Batman lovers, the wait is officially over! Today marks the release of the highly-anticipated video game, Batman: Arkham City! So begins the countless hours fighting the slums of Arkham, trying to defeat some of Batman’s most sinister and twisted enemies. The Penguin, The Riddler, The Joker, and Two-Face don’t have a chance! Now that you have this action packed game (that will most likely consume your life), don’t forget to rep’ the Bat by sporting gear from Batman: Arkham City with Zazzle!
Well, it’s been quite a day here at Zazzle! Last night’s release is out and there’s a buzz going around…we can feel it…it’s pretty buzzy ’round these parts. I think the most common questions we’re getting are related to our new Store Category Sorting and Browsing feature. Yes, it’s a mouthful…but that’s ’cause it’s a pretty meaty piece of…well…meat 
In a nutshell, Store Category Sorting and Browsing is a powerful feature that makes Zazzle stores easier to navigate for customers, and easier to merchandise and promote for store owners.
We just pushed out a couple of detailed help topics on this feature, with fancy screenshots and everything!
Below is a sample of what a scrollable Store Category list could look like in your Store.
Wow, you Zazzlers out there really blew us away with your amazing talent and creativity! Ever since we released the Advanced Store Customization Beta, our incredible Zazzle Community hit the pavement and worked tirelessly to build their own brands, create innovative user experiences, and perhaps most importantly, help each other out in our forums.
Below is a showcase of some our favorites so far…
Keep up the amazing work…we honestly can’t wait to see what you guys do next!
For more tips, tricks, and advice on this feature, be sure to visit the Advanced Store Customization beta forum. Many folks have already written detailed and very informative tutorials to help you get started.
You’re up on the stage, in front of millions, singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, a song that’s been done to death. How do you stand out? How do you make it NOT sound like Karaoke? Easy. Change the tempo, add different inflections, improvise a vocal run…basically, you make it your own, dawg! (ahhhh, he said it!)
The same idea applies to your Zazzle store. Some store owners add pizzazz with header graphics, some add HTML in their description. But most stores have the same basic layout…until now!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Zazzle has now opened up the ability to customize your own storefront however you see fit. Edit CSS and HTML directly, add your own pages, display what you want, where you want it.
This blog post will get you started, but for more complete documentation, please download the Advanced Store Customization Guide (1.9Mb, PDF) .
Be forewarned…this is currently in open BETA, which basically means we are testing this feature and cannot provide official support. To use this feature successfully, it is highly recommended that you have a working knowledge of CSS and HTML, and some familiarity with XML. Keep in mind that by messing around with the direct code behind your store, you could very easily break it and render your store unusable, forcing you to revert to defaults and start over.
Well, you can pretty much do almost anything you want with this. I won’t go into detail on how to write CSS or HTML, but let me show you some examples of the power it provides you:
Since this is still in beta, the first thing you’ll have to do is enable the feature. Here’s how.
First, go to http://www.zazzle.com/my/gallery/appearance
After saving your changes, you will see this warning:
Hit OK to enable Advanced Store Customization. Once enabled, a new tab labeled “Beta! Advanced” appears. Click on it to see and edit your Layout and Style code.
Advanced Store Customization opens up the guts of your storefront and allows you to change the code that builds it. It handles this by splitting up your store’s code into three editable parts: Layout (HTML), Style (CSS), and Content Definition (XML).
Let’s try one of the easiest store customizations…adding a background image to your storefront. It’s pretty easy.
In the Style text box (found under My Zazzle–>Store–>Appearance–>Advanced tab), look for the #mainShell section of code and add the URL to an image in the background declaration:
#mainShell {
position:relative;
width:100%;
padding-bottom:40px;
background:#bbccdd url(“http://www.yoursite.com/inc/yourImage-bkg.jpg”) top center no-repeat;
}
Then hit Validate and Save Changes (or select the Preview button to test first). That’s it! Now your store will have a background image! This is one of the easiest changes you can make, but can quickly add some personality to your store. Here are a couple of examples of stores with nothing more than a background image:
That’s about all I can cover in this blog post, but for more complete documentation, please download the Advanced Store Customization Guide (1.9Mb, PDF) . Like I stated earlier, this feature is in open beta, so there will be no official support for it (don’t call customer support for this!), but we have setup a new discussion forum so anyone experimenting with Advanced Store Customization can discuss their experiences, get help, and help others who are trying it out.
