Questions about the correct use of cover images/videos in Collections outreach

[James]

Hi Creators, 

I'm creating this thread so we can help with any questions from the outreach for correct/intended use of cover images/videos in a collections media manager. This way, we can collaborate and help each other resolve any questions. 

The email highlighted the misuse of single product images in a Collections Media Manager, which might cause confusion in line with intended use in the Marketplace and Search. 

Please only comment in this thread with questions regarding this subject directly. We all love a chit chat but this can sometimes drown out the genuine concerns of a topic. 😊

Thank you so much

James H. 

[LFL]

Hi James,

1. May we have the dimensions for videos for collections?

2. For product listings I'm guessing it's 1480px x 1480 for videos too?

Please confirm. Before I invest time creating these, I want to be sure that they meet up to Zazzle's requirements.

Thank you. 🙂

[James]

Hi @LFL , 

You can check out the dimensions, here. 😁

[LFL]

Thank you, James. 🙂

[wpl]

Thank You for the reply @James 

so a couple of questions, I have almost 1 K collections, so I would like to prioritize making cove rimages for teh ones most needed

1. for the wedding suite zazzle has real view mockups enabled , will that suffice or do we still need a cover image?

2. are cover images urgently required for the cross sell /event suites only?

Thank You 

[James]

Hi @wpl , great questions. 

1. Yes, completely fine to use the Zazzle-generated mock-ups where available. This is why we have introduced them. We understand there aren't a lot of resources for multi-product mock-ups readily available, so wanted to help. 
2. I would prioritize any cross-sells on this list we published a few weeks ago (which has also been updated). 

[wpl]

Thank You so much!!! 

[Lais]

Hello. I've just started creating cover images for my collections. Can someone tell if this is an example of a good collection cover?

This is from Adventure Begins Colored Pencil

[Gsallicat]

Can’t answer the question but that’s a beautiful collection!

[Malissa]

That definitely fits the requirements of multiple product images within the collection for the cover and looks great! 

Not just to Lais,

Obviously I am not a mod or anything, but I really think that they are looking for the following things in a well presented media section and it is up to us how much we want to add to any one collection, if anything.

 - as simple or complex of a multi product cover as we want plus one or more of the following,

- multi product secondary images,

- meet the artist, process or original art secondary images (whatever tells your story or info you want to convey to your customers,

- plus a video (I can't remember if we can have more than one).

I personally believe the single product media images in our collection media section are not really helpful anyway since most likely they will already be your main product image already in the collection.

They so far have left the creative aspect of how we want to represent our collections and products up to us and I think the lack of much in the way of guidelines because of this has led to most of the confusion.  A skeleton frame of what they would like to see would be helpful, but I do think that I am fairly correct in my interpretation of what they want.  It will just look very different from shop to shop.

[Windy]

That's a fantastic collection cover, @Lais 

[NadineMay]

I own two shops, 'The Awakening' and 'Just_kidding'. All five Mandala designs are supposed to belong to 'The Awakening' store. However, after some recent changes on Zazzle, I noticed that some designs are showing up in both stores, confusing. To fix this, I removed the tick where both shops are mentioned and kept all the mandala designs in 'The Awakening' store, which I created for this shop. What would be the best course of action for me now?

[NadineMay]

What am I to do?
 https://www.zazzle.com/pd/editcollection?id=119021701687664523&sr=250358134617660585
These mandala designs are in the wrong shop! I can't seem to edit them and put them into the right shop! I tried taking the one tick from the wrong shop and clicked onto the recommended shop.  But what els can I do? Almost all products were created for the correct shop!

[Malissa]

If you just ticked/unticked boxes today, you have to wait a day or 2 for indexing to see the results.  In the meantime, I the products will stay in the store that they are created in.  The mix up is just happening within the collections.  There is no way for one product to move to the other shop without you recreating it in that shop and posting a second one for sale.  Hope that eases your mind.

[NadineMay]

I have two stores, but I learned that my The Awakening shop is not seen? is that why it never comes up? unless I click in the pinning option?

https://www.zazzle.com/mbr/238497291765753220/stores

[NadineMay]

I might have applied a product to both shops under the collection banner. It's under the collection banner where all the products were seen. That worked well but not now everything has changed. I do understand the reasons behind the changes  but it would help to allow us now to choose under with shop( in my case) the product will fall under. In that case I do not have to do them all over again. Now I might end up with double of the same and have to delete one. Seems like unnecessary work. If I can make sure to which shop they belong by changing it, which I have been doing, then I also need to be able to change the shop under the banner page. I hope I make some sense .     

[Windy]

Can you post a link to one of the products in that collection? The collection is not yet live, so at this point, I can't see any of the products to which you are referring. Also I looked earlier today and never found a way to get into your second shop--The Awakening.  Is that a new shop?  I can only see the Just Kidding shop.

