I am a first timer author on the platform; just uploaded my first application for the second time, and got rejected hard. The content of the email reads as follows;
“Thank you for your submission. We have completed our review of “CheckIT-Lite | A Simple Digital-Based Computer Testing Management System” and unfortunately we found it isn’t at the quality standard required to move forward, and you won’t be able to re-submit this item again.
We appreciate the effort and time you’ve put into creating your item. And we’d be happy to help make sure your next entry will meet our submission requirements. Here’s our advice:
Visit our forums and ask fellow authors for feedback. Our helpful community will be glad to lend a hand.”
What am I doing wrong? I thought I had read and followed the requirements as instructed. The link to my documentation and demo app is as follows;
Hello @ki-themes
Thanks for your review. Please could you point out the poor execution and how i need a better design as a start? so that i can get this approved?
As regards not been finished, I believe no product is entirely finished, they are always work in progress; what i have there now happens to be an MVP for the updates that would be coming up later on, because i believe the idea is viable in the market since barely many developers have a solution for that market in the codecanyon store.
Thanks in advance for your replies
@ki-themes also, I discovered that my installation process did have an error while i was testing it after uploading. I discovered that I uploaded the wrong updates, the installation process was suppose to accept an ENVATO purchase code and validate it however, the process was faulty; could that be a problem for the rejection? if YES, can I correct the errors and re-submit the product considering I was told not to re-submit the item again? Thank you.
Sure. But take care to design. They look vert closely at the style and layout without the backend. Even if found any extra font size or empty space, they will provide hard reject.
@MhrTheme I discovered that the installer I uploaded along side the app for ease had a bug, could that also be a reason for a hard reject?
considering the design of the app, I took time to ensure that I was minimalistic as possible while ensuring standards are not overlooked. you can take a look at my demo above.
You don’t need good design to get approval in the PHP scripts category. This is a misconception.
I’ve successfully sold raw, pure code libraries in that category before. No design at all. Went through approval without a hitch, because it’s ultimately a category for selling code.
It still is generally worth investing time into design and user experience for applications because many buyers consider poor executions to be a deal breaker. It could slightly boost your odds of approval if your item isn’t very strong conceptually.
No – a hard rejection in the PHP scripts category means the very concept of your item has been rejected, perhaps due to low sales potential, existing alternatives, or poor overall execution. This is the so-called “quality standard” that was mentioned in your rejection.
The reviewer typically doesn’t install your item. They’ll look at your description and screenshots to determine if they like the concept before checking the live demo, and then the code for safety and quality.
You haven’t done anything wrong.
If the reviewer liked your concept but you made mistakes in the submission, they would alert you about those mistakes and ask you to fix them.
If they liked your concept but didn’t think it was quite ready, they would tell you that you’re “close to approval” and would offer some pointers.
None of that happened here, which indicates that this concept is not going to be approved even with substantial improvement.
You could try uploading a similar item, but the concept needs to be drastically improved – one that targets a wider audience, has more features, with amore intuitive user experience. However, due to the original concept being rejected, the odds aren’t great for any derived works.
@baileyherbert your reply is the most stable and relatable answer I have heard so far reading through the entire Author’s Forum. I was beginning to wonder why the code based product would be judged or approved by estetics especially when the design is minimalistic in approach and well articulated.
I am beginning to believe that my description for the project was lacking because I was exhaused with the workload of perfection. Considering that humans are captivated by what they see, i did not use any images for the description of the product rather, I just typed in some text pointing out the relevant features of the product.
This must have reduced the selling point of the product to the reviewer hence, leading to a rejection however, I noticed that the number of similar apps on codecanyon is a total of about 5 to 7 in number I wonder if this means anything?
in all, thank you for your detailed review, this is the best explaination i can relate with, I hope to connect with you and get more tips or collaboration in the future. I really do appreciate. Thank you
I think your design is just fine for the category you were targeting. Some flaws here and there, but those won’t yield a hard rejection. For example, I could see an innovative AI-based item getting approved with this design in a heartbeat right now.
I don’t think a lacking description will cause you to be hard rejected. I’ve seen some pretty bad descriptions get through, and I’ve seen numerous soft rejections where the reviewers ask them to improve their descriptions.
Rather, the reviewers look at your documentation quite early as well, and your documentation does a great job at showcasing the product, so they would have understood your item through that.
The 5-7 similar apps is a major deal, though. The reviewers generally reject submissions for concepts that are “overcrowded” with numerous existing items, unless you’re able to bring a substantial and highly innovative improvement over them. Even then, success is not guaranteed.
@baileyherbert hmmm… if that is the case, another tihing i could say i noticed while reviewing myself again was that, I could see that i had a label I left on the documentaiton saying “License: Commercial License”, and I also have some copyright labels saying “Powered by {my company name}” (although this can be flexibly edited from a form at the backend).
I don’t know if this is also a deal breaker, especially the documentation with the Commercial License label on it?
No, those would both yield soft rejections if the reviewer had any issue with them but liked your concept.
It’s easy to think about it this way: if the reviewer likes your concept, then they want to approve your item. They won’t hard reject such a submission without giving specific guidance. There simply isn’t any single mistake you’ve made that led to this decision.
@baileyherbert Then i guess it all boils down to presentation of concept or idea…
It makes a whole lot of sense which means, one has got to present the concept or idea in an acceptable form… really makes sense…
There’s no official explanation why the item is rejected, these are our suggestions/ideas. It’s up to you if you like it or not but I still stand by with my comments that PHP category would still need some proper design. Earlier, it may not require design but recently, it’s one of the popular category and if it doesn’t look good, reviewer may reject the item from the demo of what they have seen. Imagine that in a way, there’re two products, one of them well packaged and properly presented, the other doesn’t. Which one you’d prefer to purchase?
@codehunger I’m not interested in some other people work to get it approval. I’m designer and developer, I can do my own work.
@ki-themes I understand your disposition as regards this issue, and I have not rudely or outrightly disagree with your suggestions and opinions infact, I agree with you as regards design and presentation however, I do have the right to question ideas and prob insights on things.
I was just trying to understand why design should be the basic yardstick for this category even though i understand the power of presentation, and besides…things could be presented in a simple neat way yet doesnt mean the design is short of commendation.
I hope you understand my position about this issue, that is why i really want to take this opportunity to appreciate @baileyherbert , he has the best insight so far in this issue however, I get your position, presentation can also be a tool to change the narrative
@phpscriptpoint Yes! this happened due to the fact that i migrated from one hosting company to another and was setting up for upload however, the intended application to be uploaded does not have this module presented in it for the now.
I appreciate your insight is spotting out that, thank you but generally, what do you think about the system so far asside the error you just discovered?
I had my homework done, considered my market audience, also took time for UI design and still got rejected. What can one do to get their product meet the standards of Envato?
This app was centered on helping web developers ship their PHP application whether it be of Codeigniter or Laravel framework, or any custom framework used by the developer, not just that, the installer has the Envato API purchase code verifier embedded with it as a feature the developer could use to validate that the customer bought the application from the Envato platform. This app does not exist on the code development category, except for some few mediocre installers which seem to have been accepted by Envato.
I wonder if this means anything?
