Optimizing The Discoverability of your Adobe Express Add-On | by Tate Masi | Jan, 2024

Listings are the first way to make a great impression with your potential users.

Each Adobe Express add-on listing includes an add-on icon and name, as well as the developer name, a summary, a full description, and keywords that will help you categorize your add-on and make it easier to find.

Why should people use your add-on? How will it impact their experience in Adobe Express? Your listing should answer these questions through the metadata you submit when you publish.

When putting your listing together, think about the range of users in Adobe Express. These include young students, small business owners, hobbyists and professionals who may not have a background in creative tools. Therefore you should ensure the copy is engaging and doesn’t use overly technical jargon. Also, double-check that there aren’t any typos or confusing sentences before submitting your listing metadata.

You should also think about the visual assets that you include in your listing: the icon and the screenshots. Icons are key in attracting the users’ attention and are usually the very first thing a user sees when discovering your add-on. Your add-on icon should be simple, distinctive, and must be suitable for viewing on different devices and browsers. Make sure it complies with our Developer Brand Guidelines and isn’t pixelated.

Also, consider using an icon that gives users an idea of what the add-on does. If your add-on has a well-recognized logo associated with it, feature that logo prominently in the icon (see the Dropbox and Issuu add-on icons, for example). Icons are the primary way that users browse add-ons at a glance, and logos that are already familiar to them can help quickly catch their eye.

Similarly, your screenshots should accurately represent the functionality and UI appearance of the add-on. Consider uploading screenshots that show the add-on in action to illustrate what it does in Adobe Express and what the workflow looks like. This is a great way to set user expectations and make the add-on appealing for users to try out and use. On the flipside, it’s essential to refrain from including images that could potentially mislead users or are deemed inappropriate.

Your add-on’s metadata also drives the search experience in the panel. While some users will search for the add-on’s name or a developer name, the main fields you want to pay attention to are the summary, full description, and keywords. If users haven’t heard of you or your add-on before, you’ll have better luck being discovered when users search more generally for categories, features, or a problem they’re trying to solve.

For instance, one of the most popular searches at the moment is for AI, so if your add-on leverages AI to generate images or audio, for example, it’s important to note that in your summary, description, and the keywords.

Search volume is also very high for specific media or content types, such as audio, music, logos, text, icons, and animations. To show up in more user searches, make sure your metadata includes what media type your add-on caters to.

Keep in mind, the higher the quality of your listing and of the add-on itself, the higher the possibility that it will be featured in the add-on carousel on the Adobe Express homepage. If your add-on is gaining some organic popularity with users already, we encourage you to reach out to us to see if we can include you in the featured collection on the carousel.

For more tips on improving your listing metadata, check out the listing section in the general guidelines that will help you in the distribution stage of your add-on.

Most add-ons in the Adobe Express ecosystem are free. However, developers who submit to the marketplace are allowed to require licenses, subscriptions, or other forms of payment to use their add-ons. That said, we recommend giving users a choice of payment options when signing up or upgrading.

This includes giving users the chance to try before they buy. Free trials and freemium options can improve sign-up numbers. Consider if there are any features or capabilities you’d like to always make available for free to encourage users to install the add-on and take it for a spin before they consider upgrading. WellSaid Labs, for example, offers users five credits as part of the add-on trial that they can use to make five voiceover clips (see our recent article on how WellSaid Labs built their Adobe Express add-on).

For more tips on ensuring that monetized add-ons provide users with a consistent and reliable experience, see our monetization guidelines.

All add-ons must provide support for the English language. In addition, you are welcome to create your add-on in any other language supported by Adobe Express, which will help you reach a wider audience.

The add-on will adapt based on the user’s overall Adobe Express settings or their browser settings. You still need to test your add-on, however, to make sure that the user interface remains intact and functional when you switch between any supported languages.

Finally, ensure that changing the language doesn’t result in add-on strings or text content being cut-off or truncated. All text should be visible and displayed appropriately on the add-on in all supported languages.

In the future, users will also be able to filter and search add-ons by language.

Alongside the featured collection, we’re planning to introduce use case driven categories to the carousel on the Adobe Express homepage. This will help users quickly find add-ons that are the most applicable based on their task or job role. This could include collections focused on marketing, social media, or education.

Try to be specific in describing what your add-on is best used for, and start naming relevant use cases in your add-on’s metadata, like making a marketing campaign more impactful, creating infographics, or generating printable activities for kids. This will also make it easier for our team to determine whether your add-on should be part of these future collections.

We’re also planning to integrate add-ons into different parts of the Adobe Express experience and the workflow within the app. For example, we’re going to show storage add-ons that export or store content — such as the Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive add-ons — in the Share menu. This means that users who want to share or download their Adobe Express design will see add-ons as options that they can take advantage of when they click on the Share button.

Over time, add-ons will surface in all of the native components of Adobe Express, whether they’re related to illustrations and icons, brand management, or marketing. That way users will get more context as to what specific add-ons are useful for because they’ll be shown at their highest point of relevancy. By adding more places where add-ons can be discovered and utilized, we’ll ensure that users always have the tools they need at their fingertips.

To learn more about distributing your Adobe Express add-ons, including the information you need for the submission process, and how to optimize your add-ons discoverability, refer to the distribution guidelines. We’d love to hear your feedback, and if you want to tell us about an add-on you’ve built yourself, just get in touch!