Zazzle Seller Blog

So you have a store full of fabulous products, your family is supporting the cause, and your fan base is growing by the day.  What next?  How can you take it to the next level and start thinking about your store as a real business?

One aspect of free and effective marketing is your merchandising approach.  In other words, how are you making your products available to the Zazzle buyers and the general public?

In a traditional retail space, presentation is key – and online, those who dominate SEO (search engine optimization) are the real winners of the game.

So let’s start with basics – how to name your products and utilize your description field so buyers everywhere know what you sell – and most importantly, can find their way to the shopping cart, full of your goodies!

Product Titles: The importance of the name game

1.  Consider SEO: keep in mind popular search terms when naming your product.  Do some research on what keywords/phrases to use.  Google Zeitgeist is a great place to start: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/index.html

Eg. “Obama Supporter Heart Mug”

2.  Relevance: Pick words or phrases that speak to your niche and audience.  If you are designing for a certain audience, use familiar words in the title.

Eg. “Green Bliss Yoga Hoodie”

3.  Be descriptive: Use elements from your design, or the actual name of the design to specify your product’s name.

Eg. “Burnt Out Skull and Crossbones Tie”

4.  Be specific, but not too specific: “Vintage red and green Santa Alarm Clock T-Shirt” might be a little too much (ya think?!)  Save this much detail for the description. Instead use something like “Vintage Santa Alarm Clock T-Shirt”.

5.  Multiple products with the same image: if you’re creating a few basketball themed t-shirts, instead of naming them all “basketball t-shirt”, consider variations like:

Eg. -basketball tshirt, basketball t shirt, basketball tee, basketball tee shirt

Product sub-titles

Make this a longer version of the product title. Be a little bit more descriptive, but try to keep it in one sentence.

Utilize the Description Section: Picking up longtail traffic from search engines

1.  Give a background story to your design filled with phrases you want to target

2.  Add your website URL

3.  Use key words that describe your product, including the product type, like ‘mug’ or ‘poster’

4.  Cross merchandise by adding links to your other products.  This works especially well if you’re selling stamps, for example – you could also link over to cards or postcards you sell.  If the product is a gift, you might consider cross-merchandising a gift for the recipient’s boyfriend or girlfriend.  If the product supports a cause or message, cross-merchandise a shirt with a poster: “Don’t just wear your message, drink from it, display it, and send it in the mail!”

5.  Multiple spellings: If you are making a tshirt, add as many of these phrases to the product description as possible …  in a readable paragraph, if at all possible ):

o    t-shirt

o   t-shirts

o   shirt

o   shirts

o   t shirts

o   t shirt

o   tshirt

o   tshirts

o   tee shirt

o   tee shirts

o   tee

An example of a great description field:

LibertyManiacs.com supports Tibetan liberty, just as it supports liberty for all people. We hope that China allows the Dalai Lama to return, ceases Han immigration, and that nonviolent pressure from within and without causes China to allow Tibetaninternal autonomy .

We made this shirt to show support for the Dalai Lama’s quest to return to a free Tibet. Place this design on any shirt, or go into the customization engine to reorganize the elements or add your own!

We’ll have more merchandising tips for you in upcoming blogs – any more ideas on the product titles and description field?  Feel free to post a comment here!

Now that you’ve mastered the bulk product creator, err, the Quick Product Create tool (QPC),  I wanted to share with everyone how to make templates for the Quick Product Create tool. Using templates will drastically cut down your product creation time!  Since all of you are veterans of making Zazzle products in bulk by now, you are probably at the same point that I am with this new tool. I am finding that the QPC tool is very handy when it come to making multiple products, but I still have a desire to cut down the time I spend adjusting each product after they are generated. This means the editing part or even adding the same tags over and over again to these products. When it comes to some of the ‘repetitive’ things that you do when making your products with the QPC tool, you can use templates to avoid redoing the same thing over and over.

For example, lets say I plan on making a whole line of t-shirts using a variety of designs for the front of these shirts, but the back will consistently have my brand logo below the nape of the neck and rather than going in there and adding it to every single product, one by one, I can create templates with the logo already on the back so that when I choose these templates, the design is placed on the fronts all the apparel I have selected and the logo is already on all of the backs.

Let me show you how this works. First things first, go to http://www.zazzle.com/cr/quick/start while logged in and the Quick Product Create  pop up window should appear (if not click the ‘Get Started’ button).

The first thing you will be asked to do is to choose what sort or products you want to create in bulk. There are a few default product ‘templates’ that you can choose from, but when it comes to using custom templates that you have set up, you need to create them first and save them as templates to be used later for QPC. Once you create this initial set of template products, you can then use them the next time you choose which products to create.