With the ability to completely change the look and feel of your store, we’re hoping to see some really creative designs and layouts! Dig in, folks…time to truly make it your own!
It’s easy to automatically add your new Zazzle products to a Twitter feed. I’ve done this over at twitter.com/hikingviking. Here’s how:
1. Get an account on TwitterFeed, a service that reads RSS feeds and will lob them over to your twitter account. There are probably lots of services like this, but TwitterFeed has been gaining popularity in my circles, and it does the trick pretty well.
1(b). Note that to sign up for TwitterFeed, you will need an OpenId identity. You have one already if you have a Gmail or Yahoo account, or sign up with one of the other OpenId providers; TwitterFeed gives you a list. (Personally, I like ClaimId because I went to Carolina, too.)
2. Once you’re in TwitterFeed, go to “My Feeds” and click “Create a new feed”, and hook up your Zazzle feed to your Twitter account:
3. You need your feed url. Zazzle has lots of information about feeds here. The url I’m using looks like this:
http://feed.zazzle.com/hikingviking/feed?ft=gb&at=238898476793705621
Dissecting this url, we know that:
/hikingviking means I’m pulling products from my “hikingviking” gallery on Zazzle.
ft=gb means I’m pulling the “Google Base” formatted RSS feed, which gives me better access to the raw data about my product. The “title” and “description” fields are the actual title and description I have entered on Zazzle, and not html markup that allows images and links to show up in RSS reader applications.
at=238898476793705621 is how I make sure I will earn referral fees if you click through and buy stuff. Feel free to use my associate ID in your TwitterFeed! Or, you probably want to substitute your own.
The default sort type on feeds is “most recent”, so I am sure that I am picking up the products I have most recently published on Zazzle. TwitterFeed is smart enough to know what’s new every time it checks, so it won’t post duplicate products to your Twitter account.
4. The other options on the TwitterFeed page are up to you. You will have to trust TwitterFeed with your login information to your Twitter account, obviously. Then, I chose to include “title & description”, to shorten my link using TinyURL, and to prefix my post with “New @zazzle -”. That’s it! TwitterFeed runs every hour and will pick up anything new you have published to Zazzle.
I drive a hybrid and pride myself on getting amazing mileage (52MPG lifetime, baby!). To accomplish this, I drive…well…slow. I go under the speed limit and stay in the right lane. Works for me…I’m a laid back guy who takes life slowly and casually.
But there is one place where I welcome a little high speed action. And that’s in creating products on Zazzle! Introducing Quick Product Create!
Yes, now it’s easy to create up to 100 products instantly. Quick Product Create (or QPC) is a simple three step wizard that allows you to create multiple products using selections of related products (all products, dark apparel, paper products, etc.) from the Zazzle Default Products menu, or from one of your own Product Lines that contain matching product templates.
Design for success
The first thing you need is a design you plan to put on many products. Typically, this is in the form of an image (a JPG, GIF, PNG, etc.) Since this one design will be blasted on several products, you should design it with that in mind. Here are some hints:
Ok, so I have my design. I’m going to use this “Get outta my grill” image I made a while back.
The original is a high resolution PNG file, so it should work fine for most products.
Place it!
Ok, got my image. Now I need to start the Quick Product Create process by going to http://www.zazzle.com/cr/quick/start. When you start, you see this dialog pop up:
Click the dropdown arrow in Step 1 to see what options you have:
As you can see, there are some default Zazzle Product Lines you can choose from. These currently include:
If you have previously created a Product Line in your gallery that contains template products, it will show up here as well under My Product Lines. This way you can pre-define a custom set of products that you create often. Rob has written a great post about how to create your own Product Lines for Quick Product Create. Advanced users, read all about it here!
I’ll choose All Products since it contains a nice mix of t-shirts, cards, stamps, mugs, and other products.
Once you select a Product Line, you will see that you can change the default image in Step 2. Click the link that says “Change”, and you will see all your Zazzle images, or you can upload a new one. Here, I’ve selected my “Get outta my grill” image.
