Required Products

Discussion Forums Collections
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Today I noticed that a new bunch of collection types within Cross-Sell now have recommended products. I noticed this because yesterday I didn’t have any collections that had red flags saying Needs Attention and today I do, holidays that weren’t on the previous rollout; Halloween, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

In the previous rollout, I had some party collections that didn’t have invitations. The red flag said “Invitations are required”. Cool. I made invitations. The red flag went away.

In this new rollout, only the Halloween collection tells me what requirement I haven’t met; “there must be 4 of the recommended products, excluding styles”. Cool. Some design transfer will take care of that. 

My problem is Hanukkah and Thanksgiving. Neither one tells me what’s required, just that I have to have the required products. Thanksgiving is particularly vexing because it doesn’t have a slot for invitations (which I have because I designed the collection for Friendsgiving) . I guess I could try to fill every recommended slot in both collection types in the hopes that I will land on the required one(s). But I am hoping that somebody else has these collection types and no red flag because they have the correct required products.

My unfilled slots in Thanksgiving are Kid+Adult t shirts, mugs, blankets, doormats, coasters, postcards, hand towels (does mean the bathroom ones??), puzzles and posters/prints.

My unfilled slots for Hanukkah are cards, invitations, stickers, t shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, leggings, tote bags, aprons, puzzles, napkins, banners/signs, poscards, throw pillows.

That is a ton of products on both fronts so I am wondering if anybody else here has these collection types and knows which products are required that I’m missing. 

If not, I will start at the top of the list and work my way down till I happen to hit the requirement, but I’m trying to wiggle out of that.

I already made all products Preferred Collection so it’s not that.

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Sorry, I don’t have an answer for you @KeegansCreation  but I do have the same question regarding ‘Back to School’ collections. The first two empty slots on my collection are ‘kids tshirt’ and ‘adults tshirt’ (and hope this last one is not a requirement for a back-to-school collection!) 

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Just a note to add that I’m not sure the whole ‘required products’ thing is such a great idea, but will wait to see how this plays out when the dust settles. … for instance, not every back-to-school collection should require a tshirt should it? and won’t that take away some of the uniqueness of each collection if they all have the same basic products? Just sayin’

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I also had a “Back to School” collection that needed attention for the same reason today.  I even created a new birthday collection to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind thinking that it marked the invitation as required (it did).  With nothing marked as required, we can’t even fix it I don’t think.  My design would work on a t-shirt, so I’ll add one tomorrow and report back. 

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I have “back to school” set to similar theme/ style. Didn’t even knew you get set to cross sell. Just tried it and it showed red for my collection and with many missing products. This could be also because I split the theme up into one for teachers and one for students. Which seemed more logical to me.

It’s unclear for me if I set it to cross sell and fill all the recommended product slots if this results in more promotion and sales. Even though I think mixing products for students and teachers looks a bit messy.

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Totally agree, I have a “Cute Jungle Animals Kids” theme and when I set it to back to school + cross sell it wants me to create an Adult T-shirt in recommended? Doesn’t make sense.

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I did add both and adult & child t-shirt today and the the issue resolved. It’s kind of a bummer, because to me those would be the lesser of things I’d want to showcase of for “back to school” because there are so many other cool products out there that I think parents would buy first. 

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Solved for Thanksgiving: I added t shirts for kids and adults, foil holiday postcard, coasters. Red flag didn’t go away until I added a mug.

So for anybody reading with same issue it looks like we have defined 2 of the undefined required products.

Back to School- adult and child t shirts seem to be the required product

Thanksgiving- mug seems to be the required product

It’s entirely possible that there are more required products but we already had them in the collections so didn’t realize they are required. But at least this gives people a place to start.

It’s also possible that in both cases it’s number of products rather than the specific product. That would make it 7 for Back To School (thanks @Krysanthe  ) and 15 for Thanksgiving. But for anyone who has these collections flagged red, I’d start with t shirts for back to school and mugs for Thanksgiving.

In both cases the required products seem odd. I had expected other tableware to be required for Thanksgiving, like paper coasters or table runners or a tablecloth (all of which I had) or the foil holiday postcards. But no. Mugs.

