Hello again! Now that you know how to navigate, how to look for specific store sections and product lines, and know how to purchase your desired product, we will end this series with a discussion on product selection and customization. By the end of this discussion, you will know everything you need to know about the Zazzle shopping experience. (There is plenty more that could be discussed about the Zazzle community. We will leave that for other posts.)
First, did you know that you don’t have to buy your favorite design on the shirt shown? You can change the shirt selection. The same holds true for mugs and other products as well, even dog shirts.
Whenever you click on a product, you will see a ‘Customize it’ button under the product description. Here is an example using our Bookworm in Training design.
When you click ‘Customize it’, the right section changes from a product description to a customization section.
Click on the Shirt Options tab.
The pane changes again! You can now select from a number of shirt styles and fabrics. Maybe you want to buy it for a child or grandchild who won’t yet fit into a t-shirt. You can select the Baby tab to see the baby product offerings, and click on the product you would like. At that time, the pic on the left changes to match the product you selected.
You can also alter the size and location of the design. By clicking on the ‘Customize it’ tab in the right pane, you can use the customization tools to alter the product.
Say you wanted to shrink the image three sizes and turn it upside down. You would do so by clicking the left-sided ‘resize’ button – the one with the minus sign in the magnifying glass – three times, then clicking either of the ‘rotate’ buttons twice. Here is the result:
Why you’d want to do that, we do not know. But you can! See, hope and change are in the air.
If you want to add an image from your computer to the shirt, you could do that, too. Click the ‘Add Images’ button to access an image selector window.
Click the ‘My Computer’ button, then the ‘Select Images to Upload’ button, as identified below:
Your computer will open a window that lets you select a picture from wherever you keep it on your computer. After selecting the picture, click ‘Open’ on that window. The pic is automatically placed in the center of the shirt. After moving it up, resizing it to a smaller size, and moving down the original design, the shirt now looks like this:
If you want to get really crazy, you could add text, too. Click the ‘Add Text’ button, and add your text in the text box:
Then click OK. The text is automatically placed at the bottom of the shirt design area. After moving it to the top right using the Move tool, then moving it slightly left, the shirt looks like this:
Note also that text manipulation tools are displayed in the design panel. You can change the font, size and color of your text.
You can fiddle and dabble as much as you like! And if you want to start over at any point in time, you can click the Revert link, and Zazzle wipes away all your customizations.
Personalized Designs
Blurt Shirts is now offering personalized designs, such as our “Two Thumbs Up” design:
When you click on this product to get a closer look, a text box is already presented to you, so you can type your personal message.
After you enter your text, you can further customize the text and design if permitted for this design. If not, you can click, ‘Ok, finished personalizing’.
And when you are all done, click on the ‘Add to cart’ button to place your personalized, customized merchandise in the shopping cart.
If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us at inquiry@blurt-shirts.com, and we would be happy to respond to your questions.
Thank you for visiting and shopping at Blurt Shirts.
Welcome back! You now know how to read the main shop page and how to actually buy a product. Let’s talk a little about navigating the shop, focusing on the side panel. It contains everything you need to navigate store sections and specific product lines. Here is an abbreviated version of the navigation panel.
First, a few quick pointers:
If you ever get lost and want to start from the beginning, you can click on the “Home” link in the side panel. You will be taken back to the Blurt Shirt Store’s home page.
The “Featured Product Lines” section provides information on the designs currently being promoted by Blurt Shirts. Of course, you can shop in any sections of the store; these are simply the sections where Blurt Shirts has added new designs or believes the designs are politically relevant.
The “Product Lines” section presents all Blurt Shirts product lines in alphabetical order. Note that some sections also have sub-sections. By clicking on the section, the sub-section categories will then be displayed.
The “Product Types” section presents all products available for purchase at Blurt Shirts. If you would like to purchase a Blurt Shirts design on a product that is not offered, e-mail us at inquiry@blurt-shirts.com so we can make the product available for you.
Now, for the fun stuff. Zazzle itself does not dictate how sections are set up by each shop keeper. All Zazzle does is presents designs and products in the order they are created by the shop keeper, with the most recently created designs presented first. When you are shopping for the first time, things can look a bit unwieldy, especially if the shop keeper has not realized this yet.
The Blurt Shirts store has been re-structured twice. The current structure should remain as is for a while. It is easy to use and takes full advantage of the side panel features. Let’s say you want to shop for a Revolution 2010 t-shirt. When you click on the Revolution 2010 section in the side panel, you will be introduced to all the latest designs.
In this sample, you see several products for the “Congress is Toxic” design. None of them are t-shirts, though. To see the t-shirts available in the Revolution 2010 line, you can now click the t-shirts link in the “Narrow by Product” section of the side panel. When you do so, you will see that only t-shirts are displayed, with the most recently created t-shirts displayed first:
If you want to refine your results further, you can use the Search panel to search for a specific design. Say you wanted to find the shirt that talked about 535 congressmen. You could type 535 in the search box:
Then click ‘go’.
