Goodbye Editor's Picks. Hello Zazzle Select

[KeegansCreation]

There seem to be some new flairs on products.

Zazzle Select- as far as I can tell, this replaces Editor's Picks flair

Bestseller- "This product has had high sales volume over the past 6 months"

Overall Pick-"highlights the most popular, relevant product for this search"

[Jadendreamer13 · Accepted solution]

Where did you hear this?

[KeegansCreation]

I saw it in the MP. If it's not being seen by everyone I guess it's an A/B test.

[Cat]

@KeegansCreation Can you screenshot what you're seeing? I'm mostly just curious to know if they're using the "Zazzle Select" thing to mean something different than it used to mean. The products that were included in the original Zazzle Select program had some specific tags used by the system to categorize them for the program - stuff like "ztraditional" etc.

ETA - Wait a minute... stop the presses! I was just checking things out from Col's post, and now I'm seeing the new "flairs" - and it does appear that they're using "Zazzle Select" to mean something different from the other program that I participated it. Hmmm... I wonder what it means.

Also, I'm now seeing a new "collections" dingbat on the product page:

It's not clickable, so I'm not really sure what it's supposed to mean. I guess it means that the product is part of a collection? Just wondered if others are seeing this too.

[KeegansCreation]

I also see the unclickable Collections icon under the product title. If you didn't see the new Select flair and now you do then maybe things are moving fast on the ground. Did this pass its' A/B test and soon will be visible to all? We'll see soon. I am also eager to see the new More Like This option that Col's Creations saw. They are A/B testing things fastly and furiously. That Collections icon will probably be clickable soon. My guess is it will just punt you down to the section on the page where the collection scroll already is.

[ColsCreations]

For comparison, this is what I see with my blanket/related link:

For you guys, the MLT items aren't like at all, just the items from the main cat page repeated, same as they are on the "landing page" that comes up when linking from social media and cluttered with the "flairs". Definitely not the results I want people to see. I'm glad I posted about this. Had no idea it wasn't a real feature. So much for using /related links. 😞

@Cat 

[Cat]

Oh wow! REALLY different results!

[ColsCreations]

P.S.

I already hate the "save xx%" flair for covering part of the thumbnails. I've got a couple of covers I added some small text to to the bottom left and whoops, now its overlapped by this. Plus it looks so busy and cluttered on every item on the page.

[Cat]

Lordy! I'm now thinking that it's best not to put anything important in any corner of a cover - or across the top or bottom. Oy!

[ColsCreations]

All I see is still the Editors Pick flair ad nauseam and the Real Foil one. I couldn't remember what "Zazzle Select" means and couldn't find anything marked as such even when using the Special Picks filter --> Zazzle Select.. I used Google to search 'what is a zazzle select" and that gave me this thread from March 2023 by Scott

Editors' Pick and Special Picks in the Zazzle Marketplace

Secondly, I wouldn’t put too much weight on the “Zazzle Select” Special Pick. This is NOT a performance-based award or program. It was the name given to an idea that we’ve (slowly) been testing out. The idea here is to have the customer upload their template text and image first, then we’ll generate a search results page that contains the customer’s image and text on it. This is undoubtedly a better way to visualize products, but it does add a LOT of extra work for Creators ahead of time. Here’s an example page to check out: https://www.zazzle.com/featured/graduation+card+maker

Like many other closed beta tests, we worked with a small-ish group of Creators to test out a new idea. They were selected based on some parameters (I’m not sure what they are in this case), and the Creators agreed to perform a certain type of work without any guarantee that the products would sell. Not sure what our plans are for this program moving forward, but I don’t believe we’re looking to expand it at this time.

I tried that graduation card maker which put my image and text on a bunch of cards to browse through, but none of them were marked as Zazzle Select. Whatever they're using that flair for now, I couldn't find a single thing marked with it.

