Quality Control Guide to Quick Uploads

How many times have you submitted a new creative only to receive an email saying, “Your card requires modifications to go live”? You’ve all been there and to help reduce that, the Studio team has collaborated with our Quality team (QC) to put together a checklist for all you Studioators to run through before you submit your cards. We hope this will explain the many times your card has been branched and also how to make sure it is approved in the shortest possible time. Use this as a guideline prior to submitting your creative. This will smoothen your upload and approval process and also reduce the timeline between submissions to card live. This checklist also includes tips to improve the different elements of your card so do have a thorough read through.

Category Selection

Select the category before you complete your card. When selecting a card category/sub-category do have a look at the cards already in that category to get an idea of the kind of content that is appropriate for that section. Read the description along the bottom of the sub-category page to have a clear understanding of who is sending cards from here, to whom and on what occasion.

Card Content

The content of your card should be appropriate to the category you are uploading it to. For example, if you upload a card that has many Christmas elements to the “Birthday wishes” section it will be sent back. Or, if the main focus of your card is cakes and balloons and you refer to that in your title & description, QC will suggest that you move it to the “Birthday – Cake & Balloons” section. Refer to the points under the Title & Description points to know how to avoid this confusion.

Cards with very similar content will not be allowed for multiple sections. This is to ensure that no duplication of content occurs.

Card Text

The card copy or the card message is an extremely important aspect of your card and you must pay special attention what you write here. Again, the text must match the category you have selected and do check and double check the spellings and grammar used to ensure it isn’t sent back for such minor modifications. For all our verification, the Merriam Webster is used so if you are not sure, refer to their website. Unless your card is in a regional event, non-English text is not permitted. Card Text should not be controversial, intending to hurt any sentiment or directed towards any specific identifiable persons.

More often than not, should your card contain just the wish (Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary, etc.) the QC will branch the card, asking for a more personal me-to-you message to be included. This is to ensure your card is different from the multitude of cards already live.

Title

Titles must be in a sentence format and one-word titles are not allowed. Your title should not also be just the section name – You cannot submit a card titled simply “Happy Birthday” to the “Happy Birthday” section. The title should be something more. The limit of your title is 38 characters. Bear in mind that any special characters (like a comma or apostrophe) use more characters than normal alphabets. Our systems store data in the ASCII format which uses more characters while storing. It is also recommended that you don’t copy/paste the title from a word document. Type your titles directly into the upload interface and ensure you have ended your title with a punctuation. While QC is happy to correct minor spelling errors, for anything more than that or if the title is not meaningful, the card will be sent back to you.

Description

For your description, you have 108 characters that we recommend you use well. Similar to the title, you cannot submit one word descriptions or just the name of the section as the description. Your description must be in a sentence format. Use this space wisely as this will help users find your card. Use keywords that relate to the event. For more tips, refer to the Search Engine Optimization webinar we conducted last year.

Thumbnail/ Icon

The thumb/icon submitted should be a proper/relevant thumb related to the card. It must look similar to the card (or could be taken from in between the card, in the case of a video card). It is not mandatory that thumb & icon should be identical to each other but both should be related to the card of which they are part. GIF thumbs/icons are permitted only for animated or video cards.

Music

Music is optional and you can choose to add a music clip to enhance the overall feel of your ecard. For video cards, the music has to be embedded within the file itself. For postcards/animated cards a music clip can be separately uploaded to the card. Should you be adding a file of your own, please provide the relevant permissions (if any). You could give credit within your ecard as well. This is always better than including it in the description. Should your track have vocals (a person’s voice) then QC will always seek a confirmation from you that you have the necessary permissions to use the file.

Font Color

For the user message, you may select any color font but you MUST ensure that the font is legible against the background. The default background is set to white and if you choose to upload a background, make sure the font color you select is legible and looks good against that. The default font color is set to black.