POD For You

[Tanith]

Poking around Spreadshirt I've noticed a serious usability problem.  I was wondering why people were posting designs with zero commission and I think I have an idea that might affect this issue.

The first thing to know is that at Spreadshirt there are two kinds of commissions (1) Design Commission and (2) Shop Commission.  You can only earn "Shop Commission" for products bought in the shop. This is not particularly obvious. The problem is that when you are creating products the "shop commission" is the only thing you see.  It is easy to assume that when you type in an amount that is what you will get if the product sells.  Not so, you get that only if the product sells through your shop.  If the product sells in the marketplace you get only design commission, regardless of whether the design was on a product you created, or used by someone else to create a product. 

One usability problem comes with the design upload.  The default commission for design upload is zero.  It is all too easy for the product creator to not know to go back to the design page and add a design commission. 

The warning box that pops up when a design commission is changed could be alarming to some, perhaps the message could be a bit less terse and more encouraging when the design has been placed in the marketplace and the change is from a zero markup.  Something like "congratulations, changing this setting will allow you to earn the set commission. It will be applied to ..."

It is not at all obvious that if a person decides to put a design only on a product, and not specifically offer the design itself in the marketplace, that they still need a design commission.

And if I haven't explained any of this correctly that will just establish that it isn't clear. 

[kayecee]

Spreadshirt seemed way too confusing for me so I haven't messed with them.... that sounds like a weird set up...

[Sydneybean]

I have way too much going on with the other pod's I'm at but this is a good piece of information to know when I search to expand my wings more.  It doesn't quite smell right when an important piece of information like that isn't made obvious. 

[Tanith]

It doesn't quite smell right when an important piece of information like that isn't made obvious.  

I understand why you feel that way but truly most of this kind of problem is an honest failure to understand why the users don't find it obvious.  People familiar with a situation, and especially very bright developers, make completely unconscious assumptions.  

My day job puts me at the interface of the user and developer. Most developers focus on how to make stuff work, not on where it fails. When they test, they test stuff along their idea of the work flow or path, which isn't necessarily how the user actually does things.  Their background and thought process makes it difficult for them to see what the user sees.  This is why outside testers, people who were not involved the development, are so valuable.

I think step one is that commissions need to have a default value above zero, users can change it to zero if they want.

Step two -  a design commission entry box should appear on the same page as the rest of the information for adding design to the marketplace.  It doesn't make sense to prompt for title, description, keywords and omit the commission.

Step three is to examine the goals and then whether the work flow supports those goals.  For example, if the intent is to discourage product publication to the marketplace (perhaps to wait until the user has a clue before putting stuff there) then the current work flow is fine.  If the intent is to encourage product publication to the marketplace then the work flow / process needs adjustment.

The reason I was in poking around is because I made another couple design sales.  Given the extremely limited number of designs I had posted I find that remarkable.  While I'm unwilling to go to the effort of making my silhouettes and cartoons into files they will accept I decided to go ahead and post them as raster files.  It is ironic, because they started out as vector but inside Photoshop, not Illustrator, so I have no easy way to conform to Spreadshirt's file requirements.  I've added 50 or so this weekend.