Forcing a Customer to Replace Photo Placeholder

[whimsywhim]

Hello and Happy New Year!

Is there an advantage to force a customer to replace a stockholder photo?  I've seen some designers choose this option, but several others don't do anything, i.e. no template, forcing customers, fill or anything - when you click on the photo, you can delete it.  

What's the best strategy for placeholder photos?

Thank you!

[idraw]

@whimsywhim 
Hi whimsy, Since the main reason for shops is so that the customer can purchase whatever they choose, in thinking about it, to me it makes the most sense to give them the option to use a placeholder photo or to remove it.

[PacifierCity]

@whimsywhim 

Many use a placeholder image of a person or with people.  In that case, depending on the license involved, the designer may not be allowed to let a customer purchase a product with that photo.  To stop it from accidentally happening, and abiding by their license agreement for that image, one would choose to force the customer to replace the image.

So the best practice is going to depend on the license you have for the placeholder image.  If it is yours, or CCO, then choosing to not force a customer to replace may seem to make sense.  But to stop an accidental purchase where the customer meant to replace the image with their own, but got distracted and purchased without replacing, the force customer to replace image prevents that accidental sale and then the return as well.

PC

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[NigelSutherland]

If you have a placeholder photo on a item, which may be a generic photo with the words "your image here", you really don't want the customer to order the item with that image printed! Therefore it's essential to force the customer to replace it. I'd love to think that it wasn't possible for a customer to be so silly as to forget to change the image to that of their own, but I've learned never to underestimate what other people are capable of.

[plumb4me]

Don't use the words "Your Image Here" as text in the placeholder or even put "Your Image Here" text on top of the image, you use as a placeholder.  Zazzle does not allow "Your Image Here" to be placed on a product. I wouldn't even use it in my title.

This is what Zazzle says:

"This email is to notify you that we’ll be taking down ‘Your Image Here’ templated products from your store/s.

We’ve noticed you’ve created products that are functionally similar to our own Zazzle Templates. For reasons of quality control, and so our customers have the best shopping experience possible, we reserve the right to remove such products from the site as stated in our User License Agreement."

[DancingPelican]

From my own experience, I recommend using the "force replace" option for placeholder photos. I had a customer message me once who was furious that the Save the Date cards she ordered had a strange couple's photo on the back of them! It was the placeholder photo and she ordered her Save the Dates without replacing the sample photo with her own. If I had checked "force replace", she would have been forced to replace that placeholder photo before ordering. She thought if she did nothing, there would be no photo on the back of her cards. Surprise!!!

[whimsywhim]

Wow!  Thank you guys so much for all the responses!  Holy moly, that is horrible about the Save the Date cards!  I guess some people really don't see the obvious.  Going forward, I will definitely force the replacement.  

Thank you very much!!

[ColsCreations]

When Force Replace for images first came out as an option it put a yellow warning error symbol on the product page that I thought would scare customers away from the get-go so I didn't like it. I either deleted or deleted & republished whatever odd thing I had used it on because I can't find it now. So I went looking in the marketplace for something with a Force Replace image to see what happens now.

I found a card with just one template text and one template image. I changed the template text but left the image be and clicked "Add to Cart". That de-activated the button and produced the Heads-up message. I clicked the See Details and that opened the Design Issues pane on the left. (I blurred the template image there, not a Zazzle bug).

Very nice and not-scary so far but when you click the Edit Design button there, it opens into the Design Tool which isn't as user-friendly as being able to change it from the Personalize panel. Which leads me to wonder what happens if you've published with the option for "show Customize It button" turned off specifically so that people can't get into the Design Tool. Is this a back-door into the Design Tool or is the Edit Design button just not present on the pop-up for such situation? (I would assume it's the latter but not up to creating & publishing a product to test.)

You can X the pop-up box out and go back to the big blue Personalize button instead (in which case the image field now has a red warning symbol on it) BUT if they've already followed the prompt to Edit Design under the What Should I Do? then they might already be unexpectedly in over their head in the Design Tool if your design is a complicated one.

I'm not saying yay or nay to using Force Replace, just walking through the process as would happen for a customer if you use it which is always something to consider.