Creator updates for upcoming Instant Downloads feature

[Scott]

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to share a quick update about our Instant Downloads offering.

Firstly, the test has not started just yet. We hope to start in the very near future. We'll keep you updated! 🙂

Secondly, if you haven't yet heard, we're going to be adding the ability for customers to download certain products. This is entirely voluntary - you're welcome to opt-out if you wish. More information on this upcoming program can be found in the links below:

• https://www.zazzle.com/creators/playbook/learn+about+instant+downloads
• https://www.zazzle.com/creators/playbook/instant+downloads+faqs

Alright, on to the fun stuff! Tonight we updated our website with some important tools that you can use to prepare your store(s) for our upcoming release. These changes are mostly in your store backend, and include the following:

1. Ability to filter by Instant Download status – either Any, or Enabled, or Eligible. If you want to view products that are already enabled then select Enabled, if you want to view products that are NOT enabled then select Eligible. For other situations leave it on Any.

2. Enable/disable products individually or in bulk. This will allow you to add or remove individual products from the digital offering. This process should be fairly familiar: Select the product(s) then use the Actions dropdown menu to Enable or Disable. If you’re looking to enable multiple products at once I’d suggest filtering by “Eligible” products, then select all of the desired products.

3. Adjust royalty levels for individual products. The Edit Details pop-up box has been updated to include an “Instant Download” section. This will allow you to enable/disable products, and also set the royalty percentage. Please note that we imported all products at set royalty percentages. More information on this can be found here. You’re welcome to adjust the royalty percentage as you’d wish. 

4. New toggle switch for product statistics. We added a toggle switch that will show you either the Printed Stats or the Digital Stats. This will help you track the performance of your products so that you can make more informed decisions on how you offer your products for sale.

5. “Downloadable” badge on enabled products. In your store backend you’ll notice that we added a “Downloadable” badge to products that are enabled in digital format. This should make it a bit easier to spot these products at quick glance.

6. "Sell as Digital" option on the product page. When you're viewing your own products you'll see a gray bar at the top of the page. This contains some links to common actions so that you can update products a bit easier. On the left side of this bar is an option to "Sell as Digital" if the product is not already enabled. You can also click on the Edit Details link and go to the Instant Downloads section to make updates to digital status, as well review/adjust royalty rates.

For now, no changes will be visible on the product pages, even for products that are enabled for digital. We'll probably have a bit more to share when the time comes. I think it's all pretty straightforward on the product page.

Feel free to take a look around and let us know what you think! We'll do our best to answer any questions that may arise, but we hope that these new tools are easy enough to understand that you can get right to work making the desired adjustments to your store(s) and products. If not, we'll be here to help as best as we can. 

And if you've read all this and you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about then hopefully this screenshot will help:

[Cat]

Thanks for the update! I opted in for having all of my eligible products migrated, but my store is still showing 23 pages of products that are eligible but not enabled. Do I need to enable them or has the indexing just not caught up yet?

ETA - looks like the stuff that didn't get migrated fall into 2 categories: 

1. Products created after the opt in/out deadline
2. Save the Date cards

My plan is to give it until tomorrow, and if they haven't migrated by then I'll do them by hand.

[Scott]

Anything created after Jan 12th will need to be manually enabled for digital. This shouldn't be a terrible process - just select all the Eligible products on the page and enable them at once.

[blushroses]

this is absolutely great!! Thank you Zazzle, you are the best ever

[Happy_People_Pr]

Fantastic! Thank you for this awesome feature!

[Harmony]

none of the updates are showing in my store? I opted in a long time ago. 

update: apparently ii had to re-sign in for changes to take effect

[Scott]

Oh, interesting. This is a good detail to share if anyone runs into a similar issue. When I was testing this new feature I was logging in and out of stores pretty constantly so I wouldn't have come across this issue myself. Thanks for mentioning it!

[RMorganSnapshot]

So I opted out but this morning get on here and have posters that were listed as downloadable. What's up with that?

[Scott]

It does look like your store is opted in. If you do not wish to participate then I'd suggest disabling digital on applicable products.

[TShirtfort]

Same happened with me. Spent a lot of time making things not downloadable, which I shouldn't have needed to do as I am opted out. I don't care on quick stuff I did years ago but I'm not cool with it for digital art things I've done. 