If the result set was still too large, you could then click on a specific product in the “Narrow by Product” section to further limit the number of results.
Navigation is really simple once you understand how to use the Zazzle side panel.If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us at inquiry@blurt-shirts.com.
Next time, we will talk about product selection and customization.
Hello everyone. Here we are, with session #2 on how to shop at Zazzle.com, and there is already a change in plans. Navigating will wait; we figure you are here to purchase, so the next lesson will be the basics of using the shopping cart and making a purchase. Here goes….
As you move your cursor over a design, and hold it there for a second, you will notice that the design is magnified, allowing you to scroll around the design to see it in greater detail. This is handy for when image text is too small to read off the basic image. Here is an example, using a Rece$$ion Blues mouse pad:
To learn more about a product, you can click on the image or on the link below the image. You are sent to a page dedicated just to that product. Here is the top half of the screen, which has all your relevant purchasing details:
And here is the bottom half, which is where you can leave comments about this design, or link to other similar designs from Blurt Shirts:
But now, back to the top half. For the given product, a Rece$$ion Blues mouse pad, you can see two buttons next to the product price on the right hand side of the page. The first button is the Add to Cart button, the second is the Customize button, which will be explained in another session.
After you select the quantity you want to purchase, click Add to Cart. When you do, Zazzle brings you to the following page:
If you were given a promotion code for discounts, you would enter it in the space next to the Redeem button, then click on Redeem. If you want to change your quantity, you can enter a new quantity in the Qty column. And, if you don’t want this item in your shopping cart any more, you can remove it by clicking the remove link.
Once you are certain you want to purchase this item, click the Proceed to Checkout button. If you are a new Zazzle customer, you will be asked to register on Zazzle. See, they need some basic information so they can track your order and notify you of product creation and delivery. Hence, here is the registration page:
If you already a registered user, you can use the Returning Members section on the right to log into your account. If you are not registered, you will need to fill in the section on the left. You do need to accept Zazzle’s user agreement (second check box), but you do not need to receive occasional updates from Zazzle (first check box). Once registered, click Submit. At this time, you will enter data on several screens:
Shipping address
Payment
Billing address
After filling in your billing address, you are brought to this screen:
You can review your order, billing and shipping addresses, and the projected order amount. If you are comfortable with your purchase, you can click the Place Order Now button. At that time, you will receive a confirmation page for your order and an e-mail indicating you placed an order. You can also print a receipt for your order.
If you change your mind about the purchase after placing your order, you can cancel it. But, after purchasing our own merchandise and having walked through the entire customer purchasing experience ourselves, we know that you will be happy with the quality of product and service provided by Zazzle.
So, that’s it for lesson #2. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at inquiry@blurt-shirts.com.
When you choose to shop from the Blurt Shirts Store, you will notice that the store is powered by Zazzle, a powerful player in the custom merchandise market. Within the Zazzle framework, there are many awesome things you can do to tailor your shopping and purchasing experience.
You may have shopped at a Zazzle store in the past, or you encounter your first Zazzle experience while shopping for Blurt Shirts merchandise. Whether you are an old pro or a beginner, we hope that our short series on how to navigate and shop at Zazzle will be helpful to you.
If you have any questions, feel free to send an e-mail at inquiry@blurt-shirts.com.
Thank you for shopping at Blurt Shirts!
Shopping at Zazzle - tip #1 - the Main Page
Getting around the Blurt Shirts store is a piece of cake, once you know the layout of the site. No matter what section of the store you review, the site navigation remains the same. Since everyone starts at the store front, we will start there, too.
When you click on the Blurt Shirts Store link, you are routed to the main page, a.k.a. the store front. The Blurt Shirts store front is comprised of four different components:
Top Picks - this section rotates the view of three top Blurt Shirts designs, and also introduces you to the Blurt Shirts store.
Featured Picks - this section identifies the twelve products Blurt Shirts chooses to feature until, well, untill they choose to feature different products.
Comment Wall - fellow Zazzle shopkeepers and store fans can comment on site layout, designs or any other general commentary.
Navigation Panel - last, but ultimately most important, is the navigation panel. The following image shows an abbreviated version of the panel.
Most of your shopping experience will be driven from the Navigation Panel and from clicking directly on product images and product links.
In the next post, we will cover the Navigation Panel in detail, and delve into the world of store sections.
Under the category of "what took us so long?", Blurt Shirts finally expanded their product lines to include, well, everything under the sun. As of August 8, practically all designs are now available on most of the product types available on Zazzle.com.
Shirts - now available on stickers, magnets, aprons, dog shirts, and mouse pads.
Shirts and Bumper stickers - selected designs are now also available on mugs.
Going forward, each new design published by Blurt Shirts will be included on these products, offering you a better shopping experience. We hope you enjoy the additional purchasing choices being made available.
Blurt Shirts added five affiliates to its Faves today. Browse around the Faves-Politics and Faves-Humor pages to see the new additions. Not only do we like designing shirts, we also appreciate the art and talents of other store owners.
