Cover Photos Questions/Comments

[klstock]

I just read the announcement where Zazzle says they will be prioritizing products with cover photos. If so, then doing a search by "popular" would not be accurate, it would be arbitrary and misleading. I used to have several beach and tropical invitations that would be on the first and second pages of results because they have sold well. Now I have to dig a few pages in to find them (and they have cover photos!). If you do a search for "tropical wedding invitations" or "beach wedding invitations" and look at the results that show up on the first page, about half of them have zero to do with "beach" or "tropical".... 

The cover photos are extremely time consuming. If a person wants to do them on items of their choosing, and has time for it, great. I try to do as many as possible, but if you are doing a collection that has 20 - 30 items in it, there is no way I have time to do cover photos for every single product, and some don't need it. Some look good as they are with the focus on the product and artwork.

There is cost and time involved - is there an increased cut for the designers who are now functioning as a free art department? Yes in some cases, it may generate more sales - and yes the designer would profit from sales - but if the designer is the one incurring the fees (canva pro for example, or some are purchasing product mockups) and the designer is the one taking the time to make these cover photos - which takes time away from making OTHER stuff - then a bigger chunk of the profit should go to the designer. 

[PacifierCity]

lol...

There is no doubt in my mind that when Z runs adverts that items with covers are probably chosen over those without.  G ad sense probably loves the extra images.  Probably why we are being told we can caption them too.  And I think "can" in this case is probably a "should"... again without much guidance on what sort of caption is best...  There is probably some course out there on captioning product images for G ad space...

It would be great if the Z research team could link us to a few how to articles that would provide more guidance...

PC

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[ArtVixen]

A cover photo tool provided by Zazzle would make this so much easier. I did sign up for Placeit and made a gift wrap mockup. It didn't look any different than the mockups Zazzle already offers and I would have to pay 7.99 to use it. I couldn't find a free gift wrap mockup there. It's just too much trouble for me and I can't afford to pay for so many mockups. I shouldn't be punished for this. 

[Mecpublications]

After going through tons of products to delete attributions and losing my views and sales for all of them, I'm now exhausted contimplating wasting time creating cover photos. Personally for postcards, my favorite product, I prefer a sharp  clean image of just the postcard. It's easy to see on small phones and one can quickly make a decision on like or don't like without being distracted by everything on the cover. Using a cover makes the image harder to see and even though I made a few I thought I really prefer the plain card image and even with Zazzle covers have never chosen any other view for displaying them. I'll stick with my plain product cover.

I can't believe products sell better with covers. How many variables went into that study? Size of store, quantity of additional promotion, type of product?  It's likely those who do this for a living and have lots of their own promotions also tend to favor making covers. So perhaps it isn't actually the covers selling them, it's that  stores who are already successful tend to make the most covers.

Zazzle needs to increase sales but sometimes changing things like this backfires as designers are no longer focusing on good products.  (We know the store many of us abandoned to come to Zazzle had awful search results with all the crappy stuff up front) It also runs the risk of having really bad, quickly-made covers be the new look of Zazzle. 

Another thought...this whole process forces all products to be viewed and pages modified. Just like when the attribution thing happened. Would all that sudden activity help Zazzle in searches? My mind often goes this suspicious direction. Just ignore my evil mind.

I love Zazzle but mourn for the Zazzle from 15 years ago. The old forum  fewer hoops to jump through. But of course times change and with people having less money to spend it's on Zazzle head to keep the store thriving and products selling. I just hope they continue to put quality of product over bells and whistles.

My what a rant. I needed to say my piece before I could work on my store. Everyone have a great day and thank you Zazzle for your wonderful site.

[Angel]

@Mecpulications 

Thank you for sharing your viewpoint on what kind of cover images would work best. I don't have a cell phone and didn't realize that size and being uncluttered is such an important thing for cover images. Very insightful! 😀

Would you please explain what you mean by 'delete attributions'? I must have missed the 'attribution' thing.

We can complain about what Zazzle is requiring of us, but what would we do without it, right? Not that I don't have my own complaints.

A quick Google search in the news department might explain why we are being expected to do so much more than before.

Have a good day. 🐢

[DancingPelican]

@Angel here is info posted by Zazzle under Creator News regarding Attributions: https://community.zazzle.com/t5/creator-news/attribution-updates/ba-p/11138

[Mecpublications]

Thanks. I'll do that search. And the attributions were the stuff on the back of cards and postcards which gave the store name and later a qr code. I like a clean back to my products without advertising. I understand Zazzle should get credit but I'm fine without it. So I manually went through every card and postcard and had to create a new one of each because it wasn't possible to just keep the same card and remove the attribution. So because they were now new products I lost views and the number sold. 

