I have created a KBK Connect blog to show how the Zazzle Wishads plugin can be used like the Zazzle Store Builder to create a store using your Zazzle products. I called it KBK Swag. Feel free to browse and see the possibilities for your own Zazzle store that is separate from Zazzle.com!
The very first thing I did was scroll down to the Settings menu in the admin control panel and update each section with my preferences. Then I tried out several different themes. I decided to upgrade my account to Premium status, so I could use my own custom template. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great themes that come with the free account. I’m just super picky.
I always suggest fiddling with the “tricky” stuff before diving into the main pages of your website. In other words, get your store’s navigation determined before worrying about what to say on your home page.
Building Your Zazzle Store
I created a page called “Birth Announcements” and inserted the Zazzle Wishads code using the category ID for my Zazzle store’s “Birth Announcements” section. You will find the category ID by visiting a category in your store and copying the long number that appears in the browser address bar at the end of the URL.
Now that I have a main category page for my birth announcements, I created two sub-categories (pages nested as child pages with “Birth Announcements” set as their parent). I named these pages “Boys” and “Girls”, then added the Zazzle Wishads code to each one accordingly.
I’m pretty happy with how this is laying out over my site, but I want the store pages to be separate from my main navigation. This will keep things from being cluttered up and make the blog look more like an online store.
Shuffling the Menus
First, I need to create a custom menu (Appearance > Menus). Click the “Create Menu” button and enter a name for your menu. Be sure to activate the “Automatically add new top level pages” option. Then you will only have to manually add child pages to your custom menu.
Next, from the left column, select “Birth Announcements”, “Girls”, and “Boys” from the list of pages. They were out of order when added to the menu, so I just grabbed one with my mouse and dragged it to the correct position. I was able to make the ‘sub-categories’ indented by just moving them in a little in the same fashion.
My theme doesn’t support custom menus, but has a widget built in that allows me create a custom menu and slip it into the sidebar. So I hopped over to “Widgets” (still in the Appearance menu) and dragged the “Custom Menu” widget to my blog’s sidebar.
Disappearing Act
Now to clean things up a bit… From the Tools menu, select Page Links. I un-checked “Birth Announcements”, “Boys”, and “Girls” from the list. When I hit “Update Navigation” these items were removed from my site’s main navigation on the user side.
Tying Things Together
It is always good to make things look as streamlined as possible. Navigation is one of the biggest complaints website visitors typically have, so make sure you ‘tie’ your pages together to make it easy for people to get around. This will also have an impact on how search engines index your pages.
Go to my Girl Birth Announcements page. I didn’t want the redundancy of “Girl Birth Announcements” in the sidebar menu, but it looks good as the page title and ties it back to the main Birth Announcements category. Going back to the custom menu under Appearance, I clicked on the little arrow to the right of the child category’s name. Options appear where I changed the Navigation Label to “Girls” and saved the menu.
Less Blog, More Website
I wanted this blog to be more like an eCommerce website, so I made some changes that would make the default home page a static page instead of the usual list of recent blog posts. In the Settings menu, I went to the Reading options where I changed “Front page displays” to “A static page” and selected the “About” page that came with the blog.
More Customization
I added a “Bridal Boutique” category and want more control over how it looks. It also has a lot more sub-categories that I don’t want filling up the sidebar menu, so I omitted the child pages from the custom menu. Instead, I created text links from the “Bridal Boutique” page to the child pages. I can change these to graphic buttons later.
To keep the category tied together, I added a text link that reads “{ Bridal Boutique” at the top of each child page and linked it back to the parent page.
Sidebar Blog Panel
I am displaying three random products from my Zazzle store by inserting the Zazzle blog panel into the sidebar. I did this by grabbing the blog panel code here, then I went to the Appearance menu in my blog’s admin cp and selected “Widgets”. From there, I grabbed the “Widgetize Any HTML” widget and dragged it to the sidebar. I pasted the blog panel code into the widget’s HTML field and clicked the “Save” button.
Display Other Shop Keepers’ Products
I want to earn a 15% commission for referring shoppers to other stores around Zazzle. I made a new page, called “Team Coco”, and clicked on the Wishads button. I inserted the name of the store, which is at the end of it’s URL (www.zazzle.com/teamcoco). I was careful to spell it correctly, otherwise I would get an error. I picked the “Miscellaneous” category from the store and copied the product line number from it’s URL (http://www.zazzle.com/teamcoco/gifts?cg=196952135435232128). I pasted this number into the Product Line # field of the Wishads form. I set the options to show 99 products, the name of each product, and each product’s price.
Display Products From Zazzle’s Marketplace 
I want to feature a collection of products from the Zazzle marketplace based solely on search terms, but not from any designer in particular. I start by setting up the Wishads For Zazzle Search plugin in the Settings menu. It is important that I click the box at the top of the set-up form to enable to plugin (otherwise it won’t work), then I insert my Associate ID. I configure the remaining settings for how the products will appear in my site.
Next, I start a new page and name it “Holiday Cards”. I click on the ‘W2′ button in the “kitchen sink” just above the box where the content for the page goes. A small form appears where I indicate the following:
Search keywords: Christmas
Product Type: Cards
Products to Show: 9
Thumbnail Size: Medium
Show Title/Name: Yes
Show Description: No
Show Price: Yes
After that, I click “Insert” and publish the page.