For Back To School I’d expect actual school supplies to be required; erasers, pens, pencils, binders. Something like that. But t shirts??? Ok then. (Unless 15 and 7 are the required numbers, rather than specific products.)

Please Zazzle, tell us what the requirements are when red flagging so we don’t have to crowd source this.

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I just had to add t-shirts and the red went away.  I only have 7 different product types in that collection, so you don’t have to fill them all.  

I don’t know either how it will help in the long run, I just know red isn’t good.  I guess the rest we will find out over time. 

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Here’s the problem I have with required products in collections — and every product needing to be included in a collection: this new way of creating and marketing designs on Zazzle doesn’t allow designers to create only one new design, post it, and receive market/customer feedback (positive or negative) before we waste time posting the same design on 20+ items. If the first item isn’t ultimately selling, then 20 additional products aren’t likely to sell, either. We need to test the market before we create a design and titles, tags, and write product descriptions for 20 required products.

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@Jadendreamer13  I’m still chuckling at the slot for a shower curtain in the Halloween Cross Sell - not sure who decided that but no space for bottle tags/balloons or confetti - you know - party supplies. 

Plus when you do add all the products to all the slots - your zrank will decrease due to sales/products ratio (still hurting from losing a point lol)

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I was happy to see Hanukkah got an official cross sell category. However, when I checked my products, I noticed a number of them weren’t there at all. So I had to cross reference my matching categories & put the missing products in their collections and make sure the totals matched. I know that those products were originally in a collection because that’s the way I always work. So fyi, double check everything to make sure they’re there!

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I have 2 back to school collections & both need attention for cross sell. 1 already had 4 products in it & the red warning says all slots must be filled. Huh? The other 1 says it needs 1 more product to be complete. It’ll be interesting to see when I make another product for 1st one, in 1 of the noted slots, if it’ll go green at that point.

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Adding on to the above comment: I made 1 more product for each of those back to school collections. So I have 5 products in 1 & 4 in the other. The minimum requirement is now gone but the red warning is still saying: 

"Please resolve the following issues to make this collection visible in this channel:
  • All required products must be added"

I’m assuming it’s a glitch & I don’t have to fill every product slot, since it’s not that way with the other cross sell collection categories. But what do I still need to make? 

If a moderator could respond that would be great.

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@Krysanthe  Just saw your response. Why a t-shirt? Ugh! Of all the product slots, I think that would be the least applicable back to school product to create. Does anyone know if another product would work instead?

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@KeegansCreation  my erasers are all under bonus.

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Has anybody tried filling those required spots with hidden or direct-only products?

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hmmm…no I haven’t, but that’s an interesting idea. I’m going to give it a try.

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Right?  It seems like a strange choice.  I chose the t-shirt because it was the first one listed, and the required one has been the first one listed in all the other collections.  My collection already had notebooks, folders, tote bags, posters, water bottles & mugs.  So none of those are the “required” ones. 

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Here is my Make It Make Sense theory. We base our guesses at required products based on what we personally think fits in the category or what we personally have sold. I’ve sold a number of erasers, pens, pencils and binders. Some backpacks. Last night a lunch box. All these are school supplies and none required. To Make It Make Sense perhaps they base required products on what has sold on the site overall from their Back To School promotions. Despite the number of school supplies we have personally sold, it’s possible these are dwarfed by people buying t shirts (like the ones saying what grade a kid is in) and they are buying their school supplies in brick and mortar stores mostly.

I never made any of those t shirts because I find the concept weird but I made personalized pencils and erasers. Maybe those shirts are huge sellers and that’s why we’re being steered towards them. I can sort of see it for kids. I can’t wrap my head around the necessity of ones for adults.

Similarly I didn’t turn Thanksgiving collection green until I added a mug. Is that what people are mainly buying when they do Thanksgiving shopping on Zazzle? Not greeting cards or Friendsgiving invitations or linens/decor/tableware? Well, ok.

Hanukkah went green when I added stickers. I had been expecting wrapping paper or cards but stickers don’t seem too oddball.

None of this makes quite the sense of requiring invitations for party collections. But they must have some reason for steering us so aggressively towards certain products. Actual purchase data as opposed to what is intuitive to us is the only thing I can think of.

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