[NadineMay]

No it is not new at al. https://www.zazzle.com/store/the_awakening

Wrong shop. at lease the banner page I cannot edit? I use to

https://www.zazzle.com/pd/editcollection?id=119021701687664523

[NadineMay]

The_Awakeing shop from a visitor view, you can see the mandala collections.

https://www.zazzle.com/store/the_awakening
from the store management needs attention. I can see why
https://www.zazzle.com/store/the_awakening/collections?view=private

[Windy]

Ah, Okay, now I can see your shop, anyway, so that's good. When you are inside one shop it is possible to make products in another shop. I am constantly having to remind myself to choose the right shop when I list the product. So in other words, I have occasionally chosen the wrong shop for a product. But in my case, my collection names are so different that when I go to choose my collection, I cannot, and at that point I realize I have chosen the wrong shop. I do not know if this is what has happened to you or not. But it's the only solution I can think of.

[NadineMay]

I always need to click the pinned option to see the awakening shop. I never understood why. Initially, I had 3 shops. One is called Kima Global Publishers. but I deleted all the products in there a few years ago, but cannot delete the shop. Reminds me of Amazon, where my older books cannot be deleted.

[Joel]

Didn't get any email but wow, how complicated this sounds like. I fail to understand the aim & purpose here. I mean, people come for designs. And now we have to show pretty mockups of numerous products that take even more time -and money- to produce, and use them on front collection page, which will just look tiny on mobile phones. Or is there some kind of zooming on that stuff?

Now customers still have to click the mockups to see the actual design. Okay it gets clicks for the products, but if that wasn't what they wanted at first, they go back to the search results for more. That's a lot of clicks, for the good or... the bad. And Zazzle is already click-intensive enough with the search function, the outdated way to display categories, the clutter-happy options to display pages and the frontend/backend "sides".

But still, why isn't the main image the actual design, so there is no need to enter the collection to see it? Is it to prevent design theft?

Also, why isn't all that collections mockups thing on automation? I mean, in the designer tool, there are basic mockpus to choose from. So why isn't there a way to automatically advertise those mockups in the collection, especially the main collection image as collage, and leave the creation of alternate mockups as optional, maybe with a lil' zRank boost for those who bother finetuning their numerous collections instead of a potential wipe of the work already done?

As a webmaster for nearly two decades I can tell that, in 2024, user-friendliness (for both sellers and customers) & automation are a must, and some of the new ideas sound like a straight 180° backwards.

Thank you for your attention. 🙂

[KelW21]

Agreed. I search on my phone or iPad, not a laptop. Small mock-ups of multiple products are useless.

Zazzle is claiming in a video about collections that it’s to let customers know that there is a range of related products available. But I don’t see why the old way of just having a single product mock up the customer clicks on, then having the related collection display below on that product page doesn’t achieve the same result.

Do they have any data that customers buy more when clicking on a mock up of multiple products vs a mock up of a single product? Or is this the test to try and get that data?

[Joel]

I think it's to educate visitors, like if someone is looking for table ware, and the mockup shows a t-shirt, they are not going to investigate futher. They don't know about collections and design transfer (if even enabled). Zazzle pages are stuffed with content, that alone is overwhelming already.

I suggested the design to be the main image, rather than a product with it, let alone a wide range of products on a single image, which is not a bad idea, but comes with poor results as you pointed out. (As of the third quarter of 2023, around 96.5 percent of global users accessed the internet via mobile phones.)

But then a design doesn't advertise products, and it seems they'd rather have it all on the collection image to suggest the availability of a related range of products and upsells, etc. But if products mockups are too small, designs are difficult to see, which kinda defeats the whole thing. Unless there's some kind of zooming option on devices or images, and people are aware of it, and care to use it.

There are ways to "track" people's behaviour on pages, but I don't know what is being used, and how.

[TMGEE]

Well said Joel. After I received this email, I spent (stupidly?) hours removing all my cover photos including one single product in the collection media manager (all done with mockups  as I create mockup covers for all my products, including one mockup with several products for each collection). Well, several days later I received the second email saying it was a mistake, but in the meantime my zRank had gone 1 level down... Reminder: at some point, we had to include a mockup cover photo with several products in our collection and upload it in the single product media manager because the collection cover media manager wasn't set yet or wasn't working properly (just like the real view tool isn't working well either, and other functions...) hence why it created double pictures of collection mockups . If all this is not giving us (and James) a massive headache, it is telling something about how Zazzle is interacting with its creators. So, here's my message to Zazzle: I want more respect and consideration for my hard work, please. Thank you. I guess I am not the only one feeling this way.

(note: I'm putting back single products with cover photos I created in the media collection manager although it's not what we're supposed to do. Why? Because I'm lost with all these changes. Will there be other changes? I've worked hard enough to make these mockups, so I'm using them)

[Prov1423]

Sorry, I haven't had time to read through all of the replies, but is there a link to what was sent in the email. I don't believe I received one. Thanks. 

[SwissVillage]

I just got this email and I have to say I'm just furious.  Like many of you I worked so hard to do this right, and if so many of us didn't get it right after all the work we put in at the outset, then something was very badly botched with the instructions and information.  And this is from someone who loves cover images for individual products.  I like making them, I think they boost the look of things.  But I think the so called collection images with multiple products are cluttered and confusing for the customer - and look downright old fashioned.

I would like my nice little collection feature area to show just one big image of one favorite item in the collection, and smaller images of the other things.  I really cannot start making complex multi-image items that I dont' think are going to advance my sales one iota.  The confusion issue can be solved by not putting that image in the sidebar - where it just messes things up anyway.