[Cat]

I participated in the Zazzle Select program for wedding save the date cards, but I'm pretty sure it's defunct now as none of my products from that program currently carry the Zazzle Select badge. It was an interesting idea, but creating for it was somewhat complex as there were a LOT of very specific parameters that had to be followed in order for everything to pop in place for the previews. Each product had to be individually reviewed and approved by Zazzle before it could be published and even then, the results weren't always good depending on what sort of pictures and data the customers entered. Given how labor intensive it was both on the designer end and on Zazzle's end, I'm not holding my breath for it to come back.

[Jadendreamer13]

I know that I’m beating a dead horse, but one change that could improve designers’ workflow would be to give everyone the ability to make revisions to existing products. That would be especially helpful with Christmas decorations that include the current year. Including 20XX as a placeholder looks tacky, so I don’t do that.

[KeegansCreation]

That would be great. But I suppose if it hasn't happened by now (a few years on) then it will never happen. Bummer. 

[Cat]

@Jadendreamer13 Hmmm... that's an interesting perspective. I do have the ability to make revisions, but I ALWAYS use 20XX. If I had to revise the number on every product once a year, it would probably take me at least a month, as I'd literally be revising at least ten thousand products!

Actually, when I first got the ability to revise things, the first thing I did was to change all of my years to 20XX. It seemed like my sales went up after doing that, though it's hard to say if it was due to the change or if it was just a coincidence. But I do think that at least some customers (mostly the folks who are concerned about being "in style") were turned off by dates in the past - like it make the product look dated or something. I guess you could use a year in the future, but I always think that looks tacky! I guess perhaps tacky is in the eye of the beholder? 😂

Anyhow, I think using 20XX it makes it clear to the customer that they can change the number to anything they want. I also don't make up venue names anymore, I just use something like "Your Fancy Wedding Venue." I made that change because I saw some reports on the forum of designs being removed because template text like that violated a trademark, and even though I'd made up the names of my venues, I didn't want to take a chance of inadvertently causing a violation that would put one of my best sellers at risk!

At any rate, I'm not sure of Zazzle's reasoning for not extending the ability to revise things to everyone, but I do believe that when you make a revision an actual human has to approve it, so I try to use it sparingly - like only when there's a problem that could result in a printing error or a customer cancelling an order. I'm guessing that's the reason they haven't extended it to everyone as it could easily overwhelm the staff especially if people were using it for stylistic changes as opposed to fixing actual problems. I don't have any evidence to support that, but it's what I would assume. 

[Connie]

@Cat YES, I agree! I've been trying to change as many products as possible to 20XX, instead of a date. I don't think it looks tacky at all, and it makes it clear to the customer that they have to change it. On the few products where the font I used doesn't look good with XX, I'm always worried that the customer might overlook the fact that it has to be changed, especially on wedding invitations where they might be ordering for next year.

[Connie]

I've noticed this over the last week or so- they've probably been rolling it out in stages. "Zazzle Select" used to be a special program, so it was confusing to me at first, but now I realize it has replaced "Editor's Picks." What's worse, it is now more prominent, being imposed right on the product image, which means that the first several pages will be cluttered up with "Zazzle Select," making it even harder for good new designs to ever get seen and gain traction.

[Jadendreamer13]

I just noticed that one of my editor’s picks was changed to a Zazzle Select pick. I did not participate in the AB testing, so I don’t know the criteria or reason for the switch. And, yes, the flare does cover up text on the bottom of my cover image.

[shoshannahscrib]

Interesting! I noticed one of my products has a "NEW" flair. And it started selling pretty quickly after I posted it. That's a first. But also, other products I posted that are also new did not get this flair. I figured it was a different version of "editors picks". 

[cutencomfy]

There is a filter where you can choose to view all “Editors Picks”, and it seems like the results are very similar to the search without the filter (at least this is the case for “graduation announcements”)… which leads me to believe they are atill using “Editors Picks” to hand-curate the marketplace. Anyone else seeing the same thing?