zRank for one of my primary stores jumped from 6 to 8 overnight.
(even my lowest selling store went up a point).
I have been deleting products that haven’t sold, but in the past that has never affected my zRank.
wonder if it’s the (regular) posting to the new Zazzle Community forums that has had a say in the matter?
I doubt posting here has any effect on zRank at all. If you deleted products before and did so now again, maybe your stores have reached a product to sales ratio that worked in your favor with zRank.
That would be my guess. But to be fair, your guess is as good as mine.
I did have some nice bulk sales within the last couple of months. If they’ve cleared, then your guess may be correct. But as you’ve pointed out, we’re all grasping at straws. 😉
Two things I have consistently noticed will boost my zrank … deleting, hiding, sharing all ‘unseen’ products and of course ‘sales’.
Thus I believe the ratio of products to products viewed to be relevant as well as products sold.
Hence the importance of housekeeping, routinely sharing unseen items, hiding anything deemed surplus. You could for example hide seasonal products and unhide 3 months prior to the season starting ( in line with stores who start selling Christmas items in Sept. Easter items already in shops now etc.). This means you are not deleting, just popping your stock into storage until it is needed.
Doesn’t hiding say Christmas goods then unhiding them at whatever one deemed a good time to do it…
make that product lose it’s marketplace standing / location? I’m just trying to learn here.
I don’t know is the quick answer
BUT
Where are you in the marketplace? If you are number 100,000 out of 900,000 what placement are you losing? If however you in the top 5 pages … then the question becomes relevant.
For me, I don’t need to hide my seasonal items as they have all been viewed and my zrank for the store featuring them is a zrank 9. However if it was lower (4 or 5) then I would consider the merits of hiding them out of season. Market placement wouldn’t be a consideration I had.
Your market placement will fall if not viewed or sold as newer products are added daily. Those newer products may match current trends and be marketed more actively by the Creator (or Zazzle) or affiliates. On the other hand, hiding your products out of season could give them a ‘boost’ of freshness when you unhide them. Especially if you SHARE them all again at that time (you should do so).
For me the biggest reasons not to hide seasonal items is because you never really know when someone might be shopping early for a particular holiday… and also I can tell you from my own experience that my hidden things did lose search rankings. Also search placement has a lot to do with what search terms are used… so just because you are not showing up on the first 5 pages for one search doesn’t mean you won’t show up on page one for a different keyword search. So for me personally I try not to hide anything I want to see sell, I will try revamping keywords and ramping up promotions instead. If that doesn’t help after the 3rd try or so… then I will delete it myself.
I was wondering if you had recently changed your royalty? from my own observations the two biggest things that have bumped my zrank up or down has been sales (or the lack thereof) and royalty changes. For instance over the holidays I raised my royalties and saw my Zrank in some of my higher ranking stores drop a point. Then when I lowered it again I saw them go back up a point.
@shellifitz , no, I haven’t changed my royalty in years.
The hiding of seasonal items was really just one example of how we can attempt to boost our zrank without deleting products we still want to sell. Rotating stock like we do in shops. But definitely, if one can keep those sales coming in without reducing stock levels, then do so. Everything is a means to an end only.
That is an interesting observation Shelli. I wonder, did you raise them over 10%?
My Z rank went from 5 to 7 for no reason that I can figure out. I don’t need to figure it out. Just enjoying it.
My rank went up and went back down just as quick. 
@CreativeLeahG no I only went from 14.9 to 20, but as soon as that 20% kicked in all 11 of my stores dropped by 1 point. Since the holidays are over now I am back to the normal 14.9 and got my lost zRank points back.
Shellifiz - Zazzle deducts 5% from your royalty, whenever your royalty is more than 14.9%. So you only got 0.1% more royalty at 20%. Was that your aim?
14.9% is the magical figure, so going over that was the trigger it seems based on your findings. I thought maybe it was going over 10% as that appears to be their desired upper % figure.
According to the royalty calculator on the product selling page a roll of 3" wide ribbon at 14.9 % royalty will cost the customer $19.95 and yield me $2.87. The same product at 20% royalty will cost the customer $21.20 and yield me $3.89 after they take a 0.20 cent transaction fee. so I have made an extra $1.02 on that sale of one roll of ribbon. Maybe that is only 0.1% more but it was an increase in my royalties. Math is not my strong point (in fact it gives me a headache) but it seems like that is actually more than a 0.1% increase? The main objective I was trying to acchieve was to offset the deep discounts offered over the holidays and seeing what happened to my Zrank I am glad I didn’t go higher than that. I have seen from experience that my higher ranked stores do better in sales.
@CreativeLeahG I did experiment around with 10% vs 14.9% before and honestly from my limited testing I really didn’t see any difference in Zranks or sales but now go over 14.9 and zrank drops. Which I think you probably have also noticed that higher ranked stores seem to do better sales wise. At least that is what I have noticed. 🙂
I think zrank is beneficial for sales BUT I presently mainly focus on creating designs for new stores which are at 4/5 so I don’t rely on zrank. I do wonder if I am making a mistake in that regard, but I don’t like to have too many products in a single store.
Same here. That was one of the side effects when I broke out my main store into smaller ones I did notice higher zranks even though that wasn’t really on my radar at the time. But I have one store that has a pretty high rank and I try not to mess with it too much. I will usually only add new things after something sells trying to keep the balancing act. LOL Zrank is still such a mystery so I don’t really worry about it that much, but I am always trying to learn more about it just by observation of my own stores. pretty limited test group though .. haha