Item Information and Metadata Requirements

Summary: Need help with your Item Titles and Tags, what category to choose or how to write a description? This article outlines what item information includes and how this is optimized for our platforms.

What does Item Information Mean?
Item Types & Categories
Item Titles
Item Description
Item Tags (Keywords)
Item Metadata Attributes

What does Item Information Mean?

As part of our Item Quality expectations, Item Information is all about marketing your item to a global audience and filling in all of the important details to help get your items found on Envato. Without the correct use of tags (keywords) and titles that accurately describe your item, it will be difficult to surface your item to customers looking for a specific item, theme or project.

Take some time to review the following item information requirements below and the expectations for specific content types.

Item Types & Categories

There are seven main content types that are available to upload and sell your items on Envato and these are Web Themes, Code, Video, Audio, Graphics, Photos and 3D files. Under each of these content types, there are categories which offer a more specific definition of the type of item.

You can find all of these by navigating to the Envato Market homepage and clicking on each of the main content types. For example, clicking on Web Themes, will reveal a series of categories including WordPress, Template Kits, eCommerce, UI Templates, Hosting etc. From there, if you go into the category of wordpress, you’ll find item types under that, like blog/magazine, corporate and creative.

It's important to recognize the correct item type and category that is relevant to your item as this will impact how customers are able to discover and search for their desired item or project.

Please note that If you’re contributing to Envato Elements, your item types and categories are organized differently from Envato Market as it is designed for a different customer base and experience. You can find all the categories and item types by clicking on each one in the main on the Envato Elements homepage or referring to the list below.

Item Titles

Titles, descriptions and tags (outlined in sections 2 and 3) are essential in helping customers search for and find your item. They're also your best tool when it comes to effectively advertising your item on Envato. Think of this as the first glimpse customers get of your item! If they're looking for a specific item or project, how would they look for it?

We’ve included some techniques below to help you understand what to do and what not to do when creating your item titles, as well as some examples of how these are used in practice.

Please note: Audio and Theme titles have more specific title requirements, please review the:

Audio Item preparation and Technical Guidelines.

Theme Item Title Guidelines

What do to:

• Your title must be no more than 100 characters including spaces.
• Your title must include English characters only.
• Format your title in Title Case - Capitalize the first and last words, all principal words and any words longer than 3 letters.
• Your title is the first thing a potential buyer sees, so it's important to be informative, concise and professional. Include the most relevant information only. A title made up of vague advertising buzzwords is less effective than one that is clear and descriptive.

Examples of good titles include:

“This is the File Name” – Capitalize the first and last words, all principal words and any words longer than 3 letters.
“Template with CMS” – Capitalize acronyms and abbreviations like XML and PSD.
“BrandName - WordPress Template” – Follow the industry standard even if it doesn’t follow the normal capitalization rules. For example, use jQuery and WordPress instead of Jquery and Wordpress.

What not to do:

• Do not use ALL CAPS.
• Do not use all lowercase.
• Do not use subjective words like "amazing", "awesome", or "best". These words describe your opinion rather than what the file actually is.
• Do not include your username in the Item Title.
• Do not include any other information that does not directly correlate with the item.
• “Apple-like Design” – Do not describe what your item is similar to in its title, describe what it actually is - this is an example of Blacklisted Words (see below).
• “Photography - Photo Theme for Photographers” - Do not spam your item title with keywords - this is known as Keyword Stuffing (see below).

Examples of bad titles include:

“THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE” – Do not use all caps.
“this is also not acceptable” – Do not use all lowercase.
“Beautiful File” or “The Best Template” – Do not use subjective words like brilliant, amazing, or best. These words describe your opinion rather than what the file actually is, and aren't helpful for potential buyers.
“User9909 – File Name” – Do not append your username or any other less-relevant information to the file name.

Keyword Stuffing

This refers to the practice of spamming your item titles with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Keyword stuffing is unhelpful for customers and does not add any value to your items. Please keep main keywords in your titles to a maximum of two; you can always include additional keywords as tags.

We consider any of the following examples to be unacceptable;

• Repeating the same word more than once.
  • “Photography - Photography Wordpress Theme”
  • "HipHop for HipHop"
• Repeating words with the same ‘stem’ more than once.
  • “Cami | Photography Wordpress Theme for Photographers”
  • "Winery - Wine and Beer PSD Template"
  • "Estatecon - Real Estate Wordpress Theme"
• Excessively listing more than two keywords.
  • “Kapow | Karate, Ninja, Kickboxing, Sports HTML Template”
• Including keywords that are not relevant to your item.
  • “Lami - Recipe Blogging WordPress Theme [not PSD, HTML, Magento] “

Blacklisted Words

These refer to words that are not allowed in item titles and tags. The reason we have this rule in place is to avoid subjective or promotional item titles and also inaccurate and/or inappropriate item tags. 

Please note, the following words are not allowed in item title or tags:

• Amazing
• Awesome
• Best
• Bonus
• Bundle ("Pack", "Collection" or "Set" is ok for use in Item Titles when your item is within the rules of the Item Bundles or Splitting Items).
• Discount
• Free
• Premium
• Pro
• Ultimate
• Any swear words, derogatory or offensive language 

Item Description

Your description must accurately describe your item, its technical and aesthetic qualities, requirements and limitations.

What to do:

• Use your description to describe all elements of your main file/item. This includes all relevant technical specifications and limitations of your item.
  • For example, if you are selling a set of icons, are the icons individual files or do they all come on a single .PSD? Are the icon colors editable? Are vectors included as well? What dimensions are included?
• Explain your item in clear, plain language. Not every customer will be an expert in your field, so it's important to make sure that you're not going to confuse them.
• If your preview includes any images, fonts or other assets not included in the main file you must note this.
• You can include links to assets that need to be attributed or sourced, for example, Creative Commons imagery you may have used in your item preview or watermarked Envato Market items.