[migned]

Thank you Zazzle  ❤️

[mkokolo]

Thank you Zazzle! 💖Can't wait for instant downloads to go live 😄

[plumb4me]

Do we need to update any new products we add to our shop for instant downloads or when I opted in, does this apply to any new products, I make in the future?

[Scott]

The opt-in process was a one-time event, and happened around Jan 12th. I you publish products at this time you'll need to go into your store backend and enable them for digital. Once we start testing we will offer the ability to enable digital right on the publishing page itself.

[plumb4me]

Thanks Scott, I do have one other question or issue. Alot of my regular cards will not let me enable them as digital downloads and none of my Thank You Cards will let me enable digital downloads. These are all regular greeting cards, nothing different than the rest of the cards, that are enabled as digital downloads.

Unless someone else has already mentioned this, I may have figured out one of the problems. Sometimes, when I make a card, it does not automatically add "card" to the end of the "title", so I have to add "card" to the end of the "title" myself. All of the cards, I had to add card to the end of the title are not eligible for digital downloads. I'm not sure why the Thank You card titles are not eligible.

Are poster prints the only ones eligible for digital downloads, are photo enlargements considered prints?

Thank you for your help.

[CreativeLeahG]

@Scott 

Great, couple of issues

1. There appears to be an issue for designs created via 'transfer this design' NO option to make eligible for download. During or after as an edit. Even when correct product type.

2. While it was confirmed invitations were eligible, only certain paper types appear to be included. This creates an issue for customer depending on what product they land on if they only want a download, the paper type shouldn't matter? BUT they would need to transfer the design to flat card to access a digital download BUT then we have ... item 1. Doesn't work when item is transferred.

Will the other paper types be included in the future and also can this transfer issue be fixed as there is no possible way to redirect the customer should ask for a DD on an item currently ineligible for that service.

[Scott]

Curious about #1...

Are you hoping to go to a product page, then transfer the design to digital, then purchase? This is not possible. At this time, the digital option is only available after the product is published AND digital is enabled. So if you want to offer a new product in digital format you'll need to publish a new product, enable digital, and then perhaps set it to direct-only if you're helping a customer with product customization. If you're looking for different functionality let us know what it is and we'll look into adding it.

[CreativeLeahG]

No, I was transferring a design I expected to be available on the product type ( it wasnt) to one where it would be then I put it up for sale. But no options after New item created to make it eligible for download. The option doesn't exist and it doesn't show in the filter for eligible items.

[Scott]

Can you link me to a product, or send via Zazzle Chat.

[CreativeLeahG]

sent in PM with screenshots

[Cat]

I understand the reasoning here, but it's disappointing for Save the Date cards which are often purchased on either magnetic cards or postcards. Hoping there will be some remedy for those situations.

[LoraSeverson]

@Scott I am confused about the Save the Dates also. I am able to manually change them to downloadable.  I changed a page full, should I not have done that?

[Scott]

Can you link me to a product or two that you'd like to enable on digital but cannot? Or send via Zazzle Chat

[Cat]

I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. If I transfer the design I'm able to enable downloads just fine. My concern is that it sounds like if a customer transfers a design, downloads will not be enabled - which, I guess, makes sense. 

I'm just thinking of the many products that are not eligible for download where I often get download requests - so I think what I'm really hoping for is some easy way for customers who purchase those products to be able to buy a download. But I think I'm probably just going to have to wait for those products to be included in the program. Common requests include:

1. Foam core boards (most popular product for seating charts & wedding signs)
2. Paper Sheets (used for budget invites as well as programs)
3. Programs
4. Magnetic Cards & Flexible Magnets (often used for Save the Dates)
5. Postcards (often used for Save the Dates & RSVP)
6. RSVP cards
7. Enclosure cards

I guess in those situations they'll just have to contact me, send me a link to their completed design, and I'll perform the transfer for them. I was thinking that it would be nice to have an "allow downloads on product transfer" option or something, but honestly, no customer is going to be able to navigate that without my help anyhow.

