Nov 27th Edit: I've got the Google link shortening service
working with it. You no longer need to copy and paste the really long url for
your new webpages, you can use the Google-shortened ones instead :) The button to shorten it appears right underneath the link you're given.
Now that I've finished adding features to the free version of this fantastic web-page (and more!) creation tool, I can now write it all up and, hopefully answer your questions before you even think of asking them!
But I'm getting ahead of myself... here's what one of the pages created with the free version looks like
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| A web page I made with SeeMyBest (free version) |
What is SeeMyBest?
SeeMyBest lets you (you are a Zazzler aren't you?) show the best products from your store on web pages that are refreshed whenever someone visits. And it has a search box that allows visitors to search just in your store, too, showing the results right there on your page!
See what 's possible: here's a page I created with SeeMyBest of my most
popular watches with an outer-space theme. (resize the window and watch the behaviour - made for mobile, too!)
Who is SeeMyBest aimed at?
Well, first and foremost it's aimed at Zazzlers who are artists first and techno-geeks last! I'd say that you're the sort of Zazzler artist it'll suit if:
- you probably don't have a website, and if you do, you don't have time nor energy nor technical know-how to easily put your products on it
- you have heard of referrer ids - and maybe even tracking codes - but don't have much confidence you're using them right, if at all!
- you would jump for joy at being able to share your lovingly crafted product designs in a way that looks great and is so easy for other folk to pin / share on Pinterest, Polyvore and Google+.
- you don't really promote / share much because of the time it takes to put together something attractive
- you maybe have a blog but it's such a fight and time-consuming to put products on it
- you'd love just one place from which you can do a big promotion push, with pin / share buttons right there, next to each product - easy-peasy for you and for your web page visitors!
(every navigation-click a visitor has to take to achieve something, drops the number who do by half, two thirds or more. Having it there in their face means 100% who want to can do!)
Well,
SeeMyBest sorts all that out just by you:
- choosing some options that decide what products will be shown on your page
- typing a tiny bit for your web page description
- providing your referrer id so it can be used in the links.
The absolute minimum you have to do, just to see what it looks like, is put in your storename - nothing more. It's so easy, why don't you give it a try
here.
Here are some screenshots and some notes on each. I'll use the
popular watches with an outer-space theme page I showed you above as an example. Here's t
he live configuration page, already filled in with the info for it.
All explained below:
Using the web page generator config form
Your page heading info
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| details for your page heading |
Fairly straight-forward. Watch out and don't use fancy symbols in this text. Single quotes ' and double quotes " are fine but 6 and 9 single quotes, 66 and 99 double quotes aren't. Dashes (-) are fine, en-dashes, em-dashes aren't. If a plain text editor gets confused, so will the internet!
Your details
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| entering your store and referrer details |
You can mix up the case on your storename (mine on Zazzle is actually hightonridley but I can use HightonRidley, too)
If you don't know your referrer id, you can look it up by following the link. As long as you're logged in to Zazzle, it'll take you to a page with it right there, in your face. You can copy and paste form there.
What to pull
You've got really flexible ways of deciding what products you want to show on your web page. For my example, I chose to show products from the watches department and my outer space category.
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| how you determine what shows on your web page |
Search term(s): You can use a single word or a phrase separated by spaces. You can see I didn't use one, I used a different method for getting what I wanted.
I could have used
nebula (because I know I have watches power-tagged with nebula) or I could have used
spiral galaxy.
Note that Zazzle treats phrases in a special way. To get 'pulled', that phrase has to appear as is in a power tag or title. The important thing is it doesn't match products that have either spiral OR galaxy, only those with the phrase
spiral galaxy.
How many to fetch: Just remember that different people have different connection speeds.
If you put in the maximum of 30 then those on slow connections will likely notice delays.
Category id: Get it from your browser's address bar. Go to your store's product admin area, navigate to the category you want to pull from and copy the long number you see after cg=
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| you can see the category id in your browser's address bar |
For my Outer Space category, the category id I need is 196007871454443931. Do you see it in the address bar in the screenshot above? If I went to my Fine Art category instead, I'd see a different category id there.
