Gaining Shop Followers: Any Advice?

Atwell76
New Contributor III

I began creating on the Zazzle platform back in 2012 under a much older shop name. I held shop for a solid year but no success with even gaining a single shop follower.  So I left the platform discouraged. Currently I have began creating again and have been active since Dec 3rd, 2022 with a little over 455 unique products. I'm listed on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and recently YouTube. I have a little over 3150 Followers on Facebook. I am coming up on 5 daily active months and have sold 3 or 4 products but haven't managed to gain the first shop follower. This is even after running a few ads through the holidays.  

I am now a disabled father of a very active 4 year old son. Whom I stay home with on a daily basis. My wife has been working to make ends meet but I still want to work but it has to be from my desk now. Is there any advice on gaining shop followers? 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

chriiisss
Contributor II

don't worry too much about followers. I think this has some importance because when you click on the name of the store in the item's page, zazzle shows the number of followers and ends up having some (minimal) effect on the customer's perception.
but first worry about product quality and branding. excellent suggestions have already been given here in this post.
(now you have one more follower 🙂

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18 REPLIES 18

Barbara
Esteemed Contributor

Followers are, for the most part, other designers, not customers. What you need are better titles, tags, and descriptions. Randomly choosing one of your products--"Monogrammed Classic Coffee Cup"--the title says nothing about your design, and it's the design that customers search on. The description you've written is long and detailed, but it contains nothing about the design. The same is true of the tags. If a person wants a mug, they use Zazzle's categories and product types to get to the mugs. You don't need to include product names and types because Zazzle already does this. Zazzle brings the customer to mugs (or whatever), and then the person may drill down a bit to mug type, but after that, they're looking for specific designs and colors, and that's where your work begins. The mug I cited above has flowers on a lattice, is predominately pink and rose, is feminine, and has a look of springtime, but you've mentioned none of these things, which means anyone searching for the mug you've designed will not find it.

Wander through the first few pages in the marketplace after choosing a product type--in this case, mugs--and pick a variety of mugs that attract you, checking the titles, descriptions, and tags. Do this until you get a feel for how designers use titles, descriptions, and tags to essentially advertise what they've created. Your most important asset is tags, second to that is title, and description brings up the rear.

I hope others chime in here to give you more clues on what to do and not do.

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Atwell76
New Contributor III

Pretty sold advice! I'll give that a go. Thanks!

 

Jadendreamer13
Valued Contributor III

When buyers visit your store to view your products, give them a reason to stay a while and shop your products. Your store banner design has your store name under your logo, but you’ve also added the name in huge turquoise letters that cover the T-shirts in the background, and the text totally obscures them. You don’t need your shop name twice on the banner. Remove the large text, so visitors can see the t-shirts on your banner. Similarly, your category icons are very complex, unnecessarily so, and that is preventing your customers from clicking on those links. Keep your category icons simple  by using a single thumbnail photo of one of your products or a simple graphic. Your category icons will look better, and it will save you time. While you’re waiting for customers to find your products (it takes time), look for free or low-cost online design lessons to improve your design skills. There are some very large, popular, free forums for artists where artists can post their work and ask for critiques. Other designers will chime in and give you pointers to improve your design skills. WetCanvas.com has all types of design categories: oil paints, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, etc. The list of mediums is very long. Perhaps they have a category for graphics or digital design. If those categories are not available, or if you don’t like critiques of your work, just visit the forum of your choice often and follow the critiques sections. You can still learn a lot of design tricks that way.

Thanks for the banner suggestion! I have a ton of new things to try and that will certainly be on my list of things to change.  Also the category buttons do need work. I had already included that in my plans for the coming week ahead to get those cleaned up. 

Thanks a bunch!

plumb4me
Valued Contributor

I don't so much worry about followers, if customers like your designs, they will follow your shop, to see more. I would work on the designs and make sure they fit the products, like centered on the product, not cut off the product and clear resolution of the design.

Take a look at all your designs and see if they will fit on any other products and then add them to those new products. Add as many new products as you can.

On the front page of your shop, maybe put the collections up at the top of the page and work down from there. I actually never make a new collection, unless I already have products, to add to the collection. That way there is not an empty collection, that shows up on my home page.

In the title and description of your products, add more of a description of your design. You don't need to add product names (cap, watches, invitations, etc.) in the title or tags, Zazzle already does that.

Take your Black and Gold Wedding and maybe in the description, let the customer know they can change the color of the background, to go with the gold. I went into one of your wedding invitations and changed the black to navy and it looked really nice with the gold.

Take a look around the forums, there is some great advise and tips here and good luck with your shop. 🙂

plumb4me
Valued Contributor

I noticed in your descriptions, that you have exactly the same wording as Zazzle does. This is unnecessary to duplicate the product description. It's better to describe the "design" in detail, in the description.

I hope some of the advise you are receiving helps. Just keep going and don't get discouraged, if you don't gain the followers or sales right away. It takes time to build a successful shop. Here is an example,

 

description.png

Atwell76
New Contributor III

You're right and I had been guessing about if that info really needed to be included. So I just used it.  Recently I've begun using Googles A.I "BARD" to write my product info. I have BARD rename my products now, write my sales pitch and give me SEO ranked TAGS everything is written with the highest SEO rankings in mind and in the past 2 weeks I have seen crazy ranking results in my Google analytics.  

LMGildersleeve
Valued Contributor III

"Take your Black and Gold Wedding and maybe in the description, let the customer know they can change the color of the background, to go with the gold. I went into one of your wedding invitations and changed the black to navy and it looked really nice with the gold."

