A Zazzle template is a product that contains images and/or text placeholders that are easily personalised by the buyer. 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.
Popular template products include greeting cards which allow the customer to upload their own picture, t-shirts for sports teams with a player's last name on the back, personalised wedding announcements, invitations, business cards and more.
Possible Themes
We've compiled a list of several thousand different niches and themes that you can design for. The list is too long to post here, so we've put it into an excel spreadsheet that you can download here.
Here are the two most popular types of templates:
- "Fill-in-the-blank" Templates
This type of design allows you to make hundreds or thousands of products from a single basic design. The only thing that changes is a simple text or image field that the customer can fill in. An example of this would be the widely known "I Heart YOUR TEXT HERE" t-shirt designs. The design remains the same except for the YOUR TEXT HERE area. You can get creative and find many ways to utilise this time-saving approach to product design.
See more examples:
I heart (https://www.zazzle.co.uk/i+heart+gifts)
World's best (https://www.zazzle.co.uk/worlds+best+gifts)
Eat Sleep (https://www.zazzle.co.uk/eat+sleep+gifts)
- EZ Form Templates
When customers view EZ form templates for products like business cards or invitations, all they have to do is fill out one or more simple fields to personalise the product. We call these product pages "EZ Templates" because it's easy for a buyer to fill out their information and click the Add to Cart button to buy the product.
Sample EZ Template Product Page
How do I make a template?
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, advanced tools will appear below your design area. Then click the ‘…More’ button.
Click on the 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 five 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 (for images and text)
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.
- URL parameter
If you are 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 personalisation of this product; otherwise keep it checked.
Congratulations! You have just created a template product!