4 Product Cover Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Kirsten 0:04

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kirsten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together. Welcome, welcome to a another episode of the creative teacher podcast. We are at the end of season three. And I thought we would start with the beginning. So this topic that I'm going to share with you four product cover mistakes. This is literally the first TPT seller blog post I wrote almost four years ago, crazy to think. But I wanted to make it official on the podcast because I think these tips are still relevant today. And I know that you will enjoy this refresher or just these tips to help you with really great appealing and eye catching product covers. If you're a seller, teacher, printer or customer on Teachers Pay Teachers, you will learn pretty quickly that well designed products are the ones people will flock to think about when you're searching for a resource for yourself, what is the first thing you're looking for, or looking at before you even click on the product link. It's the product cover. If you ever hear the saying don't judge a book by its cover, it's common phrase that we all know and love. This still holds true unless it's on TPT. So what I mean by that is, even if you have the most amazing resource that would benefit tons of teachers, a resource that has a lackluster or bland products cover will not get as many views on Teachers Pay teacher's that's just the that's the that's the fact. So never judge a book by its cover unless it's on TPT that just kind of like our motto here that we have to go by. on Teachers Pay Teachers, in order to attract your ideal target audience are your ideal teacher customer. And for them to even consider your products, you have to have a well designed product cover. Well there are a lot of factors in play on what makes a customer ultimately buy a product. There's factors such as how the product is described the quality of the resource content, being able to view a sample of the preview of the resource. A solid product cover can make the difference between scrolling right by and clicking to get a closer look. So today, we're going to be talking about four mistakes you could be making when you are designing and uploading your product covers to TPT. The first mistake is too much wording. One of the biggest mistakes is adding too much descriptions wordings and phrases on your actual products cover. Most of the time, your potential buyers cannot read the wording that's written on the product cover until they click on the actual product link and are able to view it in a larger view. The product cover in the search results on Teachers Pay Teachers are they're already very small, as we all know, even in grid view. So the more wording you add, the less likely viewers can see it. Save the wording for the previews and the product description after potential buyers are clicking on it. So my best tip for you here just kind of sum things up is to put the most important phrases that will draw potential customers in and make them want to click for more. Sometimes that might just be a title or a really important feature, like how many activities are included or what grade levels are best suited for this resource. The second mistake I see is that there are too many pictures. And I'm talking like tons and tons and tons of pictures. There's a difference between like maximalism like It looks nice. It's a well designed to many pictures and then there's like a way overload where it's way too small. So maybe you might have too many photographs, clipart or pictures on your product cover. A busy product cover can make it less likely for potential buyers to click for more just depending on what the style or an overall aesthetic looks like. Unless you're selling clip art. It's best to make it simpler. Less is more I always try to aim for one to three major photographs or images that best represent my resource. And any other photographs can be used for your preview or thumbnails. Once potential customers can click on your product. Now, going back to the maximalism trend that's happening, sometimes you can overlap screenshots so that it looks good. And maybe you might be able to fit on eight activities, or eight screenshot pages. And if it's something that makes the overall products hover, look appealing and inviting them definitely do that. However, for the most part, if especially you're using just one photograph, like you have a photograph of your resource, then I would just recommend using that one photograph. The third mistake is not having a cover at all, I know I have to just air it out there just like it is important to have a cover. That's the main thing to think about. And I will say I have personally done this in my early days not have really cover, I just upload the generated cover in thumbnails that they still have, I'm not sure why. But using the page of our resource as a cover is not something that we want to do. That's one of the big mistakes that we want to make sure we are changing. And there are many reasons why this could be done. In general, maybe you just don't have the time to separately create a product cover, or you just don't know how or where to start. And that's okay. Knowing that your product cover is the face of your resource is really important. And that's why it's important to you can always have a template setup and I actually sell TPT product cover templates, and hence, I'm going to be making more in the coming months. And while it seems counterintuitive, I mean, obviously it would be a lot easier if people could just have that screenshot or that activity as a cover. Easy, easy peasy done. But unfortunately, that's not the way things work. As far as people clicking on it, the product cover is what ultimately attracts more buyers when they're searching for the right resource in the search results. As humans, we are naturally gravitating towards the most attractive and appealing items, a page from your resource, no matter how colorful this page is, just won't catch as much attention. So my best tip related to this mistake is to take the time to create a product cover separately from your resource use templates. And it's just making sure that less is more in general. The fourth and final mistake trying to add in all the new trends. Remember Chevron about 10 years ago, that was everywhere. And while newly popular and trending designs and styles are always fun and exciting to try out in your TPT store, the best thing to do is to avoid or limit it as much as possible. This can save you time in the long run, especially if you're wanting to use Teachers Pay Teachers as a passive income source as far as making money without a ton of effort to maintain. So I've seen this also is like people are like, Okay, I'm gonna completely update my covers and thumbnails again in a year. And there's nothing wrong with it. If you're doing it just because you're bored, you need to hold the brakes and leave it as is. So my best tip for what this mistake is related to is to keep your design bright, bold and classic, you won't go wrong. And you can always go back at any time to freshen up your product covers. If you do find your stores looking a little lackluster, go based off don't just go off of feelings not like ah, I have nothing else do I'm gonna do it. Maybe go off with data, maybe change a little bit at a time and seeing if those results are effective before changing your whole store. And then if you feel like it needs to be changed up, then definitely change it up. So to sum everything up, how can TPT sellers compete with other TPT products out there and get those potential buyers to look at your quality content. It's all in the product cover my friend. Well, that's a wrap. Thank you for tuning into this episode. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks for listening to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me on Instagram at the southern teach dot designs. Have an amazing day