Creating a Product Template

Customers shopping on Zazzle are usually looking for that special something, and the ability to personalize products are, 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 fill in with their own special message.

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?

With ‘Advanced Tools’ enabled, click on the checkbox labeled ‘Make this a template object.’ Checking this 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 the following options:

Lock object(s)

Checking this option will disable the customer from being able to change, delete, resize, rotate or move your object.

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.

Product page label

This is the label the customer will see on the product page. It tells the customer 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.

Inner fit/fill mode 

If your template allows your customers to add their own image, this setting determines how their image replaces yours. The options are none, fit, or fill.

• None - the buyer's image simply replaces your placeholder image, and may be larger or smaller than the placeholder.
• Fit - the buyer's image will be resized to fit inside of your placeholder image's dimensions. This will ensure that their image is not cropped.
• Fill - the buyer's image will be resized to fill the entire dimensions of your placeholder image. If the buyer's image is wider or taller than your placeholder, this may result in zooming and cropping of the buyer's image.

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.

◀ PREVIOUS 

Tips For Creating Great Products