Creating a Product Template
Customers shopping on Zazzle are usually looking for that 'special something', and the ability to personalize products is, more often than not, a large part of that special experience.
A Zazzle template is a product that contains images and/or text that act as placeholders so that they can eventually be personalized by the customer. This is a great way to allow your customers to make a product personal to them, while removing the complexity of designing something from scratch.
Here are some of the most popular uses for templates:
Fill-in-the-blank Templates
“Keep Calm and _____”
“I ♥ _______”
Do these designs ring a bell? They are two of the easiest designs to personalize because they allow for endless possibilities.
This type of design allows you to make hundreds of products from a single basic design. The only thing that changes is a simple text or image field that the customer fills in with their own special message or photo.
You can easily create template designs like this that enable shoppers to fill in their own text. For example, creating a template with a design that says “I ♥ YOUR TEXT HERE” will clearly indicate to your customers that they can fill in their own text. On top of that, you can use that same template to create and publish your own variations of that same design in our marketplace ( I♥NY / I♥SF / I♥LA / etc.)
EZ Form Templates
Invitations and business cards are classic examples of templates where shoppers only need to add names and other basic text information. EZ Form templates make it easy for customers to quickly fill in all of their text to complete their purchase.
Photo Templates
Most times when you see picture frames at a store, they'll have stock photos of either incredibly happy people or a beautiful landscape. They don’t do this because they think you’ll really want a photo of people you’ve never met – but that it gives you an idea of what the frame will look like when it has a photo in it.
Use photo templates to show customers what their holiday greeting cards or wrapped canvases could look like as a finished product.
How Do I Make a Template?
When customers view templated products like business cards or invitations, all they have to do is fill out one or more simple fields to personalize the product.
If you have created products on Zazzle before, you're already most of the way there! 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 or text to a product. Click directly onto the design element to edit it. Once you’ve clicked on the design element, scroll down on the right-hand side and click the ‘More options’ button and then activate the ‘Make this a template object’ switch.
Once you’ve clicked on "Make this a template object," all the options available for defining this template image become available.
Now, to help the customer who is wanting to customize your design, change the ‘Product page label’ so they know exactly what field they are updating. This is the label the customer will see on the product page. It tells them the name of the field/s they can update. Descriptive label names corresponding to each field like ‘Your name’ (for text items) or ‘Your logo’ (for image items) are best. Tip: Using the same label across multiple objects will allow the customer to replace the label once and for the change to apply to all.
Note the other options you have once you’ve opened the ‘More options’ link…
Make object(s) permanent and always visible
This option allows customers to move or scale an object within a design, but it does not allow them to delete the object from the design.
URL parameter
If you're using the Zazzle API to pass data to this product from an external source, this is the parameter name the API will use. Avoid spaces or special characters. You can safely ignore this field if you are not working with the API.
Allow editing on product page
This option should be checked to enable EZ Templates on a product page. Unchecking this option is usually only done when working with the Zazzle API.
When you’re posting your product for sale, you’ll note they ask for this additional information:
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.
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