Zazzle, Please stop sending us mixed messages!

[Connie]

Over the past year or so, Zazzle has spent a considerable amount of time pushing Cover Photos for products, giving them precedence in the marketplace, and eventually culminating in the Media Manager, where we can add up to 10 images (and I suspect videos will come eventually, since our "Images" have been changed to "Media".) Many of us have spent countless hours adding cover photos to our products (I'm still not nearly done!).

But now, with the Collection changes, apparently Zazzle will be substituting COLLECTION cover photos in place of the product cover photos, in searches, and presumably on the product pages also! So should we not bother with PRODUCT cover photos, and just add covers for collections? What's the point, if the customer won't see them anyway? (at least not at first glance. And if they are going to scroll through all the images anyway, Zazzle's default images are good enough for that.)

This is getting too overwhelming and confusing. I've spend hundreds of hours, and hundreds of dollars on mockups, for cover photos, and now it seems they are going to be irrelevant? I really wish Zazzle would be more clear about what they want, and more consistent, instead of jumping from one thing to the next before we even have time to adjust to the last thing!

[Jadendreamer13]

I did not create cover photos because I feel that Zazzle is now expecting creators to do a lot more work—in terms of product promotion—without offering creators a larger slice of the pie (increased royalties).

[Wildart]

I see your point, I too am overwhelmed by the requirements/expectations now. I am compromising, I am going to do covers on those which inspire me. I refuse to spend money on mockups,I will mostly make my own, and I have decided to do very simple collections, subject based, or at least not more than one wedding as yet, its far too involved. I am certainly not entering that one in the competition, but a much smaller item based one I hope! If I cannot do it I cannot. I really intend to enjoy the process just like I used to, so not be pressured into some one elses way of doing things.

[Cat]

Well, I feel you with the overwhelmed thing - they're certainly throwing a lot at us recently. But I don't think they're substituting the collection cover for the product cover. As far as I can tell, the product cover is the default image - it's the one that shows up in search, and it's the first image that appears on the product page. Then the collection cover is in second place, then any other media, then the Zazzle previews. 

I've only gotten it together to do one collection cover so far (I'm suffering from "I'm only one person syndrome"), but that seems to be the way it's working for me.

[PAZP]

Your "Other Media" cover image is a great idea. I like what you did. 

[Cat]

Thanks! I'm not sure if it's helping or not. People still seem to think that I'm cranking this stuff out in my basement, and that I can make changes for them after they place their order... but maybe at least a few people are reading it!

I need to do one for paper choices too - especially for anything made on a paper sheet since the semi-gloss is a light cardstock and the rest are bond weight papers - and NOBODY gets that (and, really, how could they since the Zazzle descriptions don't make that clear.) 

[PAZP]

I would think since it is so different than the product covers people might gravitate to it BUT people like to skim information and lose out in the details. 

[Cat]

Right? I'd be happy if they'd just read the headings:

Designed by me
Customized by You
Made & Shipped by Zazzle

Maybe I should have left it at that and skipped the details?

[PAZP]

😅 

[Connie]

They aren't doing it yet, but it is planned. This is what it shows in the collection management, under the channels, for Zazzle Marketplace, when you have a collection.

By the way, your collection cover looks great. And it's a good thing that they are still showing the product cover photo first, on the product page. (for now, anyway).

[Cat]

@Connie Yeah... I hadn't yet discovered that "feature" at the time I wrote this post. Sounds like you read the discussion over on Leah's thread, but I'm just SUPER confused about all of this at the moment. At least it sounds like we've got the ability to turn that "feature" off and show the product rather than the collection cover in searches. But I do agree it's a bit of a mixed message since the instructions for product covers explicitly say that we should NOT include other products in the image because it would confuse people. I suspect that there are forces within Zazzle who are not necessarily in agreement, or not communicating with each other or something. 

I dunno... at this point my Zazzle "to do" list is so long that there's no hope of ever catching up, so I think I'm going to put collection optimization on the back burner until some of these features go live because trying to outguess them just feels like I'm spinning my wheels. 

I'm trying to stay positive about all of these changes and look at them as opportunities rather than requirements. I'm not entirely sure I'm succeeding in that though! 

BTW, both the products and the covers in your screen shot are GORGEOUS! Wishing you lots of sales on those!