I would go one step further and just make a version with navy. This way you will have the product of "navy and gold" in the MP where it can be searched. The easier it is for the customer the better.

Recently I took the advice of a Platinum Member on here and started creating more invitations, business cards, stationary and stickers. I will keep your advice in mind the next time I create another wedding collection. Thanks!

chefcateringbiz
Valued Contributor

I unfollowed everyone I followed in the beginning because the emails were just overwhelming. Many designers upload tons of stuff daily and it's just too much to handle. I've been around since 2009 and have a measly 100 followers. Doesn't seem to have any impact on sales. I think people are likely to use bookmarks or individual item "likes" rather than store follows these days (I could be wrong).

I did the same as you, unfollowing almost everyone. It makes sense with social media, but Zazzle is a commercial site, not a social one. Maybe associates might follow certain favored designers for promoting, but other than that, I don't see the purpose.

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ColsCreations
Honored Contributor II
Currently I have began creating again and have been active since Dec 3rd, 2022 with a little over 455 unique products.

Before you continue expanding with more stores and more products, I would recommend first reviewing your existing ones for possible IP infringements. You don't want to put the time into publishing more products only to have them pulled at some later date for being in violation.

The baba yaga T-shirt on your member profile banner is clearly Keanu Reeves as John Wick and both names are used in your tags for the shirt. The image might be your own personally drawn fan art (?) and I honestly don't know what the rules are for such, but the recognizable figure combined with using both actor and character/movie names in the tags is probably a violation. Same thing with your mandalorian 'this is the way' design. It might be your own fan art (?) but Star Wars (which I think is owned by Disney now) is a licensed brands on Zazzle selling their own assortment of 'this is the way' designs. Another one I noticed was a "Street Fighter" design which again, might be fan art but you've titled it 'Street Fighter' which might be a violation on its own. I don't know what the legal rules (or Zazzle's own policies) are on fan art but you should research the topic before putting any more time into such designs/products.

Another questionable area is automotive branding, for lack of better words. I see a photo of a motorcycle which though not specifically named in any way, you can see a BMW logo on the bike. You've a couple of car designs, too - Impala & Cadillac - called by model name. Again,  I don't know the rules on this but I've read other designers saying that images of recognizable things/shapes, like say a VW bug or Kitchenaide mixer - are protected and not allowed.

IP rules are not my area of expertise but I would def advise to do some research on the topic and pull anything questionable yourself.

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Thanks for the advice!

 

ColsCreations
Honored Contributor II

I agree with @Jadendreamer13 .
It's clear you've put a lot of time & effort into your covers for both individual products and Categories & Collections but it's really overwhelming as a visitor to your shop. It's hard to tell whether you're clicking to view one product or a group of like products.

If you make a cover for a Category, it shows only that cover image. You can even turn off the option to have the text label underneath it for a neater, cleaner storefront.  Collections however now show two products underneath your cover image which is a change I hated but it is what it is.

For your store home page you can chose whether to show Categories, Collections, or both. You have chosen to show both which is confusing because you've organized both by product type. You've got for example a bags & luggage category with 20 products (represented by a cover showing one product) and a bags & luggage Collection with 32 products (represented by a detailed all-inclusive cover).

The covers like these that you are using for Collections, I would instead use them for your Categories. They are all visually similar, they describe what is in the Category, and being a category and not a collection, it wouldn't show the two products below it so it wouldn't be visually over-powering and confusing.

CollectionCovers.jpg

Then, I would make Collections based on design rather than product type. Collections show on the product pages as a "other products in this collection" scroll and I am a big believer in that helping sales when it's cohesive. For instance, I was really drawn to this design, but maybe I am not interested in it on a blanket. Maybe I want it on a coaster or poster or shower curtain. Short of transferring the design myself (and maybe I don't have the skills and/or desire to do that), how do I find such? I can't find it via the "other products from this Collection" scroll because that's all totally unrelated designs. I can't find this design on other products by going to your store home either because that's all organized by product type whether looking at Cats or Collections. Another example is this pillow design which I really love but, I want it on something other than a pillow. This one doesn't even have a 'other products in this Collection' scroll  so I either have to try to transfer the design myself or navigate your shop trying to find the same design on other things.

You have a really diverse selection of designs. Instead of using both Categories and Collections for products types, I would use one for product type and one for design type in order to maximize your 'bang for the buck'.

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Thanks for the advice! Will certainly try to rework the store image. Things have gotten off in left field over the past 2 months. The image of the shop has been something that I have been working on recently. I started with streamlining my ads and saw nice analytic jumps. The shop was something on my list of things to do next. 🙂 

 

So, I've been changing the Cover photos on my Collections as suggested. But You mention an option that allows for turning off the display for the 2 products under the cover images. I've looked and maybe I am overlooking the features option but haven't found it. Where would that be found?

ColsCreations
Honored Contributor II

You can't turn that off. Collections always show those two product images below your cover image now. ☹️

Categories though, they only show the cover you've made for it. And you can turn off the text label under it.

I'm sorry I was confusing. What I was suggesting was to use those Collection covers for Cat covers instead. Because they contain so much detail I was thinking it would look more streamlined and less busy using them as cat covers since the two extra product images + text label wouldn't be there.

 

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chriiisss
Contributor II

don't worry too much about followers. I think this has some importance because when you click on the name of the store in the item's page, zazzle shows the number of followers and ends up having some (minimal) effect on the customer's perception.
but first worry about product quality and branding. excellent suggestions have already been given here in this post.
(now you have one more follower 🙂