[Scott]

#2

We don't offer downloads for all product types, at least not at launch. I will try to get more information on this, but I think I might have answered this question in my previous answer? Generally, my impression is that this initial testing will include a limited number of product types so that we can monitor user adoption and slowly move in the direction of allowing downloads for more product types in the future. But this is a big change for all of us, and we're going to be methodical about it, and we hope to allow you (everyone) a bit of time to reorganize a bit so that you're prepared for these changes.

[mskaye]

...and where is this store 'backend' because I do not see any indication or icon noting as such.

thanks,

kaye

[Sara_H]

@mskaye Go to your store - click on your products tab - that area is called the backend where you edit products/ etc

[almdrs]

Thank you for the update!

Do you recommend any changes in the tags of the enabled designs? Any change in the SEO because the product is now available as a digital download?

[Scott]

I would not update metadata just yet because not everyone will have access to the download feature at first. In the long term you may choose to update how you market your products, but I'd hold off on that for now. As we start testing this new feature you'll probably want to keep an eye on digital vs print sales so that you can start to get an idea of what your customers are looking for. We'll be providing additional updates as we start testing.

[MasterpieceCafe]

With the invitations ... is it only invitations with text? Blank invitations aren't eligible?

For example this invitation doesn't have the ability to be enabled for digital download.

https://www.zazzle.com/vintage_wedding_newlyweds_happy_bride_and_groom-161714901747109901

[Scott]

That product type is not eligible for digital at this time.

[MasterpieceCafe]

But it's an invitation? Although I just noticed it's not appended with the word "invitation"

What makes it not eligible? The FAQs list invitations.

[LoraSeverson]

@Scott 

This is a link to one of my save the dates. It did not automatically become downloadable. I am able to manually change it, but will those automatically get switched or should I do them? https://www.zazzle.com/blue_hydrangeas_watercolor_wedding_save_the_date-256618666250357270

[plumb4me]

Most of the cards I have in my shop are not eligible for digital downloads, because I used the cards, that I had to add the word "card" to the end of the title. Will there be a fix for this in the future or do I have to go back and remake all of the cards and use the correct cards, that already have "card" added to the end of the title? This will be such a time consuming process to remake all of the cards.

[plumb4me]

Until this is a fix, when you make a regular new card, you have to specially pick a card that says "folded greeting card" or "flat greeting card" or it will not be available as a digital download.

[plumb4me]

Apparently this is no fix and this is the way it is set up, so I will have to make sure to pick the correct cards in the future.

[tamirazdesigns]

This morning I went into my store and saw the Green "Downloadable" on the first page by some of my products. At first I thought it was live : ) but wasn't sure since I hadn't seen a message update. Then I went to the forums and saw Scott's updated message from last night that it's not live, with some helpful information! I continued spending time looking at majority of my product pages for the Green Downloadables and saw a lot which I kept as Enabled. And a lot on items that I had Hidden awhile ago (some reasons noted below), so I went in and Disabled them (not sure I had to since they were already hidden). And had some I had previously set as Direct Only from older products (that I had then re-done long ago). 

It was exciting to see all of the Green Downloadables! This is all new for me too! For Downloadables I noticed they were Enabled on various Card and Invitation themes, and also for Posters (I left some Enabled, and Disabled some for now to see how this all plays out). But for some reason there wasn't any Downloadables listed next to many other cards that were similar themes, or posters and no option to manually enable them.

<moderator edit: the second half of this post veers a bit off-topic, and in the interest of staying organized I've moved the rest of the post here.

[plumb4me]

Here a good explanation of the replace product tool, what you can and cannot do with it, when you do get access to it, https://community.zazzle.com/t5/ask-a-question/hello-can-i-update-my-product-without-creating-a-new-...

Here is a good explanation of the types of cards that are eligible for digital downloads, https://community.zazzle.com/t5/technical-issues/digital-downloads/m-p/61099#M6521

[CreativeLeahG]

Suggestion: It would be helpful the product was highlighted as 'downloadable' for the customer, not just in the product ordering/selection details, especially as this a new feature.

Could for example tag to end of product description so as well as adding 'invitation/poster' you also add / printed and digital or something to this effect.

[Scott]

There will be "downloadable" badges on the search results page and on the product page. When we are testing the feature the badges (and downloadable option) will be available only to users that are included in the test.

In the future it probably does make some sense to update how products are marketed. Pretty sure this has been mentioned in some meetings already, but I'll be sure to pass along that idea.