Creator Playbook // Introducing Collection Types

Collections have been supercharged!

Brace yourselves for an exhilarating new chapter! We’ve made a major upgrade to your collection experience, packed with advanced tools and features designed to catapult your products and designs into the spotlight.

Throughout this guide we are thrilled to showcase examples of the experience from Phrosne Ras Design. All examples, unless otherwise indicated, belong to her.



Revolutionize Your Earnings

Amplify the Impact of your Collections.

Get ready to unleash your earning potential like never before! We're turning up the excitement and putting the spotlight on YOU with our upgraded Collections feature. It's time for your products and designs to take center stage and watch your earnings grow.

Imagine your collections gaining enhanced visibility in the Zazzle ecosystem, connecting your products with potential customers. But that's not all! We want to be able to cross-sell more of your products for customers who may have purchased already from a collection. Cha-ching!

Soon, your collections will be everywhere – from product pages to onsite search to emails to offsite ads and more. We're talking full-on exposure, reaching a wider customer base than ever before.

The power is in your hands! Seize this opportunity to leverage the functionality of collections and ensure your products and designs shine in the marketplace.

Mastering Collections: Tips for success

• Craft a catchy collection name. Keep it concise and straightforward, while incorporating relevant keywords that reflect the theme and products. For instance, go for something like "Three-Rex Dinosaur Birthday Suite."
• Unlock customization possibilities. Elevate your products to the next level by providing customizable designs. Enable customers to add personalized names or other unique elements, ensuring items are truly one-of-a-kind.
• Embrace complementary designs. Create cohesive designs that share similar elements and aesthetics, while maintaining their distinctiveness. Seamlessly transfer your designs and associated metadata using the convenient 'design transfer feature' available on every product page. Modify and update your designs using the design tool, allowing you to easily add or remove text, design elements, and more to perfectly align with your new product vision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to design "required" products to make collections visible? Yes, based on customer purchasing trends for given “collection types” we require certain products as mandatory to help elevate the customer experience. Note, recommended and bonus products are optional, but we highly recommend designing these. Some Collections may have a minimum number of products that need to be met in order for channels to be enabled.

What if my collection type does not fall into one of the set collection types and categories? We have created the various Collection Types to target the most popular Collections we have seen being purchased by customers, however if you feel none of these suit your Collection, then please choose “Other”. Our development of this new experience isn’t over yet, so we could add an option that suits your category in the future.

Is there a limit on a number of collections I can build? Yes, the system currently has a limit of 2000 collections. We believe that is an appropriate max number of collections with an eye to quality, and hopefully you do too!

What are preferred collections? For products that are part of multiple collections, you have the flexibility to designate one of them as your "Preferred Collection." This feature empowers you to specify the primary collection that represents the product across various onsite channels.

For example, when visiting the product page for a “event suite” collection, we will always show the “Preferred Collection” - if it belongs to more than one.

Moreover, this setting determines the collection to which the product is linked in search results. You can access this setting in the Zazzle Marketplace Channel.

If you notice an orange icon on the management page of your collection, it indicates that the product currently belongs to a different preferred collection. To modify this, simply click on the option menu and select "Make Preferred Collection." By default, the first cross-sell collection to which you add a product becomes its preferred collection.

What are channels? You can now choose where and how your collections are displayed - whether it’s exclusively on your store or across all channels. Our ultimate goal remains the same: to showcase your collections at every stage of the customer journey, maximizing your potential earnings.

• Zazzle Marketplace - Collections will be shown through onsite customer experiences, such as search pages, Add to cart page, etc.
• Zazzle Email - Emails will be sent to customers featuring your collections. Note, emails are only offered for Cross-sell/Event Type collections for now.
• Your Stores - Collections will be viewable within the store that it was built in.

How do I add bonus items to a collection? Bonus items are already part of the collection, but are considered “bonus”. If you have a slot that is empty and would like to design for, click on the slot

Do I have to replace my current banner? No, these were all migrated over from your previous media to the new Collection experience. For reference, the minimum banner size is 1140 px by 315 px.