In Step 3 you will notice that you have the option to change the default fit/fill mode to one of three options:
For most cases, using the default should be fine.
Ok…click Create Products…
Shazam!
Now I have a grid of 33 products with my design!
Sweet! Now all I have to do is check to make sure all products look their best. If something needs to be tweaked, there are ways to do that on a per-product basis. For example, the first sticker in the grid looks a bit tight. Looks like my design is getting a little cut off. Luckily, we have controls you can use right above each product:
Since the image on the sticker is a bit too big and is getting cut off, I need to shrink it. To do so, I click the “customize” link above my sticker product and shrink the image with the “resize” tool in the mini design tool.
Details, details, details
Now all my products look good and I’m ready to continue, so I click Next. I’m presented with a screen that is very similar to our Post For Sale page. You need to fill out all the information for these products, including title, description, tags, royalty percentage, etc. Required fields have a red asterisk next to them.
Most of these options are pretty self explanatory. However, there is a dropdown labeled “Quick Create Product Options”. Let me explain the options.
Most of the time, you are simply going to select the default option “Products to sell” because that’s what you are doing…creating products to sell.
However, if you want to make products to sell that are templates (so buyers can easily change text or images), you would select the second option, “Templates for sale”. This ensures that all fields marked as a template will remain a template when posted for sale. For more on how to create templates, see my previous post, More than just embroidery…
The third option, “Templates for reuse for quick create” is an advanced option for people who want to create a new set of products to use the next time they use Quick Product Create. This new Product Line would show up in the Step 1 dropdown under My Product Lines. As I mentioned before, Rob’s post explains how to do this.
Tada!
Click Post It and you’re done! All products are now queued up for creation. This takes anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours. If you have postage or shoes in your Product Line, expect those products to appear in the Product Line closer to the 24 hour limit since those products need to be approved before they get posted.
Helpful hints
That’s all I have for now…happy creating!
I actually had a hard time thinking about what new feature to write about. I was going to talk about the already wildly popular Quick Product Create, but Patrick beat me to it on our regular blog. And who knows, maybe I’ll delve deeper into that on a later post.
So what I bring you today is an improvement to our embroidery offering…DST uploads and a colorizing user interface!
Ummm…what?
Ok, back up. What is a DST and what’s this colorizing thingy? Let me explain…
Embroidery requires images called “stitch files” that contain information about when to change thread colors and how to physically stitch a design. Our embroidery machines take these files and know how to sew it onto a product.
Up until now, we’ve used stitch files that contain all that information as well as what color threads to use. To convert a JPG or bitmap image to one of these stitch files, you need a professional conversion done (commonly known as “digitization”).
DST files are stitch files, but they are lacking one key piece of information we need: color data. Without knowing what color thread to use during a thread change, it’s rather difficult to make it look right. The good thing about DST files, however, is that they are a very common embroidery format with a large supporting community of embroidery experts all over that there Interweb
Red and yellow and pink and green…
We knew we wanted to support this common format, but we had to build a way for users to tell us what colors to use for each thread change in the file. Enter the colorizing UI (insert dramatic music here)!
When a user uploads a DST file, Zazzle chooses default colors for each thread change in the file…just so it contains something. The results are usually less than optimal. But by going to My Zazzle –> My Images and clicking on the image, there is a link to re-color the file:
Clicking that link brings up the colorizing UI:
The colorizing dialog shows the original stitch file image with the default colors on the left, and a set of color swatches on the right. Each color swatch represents a thread change in the stitch file. It is not uncommon for a stitch file to have multiple thread changes using the same color as a previous thread change. In other words, it is possible to assign duplicate colors to different swatches.
Clicking on a swatch brings up a palette of possible colors. These colors represent the thread spools our machines have access to.
Keep in mind that each image can only have a total of 10 colors including black and white.
So at this point, all you have to do is click each swatch and choose the appropriate color. The image updates in real time. Here’s how this file looks after some tweaks…
Much better! When finished, just click “Create copy with these colors” to create a copy of this stitch file. Every time you modify the colors of a stitch file, a new file gets created in My Images. This way you can have multiple colorized versions of the same design!
This process is not limited to newly uploaded DST files. If you’ve already had some of your existing designs converted for embroidery, you can also re-color those as well without having to pay for a second conversion!
