Tests for ThemeForest Search Results Pages

Envato Announcements
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Today we’re announcing the launch of two new tests for search results on ThemeForest.

We’re continuing our ongoing work in optimizing the experience for customers and part of that is what we want to share with you today.

Key Features for Items

We’re adding the ability for you to showcase the best aspects of your item directly on the search results. This change will allow you to highlight the main reasons why a potential customer should pick your item.

In order to add Key Features, simply edit your item page and add up to 3 Key Features to be displayed in the search results. You can highlight what makes your item unique or a key selling point. Here are some of the selling points that you can use:

  • Tagline
  • User features
  • Technical features
  • Who/what it’s for
  • Amount of styles/demos
  • Special pricing/discounts (within our guidelines)
  • Included plugins

A 45 character limit per Key Feature applies to help customers scan through the search results quickly and you will not be able to use HTML.

Key Feature Guidelines

You must follow the below guidelines while adding your Key Feature(s):

  • Do Not treat the key features like tags and stuff them with keywords.
  • Ensure that each line is unique. Do Not repeat the same feature more than once.
  • Do Not use ALL CAPS or special characters.

The following image shows how the Key Features would look on the search results and it is subject to change:

tf-item-card
tf-item-card.jpg800×219 48.2 KB

Add additional images to your item to help it shine

Did you know you can add screenshots of your item too? Soon we’re going to start displaying additional images on Search Results pages. Give your item the best chance by adding screenshots.

Edit your item, in the Item Attachments area, upload a new Theme Preview .zip file containing your images.

The first image appears on the Item Page and Search Results and must be 590x300 pixels and named 01_.jpg

You can include additional images which show off your item. Additional images must be named in the order that you want them to appear, for example, 02_.jpg, 03_.jpg, 04_.jpg.

These images can be a maximum of 900x900 pixels, and may be cropped when displayed on the search results page to the same aspect ratio as the main preview image. Images must be JPGs or PNGs.

We’ll be monitoring this post for the next seven days answering questions. Please remember our community guidelines as you post.

11 Likes
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I have seen this new ‘Key Features’ for the past weeks and only started to update them in the last few days. Haven’t seen any difference in Search Results Page though. Hope we can see better results with this new update.

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I should add that at the moment you can add these to your items and we will run a test showing them to users in the coming weeks.

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Hey @jamesgiroux,

Could you give some feedback of the “last updated” metric. Thing is, a stable theme that’s getting a few sales here and there does not need to be updated, but if its last updated date is going to be shown in search results like this then Authors are going to feel pressured to ensure their entire portfolio has recent “last updated” dates, where the updates being pushed might not actually offer any real value.

A theme that hasn’t been updated for 12 months doesn’t mean it has issues, quite the opposite usually, it means that the theme is stable.

Any thoughts or metrics you can forward on this?

10 Likes
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I’m sorry to say this, but for me, as a WordPress themes and plugins buyer, the “last updated” field is very important.

Given the frequency of WordPress Core updates and new versions, a theme or a plugin which hasn’t been updated in the last 12 months is quite a risk.

Even if you see the theme/plugin working in the live demo, it could, in fact, throw PHP warnings hidden in a debug.log file not shown to front-end users - and these warnings and errors might break other functionalities added by other plugins I may be using on the same website.

Maybe a better idea would be to show in the search results the “Compatible with WP version x.xx”? :thinking: For WordPress items.

13 Likes
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That’s an absolutely fantastic idea!

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Agreed! That metric is highly important! :slight_smile:

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Ad additional images:

What if I want to display images ONLY on item description page (after clicking on “Screenshots” button below the preview image). How those images should be named?

Also, do all existing screenshot images (which are already named 02_.jpg, 03_.jpg, 04_.jpg. as per your old requirements) will show up in the search results even though they were NOT optimized for it (they are bigger than 900x900px)?

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+1 Absolutely!

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My vote is on last updated date. Awesome. A large portion of buyers wouldn’t be able to tell you what the latest version of WordPress is (I had to google it just then too :joy:). Date FTW.

I’ve seen many 12 month old themes (including mine) that yell at you about things like WooCommerce templates out of date etc…
Date + sale numbers is a really good indication that a theme is more likely to work.

2 Likes
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Take a look at most popular builder. They still fixing errors.
Or most popular WordPress theme. How about this bug which they have fixed January 29th, 2018.

  • FIXED: PHP fatal error when {name} Builder is active without {theme_name}

Really? They didn’t add a simple check for this earlier and haven’t noticed about this ‘easy to catch’ bug before?

So what is better? Top selling theme which is updating every week and have tons of bugs. Or niche theme which is stable but has low sales and was updated one year ago?

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Bug: “Last updated” dates on search result page and item page are different.

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Near [Preview] and Cart button maybe add [Buy with Hosting] button?

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In the tags, there’s one tag in bold: portfolio. How does that work?

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Maybe in case a user searched for “portfolio”?

1 Like
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Absolutely right! It’s a strong idea. I think, this opinion is best for Themeforest & Themeforest user’s.

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is there any example of 900x900 image on the search page, so that we can optimise it ?

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Date Filter.

Currently its only Last Month and Last Year. The difference is too much. What if a buyer is looking for an item which is created in the last 3 or 6 months but not year?

So please add “Items added in Last 3 months” and “6 months” in the filter.

~Surjith

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Applied this long ago but still not seeing in search result!

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Every single one of my items has a bad date in “Last updated” on new search results page. The template I haven’t touched for almost a years says it was updated month ago? Is it some kind of A/B testing or what?