Please Note: If you are using the preview version of an AudioJungle track available on Envato Market in your Envato Elements item preview (not allowed in the main download), you are required to credit the author by clearly referencing the author’s name and music item/track title in the Elements ‘text description’ field (not applicable to stock footage or motion graphics items). Please refer to the Audio Content Used in Video Preview Policy for more information.

What not to do:

• You cannot include links in your Elements item descriptions.

• Links should be respectful of Envato and not seek to drive traffic to any external, competing site or service (including linking to items for sale on your personal website). So don't include links to external sites where a customer could purchase a similar item or service. 

• If you need to let customers know where to download free fonts you have used in your template or provide links to any other resources, please include those links in the Documentation file.

Tips and Hints

Once you've satisfied those requirements, it's time to think about how to best promote your item.

• Put yourself in the buyer's place. If you were looking for an item like yours, what would you search for? What information would you need to know? What sets your item apart from the rest?
• Include example images of your item "in action", without misleading potential buyers. Make sure it's clear exactly what they receive in the main download.
• If your portfolio on Envato Market includes items related to the one you're describing, consider including links to those items.
• Make sure your description is readable. Long blocks of plain text are hard on the eyes. Break your description up into relevant paragraphs with clear headings to keep buyers interested.

Remember that Item descriptions have more to offer than titles or tags as you can include more text and images and can customise the look of your description with HTML.

Please note if you are contributing to Envato Elements, you’re not able to include HTML or URL's in the description as this will not work. You will need to format your description in markdown, in the Text Description field of your item. An example on how to do this is below.

Item Tags (Keywords)

While the Envato platform will take a look at all the title, text and attributes of the item, quality tags are the most important tool for search. Quality tags are those that accurately describe the item, its specifications, subject matter, context and style.

What to do:

• Photos and Video items: maximum of 50 tags.
• Audio and Graphics items: maximum of 30 tags.
• Theme and Code items: maximum of 15 tags.
• Use phrases – Tags don’t have to be a single word. If your file is an illustration of a brown bear, you may use the two word tag “brown bear.”
• Use lowercase – Do not capitalize words in tags unless they’re an acronym (e.g., NASA, RAID, etc)
• Tags must be separated by commas, spelled correctly (using American Standard English) and should relate to your item, its specifications and its possible uses.
• Check your spelling. Misspelled tags will not come up in searches for correctly spelled words. You can check your spelling with on-line dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster.

What not to do:

• Do not use the same tags for every item. Each tag must be relevant to the item it is applied to.
• Do not put your own username, the username of another author or the name of their item in your item tags.
• Do not include the Item Type or Item Category names as tags.
• Do not include attributes such as "vector" or "tileable" as tags.
• Do not copy all the tags from another item on Envato Elements.
• Do not include the title of another author's item in your item tags.
• The blacklisted words listed above also apply to tags - no swear words, derogatory or offensive language. 

Tips and Hints

• Identify subjects or elements.  Any keyword list should start with the concrete subjects or elements in your submission. Subjects are frequently nouns or activities. E.g., flower, piano, banner, house, echo, teaching.

• Identify context, industry, or uses. If your item applies to a larger industry, profession, or field, make sure a key applies to it. E.g., business, chemistry, music, career.
• Identify functionality or features. Identify the functional elements, if any, in your file. Functionality can include a “contact form” in a theme, “tileable” in a texture, or “gallery” in a layout. Features can also include important attributes that buyers may search for.
• Identify Mood or Style. Choose a couple of keywords that communicate the thematic mood of a file’s design, or the design style. Don’t forget abstract terms like seasons, emotions, or concepts. Note: Avoid using over-used tag terms like “Web 2.0″ or “sleek.” These terms are popular and frequently applied incorrectly, which means poor search results for buyers.
• Clarify. Make sure your terms are clear and not ambiguous. For example, if you included the tag “bar” did you mean…
  a pub where alcohol is served?
  a physical object like a crossing-bar?
  Bar, as in the verb “to stop or prevent”?
  a navigation bar for the web?
  a legal term or organization?
• Add additional tags if it can clarify the elements and features of your file. Frequently, words for the context of another tag can help. “Bar” and “alcohol” might be used to search for a pub, while “Bar” and “traffic” might be used to search for a crossing bar or physical object.

Item Metadata Attributes

When adding your item(s), please ensure your item metadata is accurate and complete. Your item metadata includes attributes such as: Length, Resolution (1080p), Frame Rate, File Size, Alpha Channel and Looped Video.

This is a very important step to ensure that your items show up in the relevant search results on Envato, so customers can easily find your items! Please see the examples on the item page below.

Please note: You’ll need to refer to the item metadata requirements for specific content types such as sound effects (bulk submission) and photo items.

Metadata Requirements for Photos

The vast majority of customers are looking for items that accurately communicate the item’s key features using the  panel on the item page. Having complete and accurate metadata here allows for a more convenient and easy experience for customers, as well as reflects the author's level of quality.

You can review and edit your items’ attributes on the Item Edit Page on Envato Market.

In an effort to meet customer quality requirements, we have moved towards a minimum of full HD (1080p) resolution content offering on Envato. Authors are required to meet this resolution for any items submitted, or to update their existing items, otherwise their content may be removed for low quality.

Please take some time to review your items in your portfolio now to make sure the correct metadata has been added, your items meet the minimum full HD (1080p) resolution required and that you’ve inputted the attributes available for your item. This will ensure that customers are able to quickly and easily view your item’s key features across both Market and Elements.