How to create embroidery on Zazzle
Yes, folks, embroidery will keep you in stitches. Sew I wanted to get right into it and show you just how seamless an experience it can be. I will show you the ups and downs and the ins and outs of the process.
These embroidery puns doin’ anything for ya?
Guide Us
First, I want to point you to an important document, the Embroidery Design Guide (PDF). This guide explains a lot of the details about creating successful embroidery products on Zazzle. Read it. Know it. Love it.
Also have a look at our embroidery information page. It contains important information regarding our process as well as links to pricing information.
Walkthrough
In this section, I will guide you through the process of creating an embroidered product from a standard JPG, GIF, or PNG image. It’s very similar to the normal print process, with a few key differences.
Step 1: Choose a product
The first step is simply to select what kind of product you would like to design: shirt, hat, or bag. Go to http://www.zazzle.com/custom/embroidery and choose one of the options:
Once you select a product, you will be taken to that product’s design tool. For this example, I chose Hooded Sweatshirt.
Let’s add an image. Click the Select Image link and you will see your image collection. Select an image, click Add Image, then click Make it now.
Now here’s one of those “key differences” I mentioned above. At this point, a new dialog will appear explaining to you that this particular image needs to be converted for embroidery.
This is an informational dialog only. It explains why we need to convert your image, how to choose an image that will convert well, and talks about the fee and time it takes to convert. In traditional embroidery, this conversion process is called “digitization”.
The conversion process is done by skilled technicians who know how best to interpret designs into stitches. It’s not an automated hit or miss process. It’s looked at by actual people using actual human eyeballs.
Once you finish reading the dialog, click Ok, add this image.
At this point, I’d like to mention that if you already own a stitch file in .OFM format, you can upload it and bypass all conversion costs. If you’ve had images digitized in the past for embroidery by a traditional embroidery company, you might have an .OFM file.
In this example, the image is sized to 1.7″ x 2.1″ and it’s telling me that will cost $30 to convert. If I wanted to reduce that price, I could do a couple of things:
The conversion fee is calculated by how many stitches it takes to create the image out of thread. The rate is $5 per 1000 stitches. The smaller the image, the less stitches it takes to create. Also, fewer blocks of solid color means less stitches required.
Keep in mind that once you convert an image at a particular size, you cannot change its size as an embroidery file. You must convert it again if you want a different size embroidery design. A handy tip is to convert images at the smallest size you can. You can convert a smaller image once and use it on a greater number of products. If you convert an image in a larger size, it will only fit on some products. Hats, for example, have very small design areas and can only accept smaller images.
If you choose to post this for sale rather than purchase the product yourself, you will be presented with the normal Post for sale page first. Fill it out normally with the description, tags, title, etc. Click Continue when finished.
Now you will get a page reminding you about the conversion that is required.
This page gives details about the conversion fee as well as how long it takes to convert. You must click Continue to cart to add the conversion fee to your shopping cart.
Once it’s in your cart, simply checkout normally, and your image is sent off to be converted.
If you posted for sale, your product will appear in the marketplace when conversion is complete.
We have specialized monogram fonts, cool fonts, and traditional block and script fonts.
Bend it like Beckham
Another cool thing about using our built-in embroidery fonts is that you can automatically arch your text up or down, or re-orient to vertical or horizontal text, using a simple drop-down menu.
Templatizing the stitchy way
Did you know you can create templates from embroidery products? Any text object in an embroidered product can be made into a template placeholder. This is great for sports teams, family reunion shirts, etc.
For more information on how to create templates, see the post titled More than just embroidery…
Release O’Plenty
Wow. What a release! If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve just pushed out one of the biggest releases in Zazzle history. Not only are we now doing real embroidery, but we’ve packed this release full of candy-coated goodness! Unfortunately, we’ve hit a couple performance snags, but we’re getting those resolved very quickly – keep your eye on the Zazzle Forums for updates on that front. For a quick overview, read our main blog post entitled Embroidery AND New Features. In this post, I’m going to get into some detail on some new features of the Zazzle Design Tool.
I’m such a tool(bar)
One of the first things you might notice is the look of our toolbar. We’ve reorganized it to show more options in a familiar menu style.
