Tips, time savers, tricks & resources for Cafepress Premium Shopkeepers
Archive for January, 2007
January 25, 2007 at 11:05 pm · Filed under CafePress Tips
“Should I organize my shop by design or product type?”
It’s a question I have seen asked on the boards countless times over the years. In my opinion, it is best to organize your shop by design rather than product type (ie. apparel, gifts, housewares etc.).
The first reason for this opinion is one of the most important things to remember when managing a CP shop: More than anything, you are selling your designs. Yes, you customer may be looking for a t-shirt or gift, but more often than not, the first thing they care about is the text or image on the product.
When we first opened Lekker Politics, we made section thumbnails using product images. This was before we had the ability to use images from our image basket, and we were still in the state of mind that we were selling products, not designs. After the election, we were contacted by CP about ways to improve our shop navigation and sales conversions. One thing they had found was that they got higher conversions from shops which used a design image as a section thumbnail rather than a product image. CP later used this info to create the marketplace we now know and love (or hate - depends on the day). After changing over our thumbnails, we have found this to be true as well. It just makes sense - you can give your customers a preview of the design that’s larger than it is on most products, perhaps reducing the amount of clicks a customer has to make to preview the design. If your image includes smaller text, the larger design thumbnails allow customers to read more than if they are just looking at the image on a shirt. I know that I tend to pass over shops if I find that I have to click on every product to see what the design looks like or says.
Also, Cafepress already has a built in function to browse designs by product. You can find the product drop down code in the CP Learning Center.
Another reason why we believe shops should organize by design is that it makes adding new products much easier. Also, sections are designed with defaults that are best used when a section contains one design on multiple products. You can add the same name prefix & description to each product in the section in just a few steps.
I have found that many affiliates prefer shops organized by design as well. When using tools such as CPShop, affiliates can easily pull entire sections into their shop. I do this in Lekker Bride. There are a lot of designs I would love to feature, but the SK either has the design scattered in sections across their shop, or has nested sub sections with products sectioned off by type. Continuity is very important to me and many other designers, so designs with this kind of setup are not given the exposure in larger shops like Lekker Bride.
Last but not least, when you organize by design, it makes offering a wide range of products a snap. We firmly believe that designs should be offered on the widest range of products possible. We choose to put a little more time and create multiple images to take advantage of the bleeds when available & cropping/sizing depending on the product range. However, this leads to loooooong pages - hopefully we will see a way to paginate CP hosted stores soon. This is an available feature if you use CPShop to host your shop on your own domain.
Of Course, this isn’t always the answer. If you only offer an image on one product/product range, it usually makes more sense to organize by product. For example, we have sections for thank you cards, holiday cards and journals at Lekker Designs. If we later decide to re-work these designs for other products, we can move the existing products to a new design section.
January 24, 2007 at 11:22 pm · Filed under CafePress Tips
Most women have a thing for shoes. I have a thing for fonts. Well, fonts and shoes. : )
With close to 2,858 fonts installed, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of them all and find exactly what I am looking for. The fontBROWSER from STC is a great flash ap that lets you preview your installed fonts. You can select any preview text you would like, up to 99 pixels high. They don’t render as well as in Photoshop, but it’s great tool to help you find just the right one.
You could install all of your fonts, but that can make your computer chug, and it’s a lot to manage. That’s where FontExplorer X comes in handy. Now available for Windows and Mac and it’s FREE! It’s a lot like iTunes - you can make smart sets of fonts, activate and deactivate individual fonts or entire sets & preview your fonts using any text. There are also plugins available that allow you to activate fonts when you open a file in Adobe programs without restarting. I love this program.
January 19, 2007 at 6:53 am · Filed under CafePress Tips
I hate busy work. In November, I went through my entire image basket (over 3500 images at the time) and got my tagging in order and my sections organized. I had been putting it off for a while, because I hate “busy work”. Luckily, this was about the same time I decided to re-design my site, so I had a few other tasks to complete in each section.
- Consistent section naming conventions. I am going to eventually have CP Shop installations for all of the Lekker Shops. In order for the sections to sort the way I want them to, I needed to make sure section names were consistent.
- Update product descriptions. It’s one of the 7 habits. I just needed to go in and freshen them up and make sure every item had one.
- Update product names. Another of the 7 habits. In anticipation of moving over to CPShop based sites in the future, we needed to get things named properly to sort the way we wanted and keep like designs together, if possible.
- Update/add tags. We had a lot of images that were uploaded in the olden days when there wasn’t a marketplace or image tags.
- Organize image basket. Taking a cue from Success with Cafepress.com, I created a system allowing me to find images and keep them organized.
- Update thumbnails. I used to have thumbnails that were branded. But, that was just one more step I had to take to get a design stocked. We now use an image from the image basket. Easy Peasy.
- Set all section defaults. pricing, names, descriptions & images.
