Tweak to open related pages from Z & S6 Nifty CPanels

Sometimes, while working on where to source the products for a promotion session, it can be helpful to look at official store or collection pages.

This tweak gives you a button to do just that.

If you’re using a collection as a source, the button opens the official collection page. From there you can get to the artist’s store(s).

If you’re using a store as the source, the button changes to let you open that store’s official collections page:

Enjoy! 😎

Encourage promotion help from friends, family and faithful followers

Since this post was published, there have been some updates. We’ve now re-written it as a tutorial. See it here

We’ve done something for you that helps to get your friends, family and faithful followers to pin your designs on their Pinterest. A bit of virality!

The specially worded appeal to them is all done in the text that accompanies the image when it’s shared. It’s not so easy to explain, so here’s what one looks like when tweeted:

How could any of them refuse that? Of course, you’d say something different than I did, something aimed at friends, family or faithful followers.

How you get yours

Use the Nifty Promo Control Panel as usual to set up the products to use. When you’re ready….

In Step 2, choose the individual product page sharer:

the individual product pinner page opens….

then just select the browser’s address bar contents and copy it. It’s a hugely long line of gibberish – but important gibberish, nonetheless!

You’re now ready to put it into

  • a tweet or a reply to one
  • a Fb status update or a reply
  • as the url to use for a new pin on Pinterest

However you choose to share, you’ll get a lovely-looking end result with text designed to appeal to those who support indy artists, as well as friends, family etc.

Here’s what it looks like when pasted into a status update on Facebook:

The text “Help an indie artist by using this Speed-Pinner” is designed to encourage in a non-pushy way.

The text underneath is derived from the storeid and any search terms used, followed by “designs – or tap/click any to buy from Zazzle and help even more!”. It’s designed both to include appropriate detail and, again, make an appeal to the viewer’s better nature. You can see how much space is reserved for that text and where it gets cut off. That’s Fb for you 😉

Improved look for embedded Nifty product grids

We’ve been carrying on with improving the look and feel of the things you can share with Nifty.

Our latest efforts have been on the product grid when it’s embedded on your website or blog post. We’ve done it for both Zazzle and Society6 product grids.

Here’s the new look as generated by the button on the full size sharer page:

We think you’ll like it and, what’s more, when it’s shared with the embedded buttons, the share looks and reads real cool when tweeted, pinned on Pinterest or shared on Facebook.

Here’s a Society6 embedded product grid

There is an anomaly in the way Society6 works when pulling from other than the first page. (We hope to be able to fix this sometime soon-ish.)

It’s this: for non-collections, S6, always has 42 items on a page, no matter how many you request to be included.

So, if you’re showing 9 and the second page gets selected, the first 9 from the second page of 42 will be shown and not the 10th through 18th from the first page. Not at all what you’d expect. Ah well…

Improved Society6 Slideshow for embedding in your website or blog

We’ve done the same for the Society6 slideshow sharer as we did for the Zazzle one. That is, we’ve made it much more compact so it looks really good in posts and on web pages.

Here’s an example of a Society6 one:

It looks cool, yes?

There’s also something going on”behind the scenes” you might like to know about.

To make sure your post looks good when shared, a hidden image is included. It’s the first from the slideshow and gets used when sharing your post. If you want your own image used, place it in the post higher up than the slideshow.