It's like the first time a migration for new phone cases came through and it was default I think, to allow it. I had do go through and fix or delete all the newly added phone cases. I have it disabled now. 😁

[Barbara]

@Mecpublications: Because size matters, I'm doing only flat layouts, particularly for cards. I want to show the front and back on postcards and the front and inside of folded cards, and I want them to be front and center. So I do flat layouts with nothing much beyond other than a nice background and the occasional widget if it both fits and suits. The notion to do this came from a book filled with award-winning ads. For stationery, not single human or part of human was included. I've no idea if it'll be any better here on Zazzle than the images where the stationery takes up less space overall, but I'm sticking to it. I'm glad I don't design clothing. LOL

Colorwash's Home

[Fiorenzo]

Agree on the size matters and displaying front and back or inside on cards. And to keep the background as calm and neutral (or themed) as possible. Looking at my early Christmas card mockups I'll keep it simpler in the future. Same story for other products - showing all sides but keeping it calm and focusing on the design. It gets overwhelming for the eye in collections and product listings, if you have tons of different and complex in-situ views. For clothing, I personally would avoid showing faces, they can easily become double-edged swords.

[Barbara]

@Fiorenzo: I agree about showing faces. Reminding a customer of the worst boyfriend or girlfriend they ever had is unfortunate.

Colorwash's Home

[Fiorenzo]

You know how to make people smile 😆.

Jokes apart, the look of a model HAS an influence on people's perception, that's proven. And I'm not excluded.

[ZBug]

I didn't even think about how it would be misleading! And it is.

[WBartworks]

I just looked for "dog bowls" to see how my postings with cover pages rank and had a hard time finding them because they are down several pages.  However, listings with no cover pages appear way before mine. I thought that having a cover page would make your posting show up before those who don't.  Although in my store, the postings with cover pages show up in front of others, I don't think that helps me because customers are not going to find my store, if they don't first see my product in the marketplace.  So I guess I wasted my time doing them.

[Mecpublications]

I think it helps your products over products of equal popularity, price, number of sales, etc. Covers are simply a search engine optimization that Zazzle is declaring is truth in the world of search in general. It's a step up not a climb to the top.  I've decided after pondering this question for some time that Zazzle wants to sell as much and more than I do. I believe Zazzle is giving me good advice. One could possibly do more by promoting or taking price down or some other selling stuff magic. I shudder at these options. I'd have a store without Zazzle if I had promotional skills. Nearly all my sales are third party sales. Yay for affiliates. 

I decided to trust Zazzle's expertise because I know nothing about seo. I'll do anything that keeps me away from promoting and social media. And if it's making covers, I'll make covers.

When I heard about using video, which I have no idea how to do without actually possessing the products, I wanted to crawl in bed with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and go numb watching old episodes of Doctor Who. I've made video long ago with Microsoft movie maker. That's all. I'm sure I could pick it up fast. But I'll be working on covers until I've finished watching all the Doctor's incarnations so I have time to learn.

I would suggest waiting awhile. I have products I covered that didn't show up close to the top pages of search for awhile. It may take time. Good luck!  

[Westerngirl2]

Frankly, I can't figure out what Zazzle is doing, and, after a year of dealing with this, I'm inclined to not worry about it any longer. I have found that posting cover photo's DOES help in some instances. I have also seen instances where, although my product has garnered thousands of views and hundreds of sales, has good cover photos....it can not be found anywhere in searching by the most popular used search term for that particular design and product. EVEN if there are not that terribly many products of that design and product in the MP. I've requested explanations for 8 months or so from Zazzle, and all I got was "we're looking into it"....but never any answers. I gave up. If they don't want to show a best selling product in their MP, I guess that's their decision, and there's nothing I can do to force it.

It's extemely frustrating and disheartening, but I've decided that I have other priorities in life.

Best of luck to those experiencing similar frustrations.

[WBartworks]

I understand your frustrations.  Although I think I'm biased when I think some of my product is better than others, I don't understand how a product showing just a simple text of a dog's name on a dog bowl can rank higher than one that has some beautiful images plus text.

[Windy]

The reason that a simple text of a dog's name on a dog bowl can rank higher than one that has some beautiful images plus text probably has to do with store rank of the shopkeeper. 

[WBartworks]

Which shouldn't be the case.  When the search filter is set to "popular,"  one will think the shown item is very popular.

[Windy]

Agreed.

[JustJayne]

I'm obviously way late to the party here.  But I noticed this week when I had some items that needed to be optimized that it mentioned adding a cover photo.  I've looked all over (well, a quick search) but can't find any guidelines on how to do that, or how to designate an image as a cover photo for a product, so I guess, given the comments on here, that I'm not going to be doing it.