[Connie]

Thank you very much for the compliment!

I sure wish everybody at Zazzle would get on board with each other! I wish I could stay positive, but I'm the kind of person that hates change anyway (my life experience has been that changes are never for the better). Zazzle HAS made a lot of good changes over the years, especially with the Design Tool, and I've even gotten used to product Cover Photos (although I'll never get my whole store done!) Overall I really like the new collections, too, except for the covers, and now if they are going to substitute the collection cover for the product cover in search, that's going to confuse things royally!

I think the main thing that makes me so anxious about all their new changes, is the fact that they tend to penalize the people that don't jump on board with everything, by skewing the marketplace results in favor of those who do. (Not to mention Editors Picks, which is something out of our control.) It makes actual DESIGNS less relevant! Which is the most fun part of Zazzle, and a good challenge to try to work your way to the top by making better designs than the competition. And even trying to master titles and tags to get on the first few pages! Now that seems like a waste of effort.

[Cat]

@Connie You know, I used to work in the music industry, and it taught me some real disillusioning truths about artistic quality. We all tend to think that the better the musician (or artist), the more successful they're going to be - but that's not really how it works. You could be the best musician in the world, but ultimately the thing that determines whether you'll get booked or not isn't how good you are, it's how many tickets the concert producers can sell. We'd get dozens of demo tapes every day, and a lot of them were really amazing musicians - but few of them ever got shows because we just couldn't afford to take the risk on a band that nobody had ever heard of. Meanwhile, there were other acts that were mediocre at best, but they were great at marketing themselves, so they got booked all the time because we could always count on them to sell out the house.

I think the same principle holds true here. When it comes right down to it, the only thing that really matters is how much stuff Zazzle can sell. And I'm quite sure that designers who do a good job of marketing their products sell more than those who don't - regardless of the quality of the designs. So I think that the push to get designers to market their own products (cover images, promoter program, contests that involve posting your stuff on social media, etc) is really just a reflection of that reality - disillusioning as it may be. 

Anyhow, I'll shut up now because I'm really just blathering. I guess the point is that we can whine until we're blue in the face that this isn't the way it should be, but ultimately, I think it's just how the world works. And as my "better half" periodically reminds me when I start to complain about it all, I could always go out and get a real job where I wouldn't have to worry about any of this stuff... and when I contemplate that, it puts things into perspective real quick! 

Hang in there and best of luck to you!

[Wildart]

Thanks for that insight,aye? helpful. I think because I am a long standing zazzler, I have the advantage of sales begat sales, which in my opinion is priceless. Not saying sales are magnificent now,but fairly steady,even picking up a little again. To back this up,I think,is the fact that MOST of my sales are still ones without(or very very recent) cover pics. One thing I do,is to fill out design range in any recent good sellers(GOOD ROYALTY ETC), so I may enhance the veiws. It is encouraging whe you get a good royalty on a product that is a first time sale. So I go with that enthusiasm it creates to design more for that product. Works pretty well. I am really not going to get much into wedding products, I love the IDEA of them, but a) hard work, and b) too much competition. I know zazz loves the whole huge collection thing, but to be honest,I find it boring to do. 🙂 🙂

[Wildart]

on a light hearted note, I do wish zazzle was called something else,cos my z key is broken and takes me about 20 attempts to get it to work each time haha

[Barbara]

Until you get a new keyboard, use Alt+90 for a capital Z and Alt+122 for lower case. I looked it up for you because there but for the grace of God and so on.

Colorwash's Home

[Wildart]

THank you, I didn't know (or perhaps I forgot haha)...Must Keep this important fact somewhere on my PC..OK it's now tacked to my laptop in  Neon Yellow note..(I use as a PC so unfortunately no sigh of ever replacing it! ) here is a test 90....nope does'n't work for laptops I guess...thank you so much for trying for me...I will investigate further xx

[Barbara]

Give a try with a '0' in front of 90, as in Alt+090. Let me give it a try:

Alt+90 = Z (works)

Alt + 090 = Z (also works)

Maybe your Alt key died in sympathy with your Z key?

Colorwash's Home

[Wildart]

I tried it in word, nope, but if I press the alt key, it brings up the alternate letter shortcuts for the tabs, and number shortcuts for the quick access bar! I used to work in a PC system which mostly used alt shortcut keys, in some docs it still works this way. the letter in each word(command) if it is active, is underlined, handy. thanks for trying, I had a creative day yesterday, so haven't looked for any other fixes yet.

