Having a template that’s popular and consistently sells is not an easy task, and requires an expertise in both designing and marketing the template correctly. With consistent effort you can make great designs, while expanding your horizons.
To get started, we’ve listed a couple of things you can do to set yourself on the right track:
Add relevant tags
Tags allow customers browsing online to find relevant content. Your templates need to have tags that accurately describe the template, or are related to the search result. If you've designed a menu, you want people actively looking for menus to find you. Add tags that describe your content. There are multiple ways to go about it:
- Describe the design style (Is it modern, minimalist, vintage, pastel, maximalist etc)
- It’s use (a party invite, concert flyer, bar advert etc)
- Design type (Instagram post, flyer, banner, digital display video etc)
- Any particular niche within a theme (charity event, electronics dealer, grand opening).
- Keep it relevant to the overall theme. For example, a grand opening flyer should also have tags for the overall theme or audience it caters too, like small business owners or restaurant depending on the content of the template itself.
To go the extra mile, use keyword research tools such as the one offered by Moz. Free options are also available online. Here’s a list of free keyword research tools. Use these to create tags that target your audience.
Keyword research tools are a must have as they allow you to find out what your customers are looking for, and a good research tool will provide recommendations based on the tags you’re entering.
For more information on improving template discoverability, see our article on preparing templates for the right audience.
Plan out publishing times
While publishing your templates as they get ready may sound convenient, its not the best practice if you’re looking for sales. This also means you shouldn’t publish a set of 20 or more templates in bulk.
Instead, you want to space out publishing in general, by publishing every few days. Posting at regular intervals means your templates will be available in the gallery for longer periods of time, so more customers will be able to view and customize your templates.
Planning for seasonal templates
You need to be up to date with seasonal events throughout the year. This means preparing relevant templates in advance of the seasonal event. For example, St Patrick’s Day is on March 17th every year, which means your templates need to be ready by February 17th.
Customers looking for promotional material for St Patrick’s Day related events or parade will do so at least a month in advance.
While every event has a certain theme to it, we recommend creating unique layouts, using different images and experiment with colors so that each template stands out on it's own. This improves your chances to get sales because a customer will likely pick one template from a list of similar templates. They may pick more if you offer more design variety within your seasonal templates.
Publishing your seasonal templates in the off-season, such as St Patrick’s Day templates may result in the templates getting ignored, and will eventually get pushed down and replaced by newer templates.
Design for subcategories
Subcategory pages are found under most category pages, and these allow customers to dig deep and filter a narrower range of templates. For example, somebody looking to advertise their tax consultancy firm can go to the Professional Services category then go under the Financial Service subcategory to find relevant templates.
You can pick and design for these subcategories. If you’re new, starting with a subcategory with limited template offering is the best way to go as this will give your templates a chance to stand out. The limited variety of templates in a niche means there is a higher chance of users engaging with your templates.
Tag your templates right, so the template lands in the correct subcategory. Remember, always create high quality content that customers would want to use.
Improve your designs
The best way to maximize your sales boils down to making the most compelling designs. Your designs should look good, and should be relevant to the customer’s needs. Your design should aim towards easy customizability and have a defined purpose. This is because:
- Templates that stand out from others tend to rank better on searches and gallery pages.
- More customers are likely to customize your template if it’s easy to work with.
- A template, no matter how pretty or well designed will ultimately get ignored if they can find no use out of it.
Sometimes designers may choose to design multiple templates that are very similar to each other, save for a few small changes.
Creating templates that are too similar to one another can occur due to a few reasons, such as:
- Simply resizing the template before publishing
- Creating several copies of a single template
- Tweaking one item in the design before publishing another copy
As a designer you are expected to create unique and customizable templates that meet our customers’ needs. Here are a couple of things you can do to improve your designs:
- Find your market - Know what your audience is looking for. Browse the gallery and the designer leaderboard to know what sells.
- Text hierarchies - Your headers should stand out, and important information should be prominent from the cursory information.
- Typography - You have a huge variety of fonts at your disposal. Experiment and try what works well with your designs.
- Stock graphics - Use stock graphics to add high quality photos or a video to your design.
- Stay relevant - Your templates should always cater to your customer’s needs, so that they have to make minimal effort.
Copying from your templates and how to avoid it
The site runs automated checks to ensure all designs meet our quality standards. If designs are found lacking, this may lead to loss of sales. The most common reason for this is that customers are likely to pick unique designs over templates that are too similar to others. Other reasons include:
- Templates being flagged, temporarily unpublished, and sent to the ‘Rejected Templates’ section in your My Stuff.
- Variations not being shown as individual templates in the gallery. They will be displayed in the preview dialogs for other, similar templates only.
- Templates that are similar to others in the gallery, which means customers may pick other templates over yours.
- Copying templates from other designers and publishing these as your own may result in your templates getting reported and unpublished.
However, you can avoid a loss of sales by acting smartly. In order to avoid problems like templates ending up in the ‘Rejected Templates’ section in your My Stuff, improve your designs by creating unique customizable templates with graphics, colors, layout designs that are unique to that template.
By creating each of your templates uniquely, you will increase your sales as well as the popularity of your designs overall.
Looking for more tips to improve your templates? See our guide on improving your designs.