There are now Select, Edit, and Align options in the toolbar. These features help you select design elements, copy and paste them, and align them relative to each other. Next time you create something, check them out!
Also, if a product contains more than one design area (front and back of a t-shirt, multiple areas of a shoe, etc.) an Area selector appears on the left. This is a quick and easy way to select the different areas of a product to design on. And the best part is that now they contain easy to understand icons.
Oops, I messed up again
One thing a lot of people do is customize an existing design. You see a cool design and want to add your name, or you want to nudge the image a bit higher. If a contributor has allowed customization, anyone can do these things.
Of course, when you start messing around with a design, you may end up with something that doesn’t quite look like you pictured it. What to do?
REVERT! Yes, now there is an option to revert any design to its original state before you started changing things. Revert is located just under the Post for Sale button.
Templates made easy
So here’s the big one. The top banana. The Big Kahuna. El Jefe. Yes, ladies and gentlecontributors, we now have an easy way to make templates! Zoinks!
“You mean we don’t have to double-click somewhere and add cryptic brackets anymore?”
Correct. There is now a template UI!
You can make a product become a template by simply defining which image(s) or text object(s) can be replaced by the buyer.
Example:
Add an image to a product. You will notice an “Advanced options” link on the image object.
Click the Advanced options link to show all advanced options.
One of the options is a checkbox labeled “Make this a template object”. Checking that box will display all the options available for defining this template image placeholder.
When you select “Make this a template object”, you have access to four options:
Once you have filled out all the options, click Post for Sale. You are then presented with the normal Post it for Sale page. Notice the checkbox labeled “This product is a template”. This tells you that the product contains template objects, and that it will be posted for sale as a template. Only uncheck it if you decide at this point to not allow customer personalization of this product; otherwise keep it checked.
Congratulations! You have just created a template product!
Lock it up!
Sometimes, you may want to create a template product but have items that are not changeable by a customer. Now you can simply check the box labeled “Lock this image” or “Lock this text object”. This will essentially lock the item and not allow any editing of it whatsoever (can’t delete it, move it, resize it, etc.)
That’s all there is to it, folks!
On Monday, August 18th, we launched our redesigned Zazzle website. Guess what we snuck in there for ya…the Zazzle Store Builder! Yes, now it is possible to put Zazzle products on your website with just a couple of quick text edits!
How easy is this?
All you have to do is enter your gallery name and your associate ID in a configuration file…and voilà! Instant store front! But it can go way deeper than that…over 20 different configurable parameters deeper. Here’s a taste:
All these parameters and more can be set in a simple configuration text file. No programming required. But if you know a little CSS and HTML, you can do so much more.
Oh, and did I mention we are releasing this as Open Source? Yup. If you are a PHP programmer, feel free to dissect this, make it better, add features, create services…the possibilities are as open as you are!
Why do we need this?
Some of you may be asking “But Ed, why do we need to have an external web site when I have a perfectly good gallery on Zazzle.com?” The answer is simple. By driving your own traffic to your gallery on Zazzle, you will make more money! A potential customer that visits your Zazzle Store Builder site and clicks on a product thumbnail will be taken to that product in your gallery…with your associate referral ID tagging along for the ride! That means that anything that user buys from Zazzle during that session funnels a percentage to you. And there’s a good chance they’ll buy YOUR product since that’s how they got to Zazzle in the first place. Which means double whammy! Referral AND royalty!
And another cool thing is that customers who click over to your gallery from your Store Builder site will be treated to the zBar (a much smaller Zazzle header), putting YOUR brand where it matters most…right in front of the customer that YOU brought to Zazzle.
What are the requirements to set this up?
All you need is a web host that supports PHP, and about 10 minutes! We provide documentation (pdf: 3MB) to guide you during setup, and there is now a Tools Forum where you can ask questions or help others if you are wise in the ways of geekdom
How does it work?
So what’s the magic behind the Zazzle Store Builder? Simple. RSS feeds. Zazzle’s new gallery RSS architecture lent us the opportunity to build a pretty robust application that gives you, the store owner, the power to design your own store front just the way you want it.
Ok, where can I download this?
I can go on all night about the Zazzle Store Builder. But you should really just download it and try it yourself. It’s FREE, so you have nothing to lose…and so much to gain!
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