Do any of you offer the customize option? I’ve seen it as an option and was thinking of making a listing using that option. Just not sure how well it works out on Amazon.
For those who use it, do you end up with more headaches than it’s worth? What are the problems associated with it that you don’t have with other items?
All of my items have some form of customization.
#1 issue: The customer doesn’t ever get to see a receipt, email, etc that shows what customizations they picked / entered. Additionally, the image they see is the main image of the ASIN. Some immediately contact in a panic because of both those things. Did I enter the right year? Did I pick the right color? Do you have the right size?
#2 issue: The customizations don’t appear in the email sent to the seller either. You have to “dig” into the details of the order to find the custom fields.
Manage Order Page display
Order Details Page
you still have to click see more to see the order info and note that the picture is the main picture of the ASIN not a customized image.
Other than those annoyances, it hasn’t been too bad.
Almost all my listings have a customization but all are for size. No real problems for me but if you have Personalizations, they tend to be more of a problem especially if the buyer cannot review the personalization info post order as noted by @joebcrafts. God or bad, depending on how it works for you, customizations are not returnable and there is no “return item” button available to the buyer so you might field some angry messages.
We have always done custom on Amazon (even before Amazon created the custom templates … which we were part of that beta back then).
Amazon has tweaked the format once or twice along the way so you should check it at least once a quarter because there hasn’t been a notice sent out on these changes.
We do custom engraving so the biggest issue for us is the customer inputting something wrong … miss spelled … wrong number. Most of the time we catch miss spelled words and sometimes wrong numbers. We use to sent an email confirmation after receiving each order but so many were blocked (by customer’s account setup) and/or never answered that we stopped doing that. We might have one or two issues a year so hasn’t been a headache for us.
Again … we were part of the beta when Amazon made customizations “non-returnable” and saw a few angry messages. However … as the system is set up now, we haven’t had any angry messages in several years.
Our set up has front side (one input), back side (up to 5 inputs) and size (3 size options) customizations.
In the beginning, we had a problem with people thinking the engraving would be color filled black because of the way Amazon labeled the input text as Veranda Black. To solve it, we had to put a disclaimer on the detail page and on the customization input pages stating the engraving was not color filled. No problems since.
Setup can be a challenge depending on what you are attempting to do but, once you get it set up for one, duplicating for another item is pretty simple.
@Amazon_Seller you’ve got great insights here! If you want some more perspectives, we can move this topic out of Amazon Handmade. I can think of at least one non-handmade Seller whom I believe uses customization. Just me know, thanks!
Thanks. That would be great!
Done! @joebcrafts @wadeorcas @Lost_My_Marbles this is now a public topic, if you want to delete your replies (or let mods know if you want to edit).
@Setalpz am I remembering correctly that you use customization on your listings? 
This has been an annoyance that customers can’t see their customization preview anywhere after placing the order.
On your order page, click on “Customization Information” and it will open a new page with a small preview of the customization artwork plus the customization details. You can then click the preview again for a larger image.
We save that larger image, and then print it on a packing slip, followed by the regular packing slip you can print from the order. This way we can double check our order before shipping it, and the customer can confirm the order they received is exactly as it was placed.
We also take a picture of the customized product with the packing slip and customization preview image showing that we shipped the product as it was ordered.
This has been helpful when we get some false complaints of the ink color, or some detail, not being as ordered.
While I wish Amazon would attach the customization preview to the customer’s order side, at least Amazon has this customization preview feature. I really wish Ebay and Etsy would follow suit.
I believe we get more sales on Amazon because of the buyer confidence from seeing how the customization will look.
Thank you @Setalpz, the double packing slip is a great tip!
I also sell customized products. The biggest ongoing headache for me is when putting upcharges for the options. All of our options have upcharge prices on top of the base price.
My listing upcharges depending on what option and the option is required to pick. Problem is with the header of the option. I don’t remember the exact default saying but it is something like “Choose from below options”. You can’t add upcharge price on that “Choose from below options” but the buyers can still click it as an option. You can change that header wording so we changed it to “Invalid option. DO NOT CHOOSE” but we still get these at least once a week. I just got one yesterday that I’ll have to cancel.
We messaged the buyer but of course, no response. I give it 24 hours and cancel it. It will ding your cancellation rate but we get enough orders so this doesn’t hurt our account.
I contacted seller support many times, talked to different teams but to no avail. I didn’t post it on NFSE for obvious reasons, I don’t want my product exposed and I don’t think a mod can help with this as this would require the custom listing template to be re-programmed.
Would be a perfect world if they make that header unclickable…
If that is the case, you’re not using options like you’re supposed to. If the “option” is required, you’ve got to have an “option” that is the “base price option”.
For example, my product’s base price includes the carving.
The “base price option” is for the carving to be natural (not painted).
There is “upcharge” for choosing for the carving to be painted.
I personally would not order a product from you if the displayed price isn’t really an “option”.
I find it frustrating that there is a seller “offering” a stove top cover but because of how they used “options” the price shown is for the size that fits a sink. The stove top cover size is considerably more. It is basically bait and switch in that they have (2) significantly different products in the same ASIN and the title is for the upcharge.
