New Design Experience Now in A/B Testing

[Heather]

Hi Creators,

We're excited to share that we've launched an updated design experience that's currently in A/B testing! This represents a significant evolution in how design works on Zazzle, moving toward a unified tool that serves both creators and customers.

What's Live Now?: Our design tool experience is being tested, meaning users will see either the current experience or one of three new variants. This tool builds on the features you've been using including frames, grids, design elements, and our royalty-free content library, but is optimized to make design more accessible to customers who may not have your level of design expertise. Your existing post-for-sale flow remains accessible and we intend to improve those workflows as part of the next phase. 

Here's a quick demo from Sean walking through the experience:

Why This Matters for You: Since this A/B test exposes templates to a new design interface, you may notice that some existing designs work differently in this customer-focused environment. 

As an example, to create a smoother customer journey, we’ve improved how “locking” works for layers. Previously , when you locked an object, customers could not unlock the object which caused usability issues when they wanted to make changes. With the new update, both you and your customers can unlock a locked layer. Note, if you originally had a a locked layer, the "disabled" setting is automatically turned on with the update. We’ve added a new toggle called “Disable All Object Interaction” which is located in the “More options” section in the right-hand panel. When enabled, it prevents users from interacting with the layer, and customers cannot change this setting.  Additionally, we’re using the locking feature to automatically hide certain layers, such as large transparent overlays, shields, or borders, that might otherwise interfere with customers trying to upload photos or edit text.

After the test concludes, we'll be sharing tips and best practices to help your templates shine in this new experience to maximize customer engagement and conversion. 

Looking ahead, this optimized experience is the first step toward a cohesive design tool for everyone on Zazzle, designed to add ease for customers and positively increase conversion to benefit creators. We welcome your thoughts and feedback as you see this experience in action, as your insights help us build better tools for the entire Zazzle community. The team will be reviewing this thread so please weigh in as you’d like. 

Thanks for being part of this journey, 

The Zazzle Team

[tamirazdesigns]

This new test version you posted looks like the new version that I stumbled upon and posted about via the forums early April 2025 of other designers items (see below ex. Image from back in April).  Except back then they didn't have the blue link to Use our Design Tool until you clicked on the Back tab at the top of screen. 

I thought back then (and still do) that this version looked like a nice clean look, and was glad the blue link opened up to the normal design editor tool. 

(The template field boxes on the image were fine back then).

Looking at your new example of this same version it looks like they listened to designers' comments to have the link to the design tool editor tab on the Front tab too, which it should have been also.   And I see they added a Preview tab now at the top from your example.  

So looks like since early April Zazzle has been playing around with this version, and also now a few more versions this week to test out which one will be most beneficial for them to decide on keeping for the customer and designers to utilize.

Ex. from April 

[Cat]

I FINALLY was able to test it out (I got there by using Chrome instead of Edge and logging out.) It will take some getting used to, but all in all I like it. A few thoughts.

1) As others have mentioned, we REALLY need the eyedropper tool. Please bring it back.

2) It took me forever to find the curve option on text - I finally realized that's because it's now called "Text on a Path." Not sure if that means that paths other than simple curves might be coming but I think that would be a great feature to add.

3) I'm not sure that I see the purpose of having this popup for text editing:

It would be more intuitive if the user could just click on the text and a cursor would appear inside of the pink box for editing like a word processor. That's probably more complicated programmatically, but I think it would be more intuitive to use.

4) I like the way it walks you through the design part, then the options, and then the review with the add to cart button right on the review page. It would be SUPER helpful if the review page could mention that orders cannot be modified once placed.

5) While I do think some folks will be overwhelmed (especially people who prefer written instructions over "discoverable" interfaces), I actually really like the all-in-one nature of the interface - I think that it's less confusing for the customer than having a form to fill out in addition to a separate design tool. I also think it might help the customers to understand that they are actually the ones doing the customization rather than filling out a form telling us how they want us to customize it for them (which seems to happen a lot under the current system.)

6) I do wish there was more in the way of on-board help for the customer. While logged out I tried asking the chat bot some of the questions I get on a regular basis (Can it be green instead of blue? How do I change the font? Are my margins OK? etc.) and all I got was generic "use the design tool" answers. I suppose while things are in flux that's really all it can say, but it would be wonderful if there was eventually some sort of interactive help that could be accessed without leaving that screen. In general, I'm in favor of making customers as self-sufficient as possible.

[SheaPrints]

I haven't had access to that version yet, but it's good to hear it's working! The three versions I've experienced, all share issues with personalization, but this one has them all:

The photo is under another graphic/frame so you can't select it.
https://www.zazzle.com/custom_construction_site_id_logo_qr_code_navy_blue_badge-256273075905369953

The photo is grouped with other elements, so you can't select it.
https://www.zazzle.com/stylish_notary_public_photo_qr_code_id_black_gold_badge-256433015875953806

The monogram text is locked, so you can't select it.
https://www.zazzle.com/custom_monogram_name_initials_retro_green_yellow_pickleball_paddle-2566122090...

Text and photo are part of a 'Horizontal' tiling, so you can't select them.
https://www.zazzle.com/custom_name_age_photo_art_deco_birthday_black_wrapping_paper-2565762286303177...

Some of these issues are solved if a customer works out how to access the 'Layers', or find the 'Ungroup' tool. But there's no solution for the locked text/image, or the 'Horizontal' tiling issue.

This is super confusing because there are four different versions being tested. So we're all seeing different things, and it changes all the time!

[plumb4me]

I went to Zazzle.com on my phone and tried to change images on one of my products. When I figured out I had to ungroup the design, I never found a button to lock the top layer template, so I could never actually change any images under the template layer.

[VivianD117]

I just went into a card to see (again) what this felt like.  Really simple suggestion:  when is says click "next" -- I was looking for "next" on the bottom near me.  Suggest:  either move it or say "click the blue "next" button top right".  

[James]

Thank you for posting examples of the layering/ image replace issues. I have passed this to the team now. 

[Lea]

I haven't been able to access this yet, but in general my feedback is I just really want a ruler. Please. Thank you. 

[Wollastonite]

Others have said this already, but it would be great if we can keep things as they are during this testing phase, where the customers have their customer-centric interface, but us experienced designers get to keep the traditional, more advanced interface.