Tips on How to Nicely Present Your Product

It usually doesn’t matter how great your theme, template, or another digital product is if your item’s featured and add-ons are presented poorly. Let’s face it… if the presentation isn’t great, your chances of having strong, ongoing sales are going to be marginal.

So, that’s why we’ve taken some time to put together some of the best tips to follow when submitting an item for sale on the ThemeSnap marketplace. These tips should help you create awesome item pages and present your items in the best way possible to customers, while taking advantage of all of our new marketplace features.

Item / Product Thumbnails

Let’s start with the item thumbnails. That tiny little 80 x 80px item image, which in many cases is the first contact between your product and the potential buyer, is quite an important little image. Here’s how to make the best of creating a winning thumbnail image for your item:

  • While creating the thumbnail take into consideration the fact that ThemeSnap automatically applies rounded corners to thumbnail images. The border radius is 2px. So if you have a border / stroke, take into consideration the rounded corners.
  • Include your product name (if possible) in the thumbnail.
  • Include the CMS / platform or the file type (for example WordPress (WP), Drupal or PSD, AI, etc). Sometimes, the icons, such as those for Drupal, WordPress, AI, etc. work well too.
  • It’s also helpful to include the category the item is designed for (i.e. Directory, Photography, etc.).
  • Try to avoid white color at the borders, because it will be confused with background, unless you do that on purpose or for aesthetic reasons.
  • Make the thumbnail retina-ready: that means you should design it at 160 x 160px and take into account that the border radius is 4px at this size.
  • Include payment method if your item includes a monetization method / payments. For example if you have pricing plans which your customers can customize on their theme and the theme uses PayPal, you could include the PayPal logo in the thumbnail to showcase this feature.
  • If you have more than a few themes / items submitted to the marketplace, you could choose to use a unique styling for all of the thumbnails. This helps customers who view an item thumbnail for one of your products understand that it’s your theme in case he / she previously saw or liked another item of yours.
  • And, of course, a logo is great to include in case you designed a specific logo for your theme — or another relevant graphic or icon.
  • Use .PNG file format – it’s the best for preserving the quality (jpg compression affects the image quality), plus you can play with transparency.

Having mentioned the above to help you along, you’ll see that there are a lot of things to take into account while designing your thumbnail image. Following these tips really does make a difference in a sale versus no sale of your items.

Image Poster / Main Product Image

Product image “poster” is the mandatory image each item uses as the main or leading image. For normal screens the size is 590 x 300px and 2x the size for retina displays, at 1180 x 600px. This poster image includes more information than the thumbnail. Here’s a quick checklist that you should include or help guide you when creating the poster images:

  • Include the Product / Item name.
  • Platform / File type (i.e.WordPress, WP, Drupal or PSD, AI, etc).
  • Small description, bullet list, etc. of the item.
  • Category the item most belongs to, such as Directory, Photography, Hotel.
  • Imagery (maybe product snapshots, or relevant background images, icons and the product logo, in case there is one)
  • Product main features
  • Make it retina-ready: that means you should design it at 1180 x 600px. But be aware that the buyers will see it at 590 x 300px (50% ratio), so please don’t include any tiny, unreadable text / elements.
  • Include payment method if your item includes a monetization method / payments. For example, as noted in the first set of tips for thumbnails above, if you have pricing or an item that features a commerce process, then you could include the PayPal logo, Skrill logo, Drupal or Woo Commerce logo, etc. into this poster image.
  • Mention if the product is mobile ready and show some previews on mobile devices too (in case we are talking about a theme here).

Here are some product posters examples (not retina-ready):

"drupads product poster"

"poster image example"

"poster image example"

Product Description & Other Submission Fields

Though the fields from the “Upload a product” interface help you a lot in describing your product, please make sure to include the following into your item description:

  • Detailed description – Tell potential buyers more about your product. Be as descriptive as possible since this is what a potential customer will use for their purchasing decision. It’s also what search engines will use to interpret what type of item you have submitted.
  • Features – You worked a lot on developing your awesome item features, so take your time and write them down, being sure to describe them clearly so that any potential customer can understand those features. We know this may sound obvious, but many authors consume so much of their time on developing their product and submitting it for review without properly or fully describing the product features.
  • Credits – Specify a list of links with all the resources you used while creating the item (i.e. FontAwesome icons, Google WebFonts, plugin or module names, etc.).
  • Dummy content disclaimer – In case your item doesn’t come with all the dummy content used in the product demo, please specify this in the product description. Also, specify whether you are using placeholders or purchased, stock images in the item demo or product description that may not come with the item when purchased.
  • Support – Be very clear regarding your provided support. If you provide no support for a PSD item, then state that in the product description and other, related fields marking support for each product. If you do provide support, let the customers know your working hours and / or timezone. Plus, adding an approximation of how quick you’ll get back to a customer (i.e. in less than 48 hours, within 24 hours) helps clear up expectations.
  • Images – Include other images right in the item description. You know what they say… it’s worth a thousand words.

We hope these item submission tips listed above help you obtain more sales for your ThemeSnap marketplace items. Please let us know if you have any other tips for author-submitted items and we’ll be sure to add it to this list!