I see your point and I think I explained it wrong. Like the example you said about a stove top cover, I don’t advertise one thing but then have something different in my options. That is not what I do.
I didn’t know how to explain it but it’s actually not an option, rather a “required field” for the customization.
Hopefully I can explain this correctly.
For example, (this is an “example”. I don’t sell anything that needs carving) let’s say I sell something that needs carving and carving is required to purchase the item. I don’t sell it without the carving as the item is nothing without the carving. Let’s just say even if I sell without carving, no one will need this item without the carving.
The next option is a box where buyers type in their word or saying. Now, I charge per letter. So if the buyer selects the base price but then types a 20 letter phrase, now I have a problem. They didn’t pay for the 20 letters but then they typed in 20 letters. What do I do now? I have no other choice than to message the buyer and hope they respond but they never do so I end up cancelling it.
I get what you are saying and maybe Amazon didn’t create the custom listing the way I use it for. But also maybe, Amazon didn’t create the custom listing to fit only one business model? I don’t think I’m using the options wrong. When buyers look at my listing, they know exactly what it is. I changed the header to “INVALID OPTION. DO NOT SELECT” and if they still click on it, it is obvious of what they are trying to pull.
Also, let’s say it’s not carving. Let’s say the base price is for a piece of wood that costs nothing. And you add decorations to it. Buyer has the option to add as much decorations they want but each piece will be an upcharge. This is why I said upcharge, but I may not have used the correct word. And I still can’t think of a better word to explain it LOL
Hopefully, this explained it better.
If the problem that I’m going through doesn’t affect the OP, then the OP doesn’t have to worry about it. Just wanted to share my 2 cents about the customized listings.
I think this is where @joebcrafts is correct. You do not have a base price, which I believe is a requirement. Maybe your base price with no upcharge should be 5 letters. They can pay more for each letter after that.
Yes, if you charge by the letter, and it is required to have a letter to have a product, then the original price must include at least one (“free” included) letter. Additional letters would be options that can have additional cost.
A bouquet of flowers (say 6 flowers) with options for “extras”. The no additional cost option would be bouquet only, bouquet and greenery $5, bouquet and greenery and baby’s breath $10.
If you’re changing the number of flowers that is a bouquet, that should be a different listing. Your first picture might show 6 flowers and it would be assumed the price is for 6. It is disingenuous if the “bouquet” is only 1 flower “included” and then each individual flower in the bouquet is an added cost. 1 flower is a stem not a bouquet.
The point is that there is supposed to be a selectable pathway through required options that is included.
Ok … that is similar to what we do with engraving. Charging by single letter or each word would be too difficult for most customers let alone the programming.
For us …
The above works on our site. It could work on Amazon but Amazon buyers are a different breed so we keep it simple. The base price includes all of the engraving charges for 5 lines (doesn’t matter if they order no lines, 1 or 2 lines … or all 5 lines). The only extra charge on Amazon verses the base price of the item would be the larger size.
Business wise it makes sense to do Amazon this way. The processing fees on Amazon are more than the processing fees on our site. On our site, the fees will go up and down with the different choices in engraving as the final price is variable. On Amazon, the fees are higher so, if we use the one higher price for the item including the 5 lines of engraving, we will recoup some of the Amazon costs each time a customer orders with anything less than 5 lines.
Finally, Amazon customers like freebies … so including all 5 lines (even though it is calculated off of lower base price with the extra lines added in) appears to be a freebie to the customer.
If it were us, we would adjust the base price to include the maximum letters the item can handle and fore go the add on price game.
Sorry, I left out one crucial info. I do have a base price LOL
That’s where I made the confusion, sorry about that.
So what my problem is, I can change it and have 1 letter included with the base price and rename “choose from below options” to “1 letter” then create upcharged price starting from 2 letters. That wouldn’t be an issue for me.
The problem comes when the buyer selects “1 letter” but then types in a 20 letter phrase in the phrase box. There is no way to stop this.
A few times, I got really irritated by this and instead of cancelling the order, I sent a message saying something like “if you do not cancel from your end, we will send only the first letter and you will not be able to return it for a refund”. Not in those exact words, I did word it nicely and professionally as possible. I did this like 3 times I think and never heard from the buyer. And during that time, I didn’t receive any negative ratings. Then I got scared so I started to cancel them again.
If anyone can figure this out, it would solve my problem.
LOL yes indeed. We also sell on Etsy and Ebay but never ever had 1 issue. Just Amazon. I get it at least 1 a week on Amazon.
Yes, but what if the buyer wants to choose 30 letters? They wouldn’t be able to type in the 30 letter phrase.
Is it possible to have that limit per each option?
Yes you could but you are limited to the number of customization options on Amazon which would then limit the total number of characters.
Things Remembered use to price by the word. It made a lot of customers upset.
And Things Remembered is no longer around.
The one variable that you have not address is the space(s) in between words or characters in the 30 character phrase. Would you be counting space(s) as characters to maintain the 30 characters? If not, then you wouldn’t be able to maintain control of the area being customized on an item.
Is it possible to charge by the character … yes.
Is it practical (or workable) to charge by the character for longer strings of characters … no.
