Please reconsider marketplace placements

[LJ]

I know it's naive to think that my post will change anything, but things have come to a point where I have too much to lose to leave it without a word. (And I've just read that some criticism here won't lead to punishment in the marketplace.)

Like many other designers, I'm experiencing a decline in sales. It would be comfortable for me too to blame it on the economy, but all my other POD accounts are acting normally (October = 3x August). Despite spending 100% of my POD time here since the mockup misery and the collections update.

Unlike others, I believe the main factor in decreasing sales is the heavy manual intervention in the marketplace placements. Definitely not the collections, maybe not the mockups or any changes announced, but things happening under the hood. It seems that Zazzle's new approach is not showing customers what they want but showing them what they want them to want. But, as results show, it doesn't work like that. Apparently, the crowd can better decide what's popular (with their money) than some Editors (with their picks).

A year ago, when I was browsing in some random product category, I was thinking if I had more money, I would buy this and that, and those too. Everything looked so nice and professional. Now I scroll through the first page of literally any category and don't like what I see enough to go to the second page. Yes, some awful mockups definitely don't help (and I say this knowing that I suck at mockups too), but prioritizing pages of designs that one employee liked at some point will drive away customers who are used to seeing beautiful and trendy things here.

I like to believe that the intent was good, but the implementation went astray. I understand that Zazzle wants to reward certain designers and influence buyers, but it could be done wiser in my opinion.

So just a suggestion: why don't you put one Editor's pick in every other row and let customers see the organically popular items too (bought with real money), as it used to be. If you placed a few EPs on the first pages, they would have the opportunity to catch up, but they would be put back into their normal places a few days later (I mean like some rotation system). This way, the category pages would have the popular and best-selling products but always show something new to keep visitors coming back.

Sorry for the length and the poor English.

[kimmpossible]

Thank you for putting this out there. I couldn’t agree more. Some of the Editor’s Picks aren’t the most popular designs in my shop, but they come first on my product page and searches. I also have a ton of products, that are popular on other platforms, that never gain ground on Zazzle for some reason. I have been designing invitations for 11 years now and I am pretty good at knowing what sells, otherwise I would have quit a long time ago. 

I do think there is a little more to the drop in sales than Editor’s picks, but it’s definitely a contributing factor. I was in contact with the VP of marketing at one point and I know he was marketing a lot of my products. He isn’t responding to my emails now, so I looked him up and it looks like he got a new position in the company and they are hiring for his position.

Hopefully things pick back up soon. 

[Lisa-B]

Thanks @ LJ for your ideas and feedback on this. I will be sure to pass it along to the Team.

Lisa 🌺

[CreativeLeahG]

@Lisa-B  I raised this issue in February

This was the response by Scott at that time (if this helps)

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/general-zazzle-discussion/editors-picks-taking-priority-in-the-marke...

Since this time this situation has worsened.

As affiliates our affiliate links should go to the page that WE not the brand dictates. For reasons unknown, links shared via social media are going NOT to the product page but instead to a landing page where our product shows (but it is not the product page) followed by 65 Editors picks. That means that our self-referral now has to compete with 65 other products when that is NOT where we sent our customers as affiliates. I am concerned that this is a breach of affiliate contract terms given that our affiliate links are not going where we intended them to go. This issue has been raised multiple times without any response. Please while forwarding this Editors issue please raise this more serious issue of 'redirecting our affiliate links'.

The thread re all the details re this is here

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/general-zazzle-discussion/why-do-our-pinterest-marketing-efforts-pro...

Many thanks

[LJ]

Thanks, I haven't seen that.
...Anyway, I didn't have high hopes.

[Echo]

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Zazzle is deciding what customers should buy by pushing their “editor’s pick” to the front pages instead of letting customers decide what they want. If I were a customer and see all the products on the first few pages has editor’s pick on it, the first thing comes to my mind  would be, “they are trying to trick me to buy these” and go elsewhere. I hate it that my editor’s pick (a design I made for fun and didn’t think it was going to sell) has priority over one of design that sold 30x more.

[CreativeLeahG]

@LJ 

Please do stay positive, as there is always hope however small. If sales are declining we have a chance of seeing a change, if they increase then it's less likely. That's just business, unfortunately.

[tanyadraws]

I definitely agree with you. I've recently been browsing the marketplace here to see what's going on, and you're right - in nearly every category when browsing from Z's navigation, the editors picks are given the most weight - it doesn't seem to matter if you have more views, sales, or an updated cover photo. The products shown are different for customers with login / user history vs. incognito browsing so they do seem to change it up per customer and by domain. However, when browsing incognito or different zazzle domains it is still very heavily weighted towards editors picks no matter what. Sometimes the search bar shows more unbiased options (based on tags, descriptions, popularity etc) but I think this has more to do with how niche the search is. However when searching more generic search terms - ex. "modern business cards" it is mostly dominated by editors picks.

More of a balance would be preferable - even just 50% editors picks per page balanced with a mix of popular, best selling and highly viewed designs. As you said, not every editor pick is going to resonate with customers. But we do have tons of popular best selling items that might potentially be a better match if they are put in front of a customer.

[DancingPelican]

Sales are slumping for me again after a brief spurt upward. This month has typically, over the years been one of the busiest months of the year for sales. Not this year.  I would like to be able to view what customers are actually buying now. Zazzle used to show us the bestsellers for the month, the day, and all time. I used that in my own business research to determine what types of products to design and what general styles were working popular with actual buying customers. We have lost that important business tool. Zazzle - can you bring this back? Please?

Anyhow, I am keeping the faith and doing research with design blogs and websites to get inspired and keep creating new designs in several niches that have a bit of a track record for success.

Hang in there, everyone!

[kimmpossible]

@DancingPelican the problem with that feature is there are people who will see the bestselling design and copy it. I can’t tell you how many of my bestselling items have been copied on Zazzle. They’re not the exact same, but they’re very similar. What’s even more frustrating is I will see those products promoted by Zazzle on Pinterest and Google. I don’t even like my shop being organized by “most popular” anymore because of this. 

[DancingPelican]

@kimmpossible. Yes, some of my best sellers or featured designs were copied too and my bestsellers fell by the wayside and dropped off the first page, 2nd page, and beyond. I do want eyes on my products so they have a better chance of selling.