No Sales

[digitalpri]

Hello,

I have approx. 800 designs on my store with only 1 sale to date. Wondering, when can I start seeing consistent sales. What's your take on this?

TIY

[minix267]

you need more designs. 

[ColsCreations]

It's not the number of designs, it's the quality and user-friendliness of them. I mean, the more you have out there the better the chances of someone stumbling on one, sure, but if it's not set up properly they're just going to move on to something that is easier for them to customize.

I looked at your store and it seems you have a lot of products with text meant to be customized but it's not set up as template text so shoppers have to enter the design tool to edit it. Same with some of your photo designs I clicked on. I did find some products, like this mug, that ARE set up as a template, but when you click to 'Personalize this template --> change image' it doesn't work out right.
With this mug example, I used the template option on the product page to replace "Image 1" with one of my own images of roughly the same proportions as your placeholder image and got this:

Clearly not what I want so I clicked "Personalize" again, then "Edit using Design Tool" to enter full edit mode and got this:

As an average shopper I would have no idea what to do here so would walk away at this point. As a designer, I know to highlight the Group and then click Unmask to get to the photo so I did.

This shows you're using a mask (defined by the red rectangle above) to reveal a select portion of the shopper's image with undesirable results most shoppers aren't going to know how to fix. (Click Personalize again, click to Edit using Design Tool, highlight the Group, click Unmask, resize the photo, maybe figure out how to use the Crop function if resizing isn't enough ...) I think it's also making more work for yourself, setting up masks instead of just making your placeholder images templates and choosing 'fit' or 'fill' for them. There are others here far, far more knowledgeable on that subject than me and I'm sure they'll have good advice for you in that regards.

My advice is, if you're doing designs intended to be personalized, set them up to be as easy for the shopper as you can. Each step they have to take to figure something out is a step further away from the Add to Cart button 😉
I think you're making really good use of your tags & titles, and you do as you said have around 800 designs out there so I don't think visibility is your issue. There is no cookie-cutter formula for getting consistent sales, if there was we'd all be Diamond level sellers. But I think if you work on making more of your text & photos templates and making them user-friendly templates, you'll see better growth.

[Cat]

Agreed. I wouldn't use a mask in that situation. I'd size your sample photo to the correct proportions before uploading it (or at least pretty close and then use the crop tool if need be.) Then I'd set the inner fit/fill property to fill. I only use the mask feature to do non-rectangular shapes, and when I do, I size my sample photo as close as possible to the mask so as to avoid the sorts of problems with cut-off images like you've got with the example that Col cited. 

There's definitely a learning curve with setting up products so they're easily customized, but it's well worth the investment of time because with billions of designs for the customer to choose from, unless there's something REALLY special about your design, customers are not going to take a bunch of time to try to figure it out - they're simply going to give up and move on to something that works better. You might want to play with some of your templates - replace the photos and text as if you were a customer and look for the sorts of problems that Col has pointed out here.

You've got some really nice designs, but honestly, if it's intended to be customized but isn't set up properly like this one: https://www.zazzle.com/autumn_floral_wreath_pumpkin_gold_thank_you_favor_keychain-256494269511047239 you're probably better off re-making and replacing it rather than hoping that someone's going to stumble upon it and take the extra time to figure it out.

Remember, the majority of customers are shopping on a phone, not a laptop, so anything that requires entering the design tool is even more difficult for them than it is for us. Not saying it's impossible to make sales with products that require that sort of work to customize - it could happen - but I think your chances of making a sale that way are pretty darned small.

[digitalpri]

Thanks a lot. It helps me so much. One ques, should I remove the mask, crop the photo and upload it? Like I tried it here https://www.zazzle.com/minimal_custom_best_brother_in_law_ever_add_photo_coffee_mug-1688694868123158... but not sure if it is good to go.  

[Windy]

I have 1328 products. About 650 of these have been viewed three times or fewer in all the years I have been here. Many of these never-viewed-designs have templates. Templates do not bring views. No one buys a product that no one is looking at. 

I have been selling at Zazzle since 2005.

Figure out a way to get people to look at your items and then you may get some sales.

[Polenth]

On the plus side, your tags look fine and the designs I looked at were placed properly in the green lines. Sort out the templates, as has been said, and you should see some progress. When it comes to text, make it a template as often as you can, even if it isn't a name or something. People will change messages, captions and puns as well. Test the text templates to make sure likely options will fit. You can do things like change the line spacing, change the anchor of the text, and stretch the edges of the text box to show where the limits should be... make it as easy as possible for people to add their own text without needing to do those edits themselves.

Also, going totally against the usual advice, some designs sell best when they aren't set up with photos and text. Most people don't want their face and name on everything they own. They might just want a nice picture or a pattern, especially for stuff like home decor. Mix it up a bit to see what items sell best with what sort of design.