If some of your art pieces can be purchased on different merch products like tote bags, throw pillows, mugs, and others, you might want to consider creating a Gift Shop gallery on your website. It's important for your website visitors to be able to see that they can purchase these Gifts without even needing to browse through other themed product galleries (such as Abstract, Landscapes, Watercolor,...)
However, before we set up the Gift Shop galleries on your live website, let's first talk about the ideal product setup.
Ideally, every art piece that you are offering in a variety of different print mediums (canvas, metal, tote bags, mugs,...) would be set up as one art print product in the back end of your website. There are two main reasons for this:
Easy to maintain
Uploading the same art piece as multiple products, and then enabling only one medium for each of them is not a good practice. Often times this will be paired with having multiple Art Print Stores in the Site Manager. This will make your website more difficult to set up, confusing to navigate and products a lot harder to maintain, as opposed to having just one art print product with all mediums that you offer enabled on that one product. Imagine just needing to fix a simple typo in the product title and then having to hunt down all the places where that piece was uploaded. For something that should be a few seconds fix, you would now need to spend 10 minutes or even more to find all the places where you uploaded that same file to fix the typo there as well. Not to mention that every time you need to add something to the product page (like a product description), you will need to do it multiple times.
Offering a variety of choices to the buyer
Once the potential buyer reaches a product page, the only thing you want them to do from there is to make a purchase. You do not want them to exit the product page. However, if you are only offering one medium on that product page, you are significantly lowering the chances that the buyer is going to check out with that product. Why? Because if the buyer is not 100% ready to purchase that specific medium available on that product page, there is nothing left for them to do, but to exit the product page. They might not even know that the same piece is available on other mediums. If you are lucky they might continue browsing through the website in search for something else. But instead of pushing them towards the cart, you have just lost the opportunity to turn that visitor into a buyer.
Now imagine if that website visitor was able to see on the same product page that the same art piece is available in a variety of other mediums. If they weren't ready to buy a Hoodie, they might still be interested in purchasing that art on a Mug. If they can see on the same product page that this is available printed on a Mug, they can add it to the cart with just one click. No need to exit the product page or browse other galleries.
To set up the product in an optimal way, follow these steps:
1. Go to the Art Print Store
2. Go to the Media tab
3. Enable all the wall art mediums and merch products that you would like to offer in your gift shop. In this example, we will be creating a Gift Shop with T-Shirts, Tote Bags, Throw Pillows, Phone Cases, Mugs, Wall Calendars and Canvas.
Within the same store, we also have enabled wall art prints for Lustre Paper, Watercolor Paper, Metal Print, Canvas Gallery Wraps and Acrylic, for additional variety:
4. Now let's upload an art piece. To do that, go to the Products tab, and Click + Add Products
In this example, we will be using a signed image of a Tit Bird to create the product:
5. Now that the product is uploaded, let's Click on Edit
6. Add the information about the product like Name, Short and Long Description,...
8. Now lets Click to Preview this product page
If we observe the image in different mediums, you will notice that the image is not ideally positioned in all mediums. For example, when viewed on Phone Cases, the head of the bird is cut off, while when previewed in Tote Bags, artist signature is cut off.
9. Lets go back to the product page on the back end to fix this.
First, while still one the product, go to the Available Media, then Merch. Find the Phone Cases, and next to it, click on the 'Lock Image Position'
10. This will open up a new dashboard for you where you can now start manipulating image position on the Phone Case by simply hovering over the image and then dragging and dropping it into a more suitable position.
11. When you are happy with the position of the image, it's time to Lock the image. To do this, you have two options:
Lock Current Variant - This button will apply this new image position but only for the selected product variant, which is in this case iPhone 15 Pro, Premium Glassy Snap Case. This is a more granular approach, that will allow you control for each individual product variant, but it will also take more time to set up all variant.
Lock All Variants - This button will apply this new image position to all product variants (all phone models and case styles).
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will click on Lock All Variants.
12. When we are done editing, lets click Save at the bottom right corner, and then let's click on the product link at the top of the page, to go back to the product settings.
13. Let's now do the same for Tote Bags. Again, we will click on Lock Image Position next to Tote Bags.
14. Again, we will want to find the optimal position for the image on the Tote Bags.
Since for this image, the signature at the bottom right corner is cut off we are going to drag and drop the image to the right, so that the signature is outside of the print area, and then click Lock All Variants.
NOTE: if you prefer to not cut off the signature, and instead you want to display it, then you can also use the Image Size slider to zoom out the image before you Lock it:
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will not be zooming out the image, and instead we will use the above approach of simply moving the image to the right to remove the signature from the print area.
16. Now lets go back to the product page and Preview it on the live site to see how our products look.
You will notice that when we select Phone Case and Tote Bag medium, the product looks much better - the head of the bird and the signature are no longer cut off.
You can use Lock Image Position tool for all merch mediums you are offering on the specific art piece to find the optimal image position. You can be as granular as you want with your approach, positioning the image for every product variant or for all variants in bulk.
For more information about the Lock Image Position tool, please read How to Lock the Image Position on your Merchandise Products.
17. Repeat this process for all the products that you will offer in your Gift Shop.
What Next?
Now that we have set up the products for the Gift Shop galleries, it is time to set up the product galleries. To do that, please follow the step-by-step instructions in How To: Set Up A Gift Shop.