So, how did I make it to the end of the tunnel without going (more) crazy? Copy and pasting is a pain. But one little tool can make it a lot easier. You’ll need to get the Yahoo! Widget Engine (Windows or Mac), and then download the Scribbler 3.0 widget. it allows you to save multiple snippets to paste later. - basically an interactive clipboard, like they have in MS Office. What I would do is set everything up in the section info tab - names, descriptions, thumbnails, etc. I could then copy and paste the description from that tab, go to the contents tab and make the changes with the bulk change drop down. It saves a step, and it’s a lot easier than using a text editor to keep all of my copies, which is what I used to do. It would also come in very handy when I was tagging. I use this little guy every single day. They have a lot of other widgets too - email tracking, clocks, system tools…
January 18, 2007 at 10:26 am · Filed under Randomness
I’ve changed the layout of the site. In doing so, I added an image to the header. My husband took this picture last April in Amsterdam. I recently came across some real cool prints of the Netherlands from the late 1800’s which I made into a calendar and gifts. The image for January is almost the exact same photo, over a hundred years later. Not too coincidental, as there are only so many canals in Amsterdam, I just thought it was funny how I was inspired twice by the same exact view.
January 18, 2007 at 10:13 am · Filed under CafePress Tips
Or: If my time as a Cafepress Shopkeeper were a game of Jeopardy, the categories would be*…
More than just a White T-Shirt: Product Names
Product names are imperative to higher search engine ranking - every product in your shop should have a product name prefix added to the default name. For example, if your Default Product Name is “Purple Monkey” and you add a “Dark T-Shirt”, “Mug”, and “Kids Sweatshirt” these items will be named “Purple Monkey Dark T-Shirt”, “Purple Monkey Mug”, and “Purple Monkey Kids Sweatshirt”. These names also make it easier for you to tell what you have sold, as they are used in sales e-mails and reports. You want the product name to be descriptive of the design and if relevant, with keywords people would use to search for your products. Product names can be changed to existing products by using the section’s bulk change drop down. New products will use the name as specified on the Section Info tab.
Google Food: Product Descriptions
Every product stocked in your shop should also include a product description. This is a great place to get in a few more of those keywords people would use to search on your shop. Google (and other search engines) love content to eat up and spit out as results. I try to describe the design as if it can’t be seen. If it’s too complex, or I just get a case of writer’s block, I try to at least convey the style. I have found that if you have designs with a distressed or vintage finish, it is a good thing to let people know. Early on, CP contacted me to make sure I wanted it that way, as the customer thought it was a printing error. Product descriptions can be changed to existing products by using the section’s bulk change drop down. New products will use the description as specified on the Section Info tab.
Tag! You’re It!
Image tags that you specify when you upload a new image to CP are only used only for searches within the CP system (Marketplace, Topic Ads, misc. 3rd party tools). They can’t be seen by any other search engine. Tags should be used to describe the image, not other offerings in your shop. You should use relevant tags that pertain to the specific design. I can’t stress this enough. For example: In Lekker Designs, I have a variety of categories. When I upload a new Geek image, I am not going to tag it “Alice in Wonderland”, even though I offer those as well. If someone searches “Alice in Wonderland” - they want to see “Alice in Wonderland” designs. I do use a few “persistent tags” unique to the Lekker Shops. These are for my third party search service as well as for Affiliates to use in Topic Ads or other third party stools. All of my images are given a tag of the Lekker brand & shop that they are in.
Catch ya on the flip with more lekker tips… Read the rest of this entry »
January 16, 2007 at 6:19 am · Filed under CafePress Tips
I always carry around a journal so I can jot down design or shop ideas & sketch whenever the mood strikes. I think it’s a good habit to get in, because often inspiration would strike and I would forget later on when I opened Photoshop. Now, I just look through my notes to find what I’d like to do for the day.
I used to keep all my notes on paper, but when I got my laptop last month, I started looking around for something that would help me get organized, better manage my time and keep track of projects. I am the type of person that is always working on at least a dozen things at once, and really needed to get my act together. In fact, it’s my resolution for the Lekker Shops this year.
I had used ACT in the past for a similar situation, but it is not available for a Mac. I found Daylite and haven’t looked back. You can create project pipelines to track the progress of projects. I have set up pipelines and activity sets that lay out all of the steps of design development, from concept to stocking. I can easily see where I left off on something, even if I haven’t touched it in a while. I have areas to input description copy I have finalized and tags that have come to mind. I also use it to keep track of when my Google Base uploads expire, CP chats, etc. Now when I get a new idea for a design, I just open a new project in Daylite. I can categorize it to the specific shop, and make smart lists that pull all projects by shop. I really like having everything in one place.
Daylite offers a free 30 day trial, which for me is almost over. I will be purchasing a full version, because I find that it really does help keep my stuff in line.
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