This is the second in a line of daily outages and maintenances within just a couple weeks:
Hello Shopkeepers,
We will be performing system maintenance over a few nights starting Sunday evening.
Sunday, November 11th - Maintenance will begin at 11 pm Pacific Standard Time, and is scheduled to last approximately 1 hour. During this time the CafePress website will not be available.
Monday, November 12th - Maintenance will begin at 11 pm Pacific Standard Time, and is scheduled to last approximately 2 hours. During this time the CafePress website may not be available.
Tuesday, November 13th - Maintenance will begin at 11 pm Pacific Standard Time, and is scheduled to last approximately 3 hours. During this time the CafePress website will not be available.
If any of the above schedule changes we will revise and update this page
We apologize in advance for an inconvenience.
From AngCP:
We have a Free Shipping Promotion coming up. Here are the details:
Dates: November 17-21, 2007
Offer: Free shipping with minimum purchase of $75*
Coupon Code: FREESHIP75
Promotional banners will be available in your member account once the sale starts.
Happy selling!
*Free Economy or Standard shipping for purchases of $75. or more, excluding shipping charges and applicable sales tax. Delivery address must be within the United States. All orders will be Economy shipping unless, the order is not eligible for Economy shipping (e.g., order exceeds Economy weight restrictions). Coupon code must be entered at check out. Promotion starts on November 17, 2007, at 12:00 a.m. (PST) and ends on November 21, 2007, at 11:59 p.m. (PST). See Shipping Information for additional shipping options. Cannot be combined with any other offers, discounts or coupons.
Cafepress FINALLY has decided to actually help shopkeepers out by promoting the shopkeepers store (which is the reason why Cafepress is making tons of money) on their receipts to allow people who buy items find more items they might like. You can read about Cafepress’s adddition of the shop & product URL to the order slip in this announcement:
True or False - I’m always impressed with the packaging I receive when I order stuff online.Based on our experience and a little research we think you probably answered false.
We think most online retailers could use some package presentation improvements; CafePress included. We’ve also seen that shoppers feel better about the stuff they buy online when it’s presented well, so we’re looking at what we can do to improve the experience a shopper has when they open their CafePress packages.
We have a few things we’re working on, but starting today we’re launching step one - new receipts!
Until now our receipts have arrived in the form of an 8.5″ X 11″ printed piece of paper, often poorly folded, and simply not reflecting the quality and care that has gone into the product design, or the product itself.
Beginning today we’re sending a new and improved receipt with every order. For the most part the information on the receipt is the same, but it now includes the shop/product URL (example: www.cafepress.com/shopID/product#) for each product listed, and it looks more like a receipt you’d receive when you make a purchase at a department store.
To make the presentation complete each receipt will be placed into a “receipt jacket” featuring artwork and copy designed to help buyers understand the unique nature of the item they’ve purchased, the diversity of merchandise available at CafePress, and the vast network of Shopkeepers that make it all possible.
You’ll see the final product on your next order, we hope you like it as much as we do!
Cafepress has long favored branding their site over the sub sites of the shopkeepers who have given them millions of designs to sell. This is a step in the right direction.
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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.
Cafepress has removed the feature that offers suggestions for tags to shopkeepers while they are tagging their own images. The reason for this is because they claim it lead to improper tags being added.
Removal of “suggested tags”Ever hear of Tag Spamming?
Yeah we have too, and it’s a problem many Web 2.0 companies are talking about these days. Basically it’s the result of web users adding improper “tags” to their content.
We see it all over in the CafePress marketplace. A great example would be if a search result for “Hillary Clinton” turned up T-Shirts featuring Rudy Giuliani or Barack Obama - obviously not the products the shopper was searching for. We’re sure you’ve run across this at some point while searching at CafePress and other sites.
Part of the problem may be the result of a tool that identifies “suggested tags” to Shopkeepers based on current tag usage.
When Tags were first introduced to the community, it was a great tool that helped Shopkeepers learn about tagging, and how they might want to think about tagging their own items. Unfortunately “bad” tags are now being suggested.
Many Shopkeepers have expressed that they’d like to see this feature disappear, and as of today it has!
I don’t really buy the inappropriate tags excuse although I am sure many customers complained. Many times members of Cafepress suggested even using “inappropriate” tags in order to draw attention to products.
Of course I’m happy to see this feature go. First because it gave people the ability to see what other tags people were targeting based on the tags they had selected. This was bad in my opinion because it gave competitive stores information that no person running an online business would want so readily available and I am sure ticked off more than a few people. Second however was because the suggested tag box worked only about 80% of the time. The other 20% it wouldn’t load at all and cause site slowness issues.
So now, if you want to tag your products you are going to have to think up your own tags.
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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.