[Barbara]

I didn't realize you're not working on a PC. Surely, there has to be a way to access. Don't Mac keyboards have an Option key that's pretty much the same as the Alt key? I can't imagine that the letter codes are accessible only a PC.

Colorwash's Home

[JulieV]

Ha ha...xaxxle perhaps?

[JulieV]

Wow, so happy to hear you are making sales and have found a system that works for you. So encouraging! Also great to know even without covers pics you've had some success. Thanks so much for sharing. 🙂

[JulieV]

Loved reading this! A dose of reality helps make sense of all the recent Zazzle changes being foisted at us left, right and centre. At the end of the day it absolutely is about Zazzle selling as much as they possibly can. I'm sure the success or lack thereof of creators has little to do with Zazzle's algorithms. 
Most things these days are all about the money. From corporate entities to small time creators, such as myself.
Zazzle needs to know it's bottom line...and so do we. Once the balance tips into the "red" where time and effort give nil results...we have our answer.
I'm sure the reason many of us keeping plodding along is due to being creatives. We love to create and Zazzle provides an outlet for that.
Unfortunately, as you say, success on Zazzle probably has a lot to do with marketing and knowing how to be "seen" than purely focusing on the creative side of things.
As "right-brain" creatives, focusing on "non creative" aspects of POD leaves many of us gasping for air, wondering how the heck we can learn these things. For me, even when I do have clear instructions and patient teachers, I find these concepts difficult to understand and implement.
It was much easier when I was younger so may be age related in my situation. 
Anyway, thanks for sharing your excellent post, it helped me see things more clearly! Maybe one day I'll get the hang of it all. I hope so!

[Barbara]

@Connie, I feel your pain. As an "Other" sort of designer, one who only occasionally creates for events and only for those that don't even want a suite of products like a Christmas open house or a reunion, I realized Zazzle's vision isn't for what I'm doing, given they've supplied no guidelines nor goals. I'm not even sure it's possible for them to do so. It's always appeared to me that their core seller is the wedding, and thus it's good to make each suite (collection) as attractive as possible. But what can they do with class reunions, most of them taking place in a hotel restaurant or a park? What can they do with an open house or we've-moved announcements? Perhaps the only arena with potential is in business products.

My reaction is to peacefully wait, designing covers when they seem appropriate. Most of the time, they don't seem to be. But who knows? Maybe Zazzle will come up with ways to deal with that large "Other" category. Until then, maybe we shouldn't stress over it.

Colorwash's Home

[CreativeLeahG]

Connie, it is overwhelming, you're not alone.

What I am doing is using the cover photos I create for the products for the collection media images. And I still find great enormous value in creating covers because they do get seen when we 'share' them across social media. I optimize my covers for the 'social media sharing' aspect as a priority. With self-marketing all the more important, creating and sharing those covers is super important (in my opinion). I would just do as I am and create 1 cover ( I can't possibly create 10 as my latest post shows, it's already going to take years just to update the collections) so use that 1 cover per collection item as your media image, thus reducing your workload in that regard. 

I hope this helps a tad. Hang in there!

[Connie]

So you don't mind that your collection cover image on shows one product? I'm trying to get as many products in them as possible, which is very time consuming.

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear that about your site! It has so much wonderful information on it! I hope you are OK!

[Scott]

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@Connie wrote:

But now, with the Collection changes, apparently Zazzle will be substituting COLLECTION cover photos in place of the product cover photos, in searches, and presumably on the product pages also! So should we not bother with PRODUCT cover photos, and just add covers for collections? What's the point, if the customer won't see them anyway? (at least not at first glance. And if they are going to scroll through all the images anyway, Zazzle's default images are good enough for that.)

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I don't think we'll be substituting one for the other. Or, I haven't heard this myself at any point.

As of today, if you go to a product page you'll notice that we're showing Cover Photo for products as well as Cover Photo for Collections. Each of these has its own usefulness and importance. It's possible that in the future you may see us displaying Collections in new areas around the website. More info to come on this when it becomes available.

[Connie]

This screenshot in the back end of the Collection Management, seems to indicate that it will be substituted.