’s the same issue for elements I’ve previously grouped or locked.
Repeat patterns using the ’ Horizontal’ tiling feature also can’t be customized on the design area.
It’s good that the ‘Edit’ box lets customers personalize all the template objects. However, the instructions also tell them that they can “click on the design to make changes directly.”
New Help Article: 11. Try to avoid using large shields with cutouts: “If a large shield is integral to the design, we suggest using the lock feature so that customers don’t accidentally click on the shield cutout when customizing their design.”
Sometimes a ‘shield’ object is also an SVG object, allowing color customization. Is it possible for you to make photos/images within the ‘cutout’ area selectable on the design area?
I logged in today and am completely confused again. I am on Zazzle constantly and never saw this coming, a complete disaster! People who want to buy a personalized product that simply required them to press a button and enter text at a simple prompt NOW need to be directed to the artists page that has so many options even an artist is confused. The customer does not need to redesign products that we “Artist/Creators” worked so painstakingly at creating from scratch as unique to each our stores. We need to separate customers from Creators so that customers are not “lost” in the design screens or redirected constantly. A simple marketplace, stores that can be found when searched for and product screens that “Add to Cart” without frustrating the customer into design screens. At most, show entire “sets” that can be selected, such as paper plates, napkins, cups that match so we can sell sets easily. Text and color wheel only should be on the product page. Please, Zazzle had what we needed 7 years ago but since has only taken one consecutive wrong turn after another. Please, do not do carry on with these crazy ideas, especially at this time.
The new design tool for customers is awesome! As a user experience analyst, I know how difficult the regular design tool was for many people. This new tool is similar to Canva, which more and more people are using. It’s so much easier for customers to change colors now, which can only be a good thing. I’m 100% sure that conversions will improve with this new tool.
There’s an issue with images when you have multiple copies of a single image (e.g. wrapping paper like this: https://www.zazzle.com/merry_christmas_with_one_circle_photo_red_wrapping_paper-256120567154214595)). Images that have the same ID (image1) should all be cropped when the customer crops one of them. Right now, if you add a photo to a product with multiple copies of the same image and you crop the image, you will have to crop every image individually.
It would also be great if we could have a setting allowing us to specify that text should resize to fit the text box. I have many designs where there is limited space and I want to cater for longer text so I have to make the font smaller than I would if the text was shorter. Automatic resizing would make many designs look better with shorter text.
And yes, please let us tile SVG files.
Please thank the team for the great work on the design tool!
I just saw it since I happily created a few things last week after being away a while dealing with having a house sold, packed, and the contents moved down from 13 hours north during the 2026 Snow Storm - absentee. I’m a bit confused, but will learn eventually I hope 🙈 …
Hello! I think it could be good to add the save on file option, creating a file extention for the Zazzle edit tool for Win and Mac, and maybe also Android. This can be helpful to prevent loosing settings of work in progress due to blackouts or errors. Especially creating templates with text and images fields data and settings. Moreover it can be an help not only for customres but also for designers, for the ones that use and edit with the Zazzle. This improvement I suggest can be positive and useful also for customers. The cloud era is started from much time as well as independency.
I’m getting more used to this, but it is still awfully cumbersome. Finding fonts, is craziness… too many clicks to get back to a font you just used. The font editing tools should all be together with the fonts, instead of having to scroll across the page to find the button to push to scroll down to the curve/letter space/line space, and it exists with elements that have nothing to do with fonts. Also, the “layers” button does not show up continuously. I don’t mean to be rude, because I know you guys work hard, but do the people who design the tool sets actually sell products on Zazzle? I have been waiting to comment, and thinking that some of this would be squared away. Can you advise? Thanks so much.
