Optimisation of Hidden Products

[NigelSutherland]

Having neglected working on hidden products for a few weeks, I discovered that I had around 2,500 products in one store alone that required optimisation! So I've been going through them only to discover that the number has suddenly increased to nearly 3,500!!

I'm still making regular daily sales, (although last month was about £450 down on December the previous year).

So I have some questions that I hope those that have better experience will hopefully help with...

Is it acceptable to simply "unhide" products, and then open each page to register a view?

I understood that if a page has been viewed, it doesn't get hidden. However, I have many products with multiple views that Zazzle has hidden.

Does anyone have tips as to the fastest way to get through a mountain of hidden products, while staying ethical? (3000 products even at 30 seconds work per product amounts to 25 hours!)

[PenguinPower]

You can bulk unhide things. And yes, you can simply unhide them, you don't even have to open them, in fact, I'm not sure that if you view the item under your own login it 'counts'.. Things that have views can still be hidden if they fail to get a new view within the set period (what is it.. 16 months, I remember it's a little over a year..), only things that have sales are never hidden.
AFAIC, there's nothing unethical about unhiding your items... if you have an active store, it's your business as to whether you want to keep items up for sale or not. 

[ColsCreations]

 I discovered that I had around 2,500 products in one store alone that required optimisation! So I've been going through them only to discover that the number has suddenly increased to nearly 3,500!!

How many total products do you have? There's a limit of 100,000 public products per account.  When you reach that limit, least-popular products start getting hidden regardless of views/edit dates, until you are under the limit again. If you're at the limit, publishing new products is going to cause older ones to get hidden. If you start unhiding, others have to get hidden in their place... If you're near or over the limit you could be stuck in that loop. The only way out is to clean house and delete products. Or, you'd need to be exceptionally organized and on top of the numbers so you could say, hide all your Halloween and Thanksgiving stuff to make room for all your Mardi Gras and Valentines stuff ...

Here's the FAQs page about max number of products and them being hidden:

How Many Public Products Can I Have?

[Windy]

I do not have a 3500-scale problem, but after a family emergency which took me out of service for over a year I did come back to a 450-scale problem. I divided these into chunks (I made a bookmark for, say, clocks needing optimization). I visited my bookmarked set each day and tackled a dozen or so of those.  I found that about half were so lacking in quality they needed to be deleted, so I deleted those and unhid and retagged others.  I also found others which really are not relevant now, and deleted those (masks, for example). This does not answer your question, but might be useful to others browsing this thread. It's doable, but it does take time.

[NigelSutherland]

I'm also wondering whether selecting very specific "events and occasions" under the categories options actually RESTRICTS product views. I've noticed this with party invitations for instance. If I don't specify anything it seems more likely that I get views than if I specify "birthday" then sub-category "21st" for example. Not specifying a category and leaving it open to be found simply by searching key words or phrases is possibly more efficient I suspect. This is something I've had a hunch about for some time...

[Windy]

INTERESTING! I will now try some of that.

[Van]

I think it's products that have sold that don't become hidden, not just viewed. I start going through the optimization needed things then not long after there's another batch showing up, lol. One day I'm just gonna have to grit my teeth and do some serious store cleaning.

[Deb]

All of this being said - I have been getting  one after another  notices of  products needing optimization -  and  being busy with other facets of product design or covers or what ever I'm doing, I've been pretty much ignoring them..  I had clicked on one and it took me to a section, not to THE product  they were warning me about.  I too have noticed a HUGE decrease in sales..  HUGE.. so today I decided to take a little deeper look  at  products needing optimization..  and WOW I noticed some pretty disheartening things.. and felt it was important enough to share 

of my small shop of only 5719 products..  a third of them were hidden - I double checked  tags descriptions etc..  and a few more disturbing things..  namely..  ADD A COVER PHOTO  .. A-HA! there it is..  So , it appears that now Zazzle is in High gear hiding all content without cover images.. 

Another reason for the optimization warning  is Promote products  on social media or your own website            How does Zazzle know if you are nor not?   

titles: do not use less than 3 words or less than 20 characters? I never knew this before.. OK.. 

titles: do not use the same title for more than one product.. or use another design's title..  which is difficult when you have a collection of wedding stationery  that all are a matching set.. I HAVE tried to name them something different..  invites with a diff name than the rsvp etc..  only to have customers CONSTANTLY ask 'do these match? they have different names'  So I went back to naming  them the same in one collection - 

There is a Slew of conforming rules to tags, descriptions and titles..  read it here

 https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000373127-Title-Description-Tagging-Best-Practices

So.. as I said this is only one of my many shops..  I have not yet looked into the others..  to see how many things there have been hidden.. IF I spent all my hours  doing everything to comply with  the new rules and regs of Zazzle - I figure by 2026 I ought to have time to create a new design or 2  😞 

[Windy]

I have been doing a lot of optimizing, because after a series of family tragedies,  I had to mostly be away from Zazzle for over a year. When I came back I had about 500 products needing optimization--eventually I went through the entire list.  I never took those suggestions in the way that you are interpreting them. I think of the suggestions as being good ideas for how to bring more attention to a product, so I sometimes implement one or more if I want to. But in many cases I have deleted the product outright.  I do not believe that Zazzle has hidden any of my products due to lack of a cover image. They've all been hidden to lack of anyone clicking the product to view it, over the specified length of time.  

[WBartworks]

From what I understand product doesn't get hidden because it doesn't have a cover or doesn't get promoted, it gets hidden because it didn't receive any views for 15 months.  Zazzle may be less inclined to promote product that has no cover and therefore product without cover gets hidden due to not being seen.

[Deb]

https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/223160488-Marketplace-Optimization

this explains it  .. but the confusion comes from this little note on the page  when you see your products that are hidden with a red !  

[AWESOMA]

I just got 4100 hidden products at one time....how on earth can optimize that many products?  Please slow down on hiding them.  You're making it impossible for us.