How should I add a cover photo to a collection and how will it be used? Use the ‘Media’ section in the Collection management screen to add all types of media to your specific collection, such as a banner image and a Cover Photo. Our customers enjoy seeing a creative mix of products in the cover photo to get a feel of what’s in the collection. Collection Cover photos will be showcased on the product pages and throughout the customer journey.

Which collection types get emails sent to customers? The post purchase email channel has only been added to valid cross-sell collections for now. We do have plans to bring email support to other collection types for additional use cases in upcoming updates.

What do I do if my collection was classified incorrectly? Easy-peasy. Simply go to edit your Collection and choose the most appropriate “Event or Occasion” Category and Collection “type”.

What is Custom-Grouped and Custom-Ungrouped? By default, all collections have been migrated to the “recommended” product sort based on customer purchasing trends and we highly suggest keeping this setting as is. Custom-grouped will allow you to move your products within a collection while also showcasing Zazzle’s recommended products. Custom-ungrouped allows you to move your products within a collection with removing Zazzle’s recommended products above outside of the collection.

Is there some penalty such as lack of promotion and position in the marketplace for not adding ALL items recommended? No, you will not be penalized for not adding all items recommended, however we suggest adding the recommended products as it is based on customer purchasing data. In addition, offering more products increases your chances to earn more!

Will you be adding other categories apart from events and occasions? Yes, we will be adding more categories as we start to see trends/themes from Creators choosing “Other”.

What is going to change from the customer viewpoint? When will this roll out in the marketplace? Collections will be more prominently featured throughout the customer experience: Product page, checkout, search pages, etc. Although you may not see in your experience today, we plan to do lots of testing to measure the impact before releasing to all users.

What is the limit in the number of items in a collection? 300 products

I have a number of collections that were created in order to submit products for the Zazzle Select program. I'm wondering if it's OK to delete those? Yes, any collection that was created for Select can be deleted

What should I be doing with my collections to benefit from this new feature? Creators should make sure they are hitting the minimum required products in a collection, designing recommended and bonus products, ensuring you have a cover photo showcasing a range of products within the collection, and enabling all Zazzle “channels” if applicable.

Can I showcase a collection in more than one store? Can I disable showcasing it in a store that the collection was created in? You’re able to showcase a collection in more than one store by adjusting the Collection Channels “Your Store” setting. The collection the store was created in will always need to be visible and cannot be adjusted.

Will we be penalized if we categorize a collection wrong? You will not be penalized if you categorize a collection wrong, however, there may be some settings and channels you will not be able to access depending on what Collection Type you choose. If you have any questions about a collection category, please reach out to the Creator Team at Zazzle.

Why are some of my collections only showing two collection channel options? At this time, we have Zazzle emails only enabled for Cross-sell/event Collections.

If someone has my products in a collection of theirs (Affiliate), will their collection show up on my product page? No, only the collection owned by the same owner of the product will show on the product page.

How do I re-order products in my collection? Easy, just click, drag and drop your item to its preferred position by using the filtering option on the right next to “add products” (It may take up to 24 hours to index through the site). We suggest using the “recommended sort feature” that orders your products based on customer purchasing trends.

How do I go to the product page of a product that is part of my collection? When you hover over the product image, you will see a 3-dot sub menu appear. Click this and select the “view product page” option.

Are Cover Photos and banners mandatory for collections? No, cover photos and banners are not mandatory, but we highly suggest having a cover photo showcasing multiple products within the collection and a banner as the collection will be showcased on the product page and also throughout other customer experiences.

Were all my Collections migrated over to a specific Collection Type? No, not all collections could be auto migrated as some we could not identify the collection moment and intent. We advise you to check that each migrated collection has been set correctly. In addition, for collections that were not auto migrated, please assign the proper collection type based on your intent.