The first time around you must choose from the default templates that are available. You can add up to 100 products on your create list. Once you have added the first line of products, you can keep adding more and more until you have the desired selection of products.  In my case, I will choose the ‘Light Apparel Only’ to generate a bunch of products to tweek and then save as templates. I will also delete all the additional products that I don’t want and keep adding more until I have the exact line up of products that I plan on making into templates.

Next you will be prompted to select an image for your products that will eventually become templates. I simply use the default ‘Your Image Here’ image that is already available for you use. By selecting this default image, you can give your products an image place holder. Once the products are generated with this image place holder on them, you can always replace them with your own version if you like. You will also be asked to choose your fit/fill options (#3) but since you will be creating templates, you can leave it on ‘Use Template Defaults’. Next just click ‘Create Products’ and you will see the first batch of Light Apparel products appear.

Once all the Light Apparel products are created next its time to prune and tune each product to meet your template needs. In some cases You will need to delete the products that you don’t want in the mix, as I mentioned earlier. Remember, you can make up to 100 products at a time, so make sure that you add all the products you want to make for this particular template set.

Above you will see the products that were generated for me. I don’t want hats or ties for this particular product template set, so I will delete those 3 products.

Next I will go in and individually customize each product so that its showing the right model and shirt style that I want for my templates. I will also add a brand logo to the back of every shirt so that later when I call upon these templates, all the shirts will be set to the right style, model type and will come with the logo on the back already positioned the way I set it. This will drastically cut down on the time I would spend repeating this process over and over again.

As you can see above, I’ve changed a few of the shirt styles and the models as well. What you cant see in the image above is that I also set a logo on the backs of all the products. See below.

Once you have set up all of your products the way you want them, click on the NEXT tab to go to the next step.

Here you will find all all the fields for pricing, product info and setting categories etc. Since you are creating templates, the most important part to take notice is the ‘Quick product create options’ section you see below:

By choosing ‘Templates for reuse for quick create’ you have now set these products to be templates for use later with the Quick Product Create tool. Once you set all the other things like Titles, descriptions, categories etc, click the ‘Post It’ button and your template products will be created and placed into your product selection. These products WILL BE LIVE and your customers will be able to create and customize products using your templates. This is great to make a sale off of a customer that didn’t find what they were looking for in your store. If you don’t want your customers to see these templates, you can make them private products, which will hide them from the public, but still allow you to use them as Quick Product Create templates.

The next time you go to use QPC, you will notice that there is a new selection available to you. In this case, I placed my QPC Template products in a folder called ‘Templates’ and as a result, there is now a ‘Templates’ category that I can choose when selecting what ‘templates’ to use when bulk creating products the next time around.

When you choose this option, you will notice you will have all the products that you selected and set up previously popping up with the design you selected on them.

Now get started on those templates and if you have any questions, post a comment below!

Sweet!  Not only are you a Zazzle seller – utilizing the most cutting edge technology available in POD – on top of that, your customers are receiving award-winning service!

Check it out:

“Zazzle.com Inc. keeps shoppers coming back to see what’s new with ways to  ustomize products, and not just by printing images on T-shirts, mugs and posters. The web-only retailer added custom shoe design in April, custom skateboards in August and embroidered design services in October. Adding new products and services isn’t just a marketing ploy, says Bobby Beaver, co-founder and chief technology officer. “It’s blowing away the assumption that customization is just printing on products,” he says. The custom shoe product line was developed in conjunction with Keds, a division of The Stride Rite Corp.

Shoppers can design their own sneakers online from scratch or choose from existing designs and color  options. They can build their sneakers at the Keds Studio, located on Keds.com, or at Zazzle.com. Zazzle hosts the software consumers use to design their creations and manufactures the shoes.
The skateboard product line was developed by Zazzle’s engineering team and Andy Howell, a former pro skateboarder and founder of Artsprojekt, a unit of Zazzle. Artsprojekt produces skateboards with Zazzle designs or designs provided by the customer, within 24 hours of ordering.

Zazzle.com also introduced its redesigned web site last summer, using a black and gray color scheme to help color images of products stand out more sharply and grab shoppers’ attention. The retailer also has partnerships with Walt Disney Co. and LucasFilms Ltd. so that visitors to Zazzle.com can use licensed images of characters like Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader in their designs. A deal with wedding services e-retailer TheKnot.com offers custom wedding  postage for announcements and invitations via a tab on Zazzle.com.

“This site is personalization at its best,” says Georgianne Brown, managing partner at Big Couch Media Group and president and CEO of PetStyle.com, a web broadcast and social network for pet lovers. “They use their positioning as infinite and instant, which tells me they have a pretty wide selection and that I’m going to get my order quickly. Zazzle is leveraging the latest on-demand publishing technology and offering a platform for anyone”