Department id: pretty much the same thing for departments. Here's the one I used
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| you can see the department id in your browser's address bar |
There's a link on the form to a partial list of Department Ids that's maintained on the Zazzle forum. It opens in a new window. I find the quickest way to find something is to use the browser's in-built page search (usually <ctrl>f on Windows and <cmd>f on Macs) and find what I'm looking for that way.
Tracking codes
You can see that because I'm pasting this here on my blog, I'm using tracking codes that tell me as much. What could happen is that a) someone visits here, looks at one of my pages and then pins one of my products on Pinterest and b) the pin gets re-pinned over and over.
Then one day I'm looking in my Referral History report (see below) and see TC: razadnopntrst then I'll know that it came about through this blog post.
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each place where the products on your page can be shared has its own tracking code
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A tracking code tells you which link was clicked that resulted in you making a sale. It shows up in your Referral History report on the line item that details the sale. You can use letters, numbers, and dashes. It looks like this:
I know from this that it was a link on my coordinated wedding blog that was used to buy something that gave me the referral commission. All links I place there use that tracking code.
Other pinning / sharing details
I mentioned above about the image size. This is the size that will be used when a product is shared. The image size used on the sharing page is set to a comfortable 275px but if someone pins it on Pinterest, shares on Facebook or wherever, then it'll use the size you specify here.
You can use a different colour for your product image background (000000 to FFFFFF) or (for nearly all Zazzle products) a transparent background version of each product image. You can use these type of images by giving a colour of 0x00000000, which gives a fully transparent background. If you use 0x88000000 you'll get 50% transparency and 0x44000000 gives 75% while with 0xCC000000 you'll get 25% transparency.
Saving your page setup
When you click the
build web page button, all your choices are used and the page is built. You see a preview of it after the form.
You're also given two links you can bookmark. One is so you can always return to this form with the details you've used already filled in. And the other is to your newly created page.
Nov 27th Edit: A button will appear under the link that lets you shorten your new web page link using Google's link-shortening service.
A note about your page: The html used for the page uses a 'fluid' design. This means that it adjusts to suit the size of the device it's being displayed on and the width of the browser, if you're using one.
Go on, visit your page and make the browser window narrow and wider to see the effect in play. If you've got a phone or tablet, try on them too.
You also get another button:
Show pastable code for your 'card'...
Sharing Card
This is what you see when you click the button:
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| this is a 'sharing card' and is what you get when you paste the code somewhere suitable |
BBCode: this is the special code used on the Zazzle forum (and many others like it). When you create a new topic or reply to an existing one, you can paste the bbcode for your sharing card right into your reply (no fancy border, I'm afraid). That's all you need to do. Really simple.
And if someone clicks it, then they'll be taken to your new web page.
html: paste this anywhere that lets you paste html. This could be on a Wordpress blog, a Blogger blog, Wix, Weebly and in Mailchimp mailings, to name a few.
And if you want more than one of them in the same place, you need to paste the html for them, one after the other and then enclose them in the following div.
That way they'll behave 'fluidly' wherever you paste them.
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| An html div for when you want to use more than one sharing card and get fluid behaviour |
So that's the end of the detailed walk-through of all the options. There's a
topic on the New to Zazzle forum where it's discussed and questions get asked and answered. I'm happy to do the same here in the comments and would love to see what you create!
So what do I get out of this?
Kudos :) Also...
There is a Zazzle banner on the webpages SeeMyBest creates and its link includes my referral id (and tracking code). This is the only place, in case you were wondering.
All other product links use yours.
At the bottom of each page is a Google ad that can generate revenue for me. Of course many peeps use ad blocker to stop them being shown.
Finally, I ask that if you regularly use SeeMyBest then please donate to my tips jar. If you do, I'll give you access to the Pro version that does so much more...
