Make your Snap store page pop!

When you publish a Snap you want to grab the attention of as many users as possible. The Snap Advocacy team regularly review high quality, new and interesting Snaps published in the store so that we can feature them in Editor’s Picks, blog about them here or promote them via social campaigns using the @snapcraftio and @ubuntu Twitter accounts. As a side note, if you’d like to stay informed of new developments in Snapcraft and Ubuntu then give both those accounts a follow.

After you’ve tested the Snap and happy it works as intended, here are 6 things you can do to make the Snap store listing really pop and significantly increase the likelihood that the application will get noticed and widely used. Log into your Snapcraft account and take your store listing to the next level!

Essential metadata

The simplest thing you can do as a publisher is to make sure basic application metadata is correct.

• Make sure the Title is accurate and uses the correct case and spacing.
• Write a 79 charactcer Summary to pitch the application to people browsing the store.
• Use the long form Description to accurately describe the application and highlight it’s most important features.

The Snap Advocacy team love accurate and detailed metadata because we can create effective social campaigns and blog posts to highlight the application.

Logo and Screenshots

Upload a 256×256 logo for the application, .png and .jpg are supported. Uploading a logo significantly improves the appearence of the application listing in graphical storefronts.

Each store entry can feature up to 5 screenshots. If the application is cross-platform please upload screenshots taken from a Linux workstation rather than reusing screenshots from other platforms.

PRO TIP! Animated gifs generate far more engagement, particularly when embedded in social campaigns. Consider uploading at least one animated .gif of the application or game, even if it is for the command line.

Banner & Banner Icon

Each week the Snap Advocacy team will choose an application as the No.1 featured Snap in the store. Only Snaps with a banner qualify for promotion in the top spot. Uploading a banner does not guarantee the application will be featured, but it helps and the No.1 Editor’s Pick will typically generate a significant volume of new users.

The banner should be uploaded in the same place as other screenshots and must be named banner.png or banner.jpg with a resolution of 1218×240. Here’s an example banner:

An optional banner icon can be also uploaded in the same place as the screenshots and must be named banner-icon.png or banner-icon.jpg. If uploaded, the banner icon will be overlayed on left side of the banner image. Here’s an example banner icon:

Here’s how the banner and banner icon would be presented in the graphical desktop storefront when composited with the Title and Summary:

NOTE! If you upload a banner and banner icon they both count towards the 5 screenshot limit.

Website and Contact links

Include a link to the application website or product page so users can find out more about related products and services. The Contact link is intended to direct users to somewhere they can provide feedback about the application. It should point to a support site, forum or bug tracker.

Tell us!

If you have published a super cool application in the Snap store and super charged the store listing then let us know by either posting an announcement in the “snap” category of the Snapcraft forum or tagging @snapcraftio in a Tweet.

Tell the world!

Update the download page on the application’s website to reference its Snap store page. Every Snap published in the stable channel has a store page on https://snapcraft.io. For example the LXD store page can be found at https://snapcraft.io/lxd, replace lxd with a registered snap name to see the applications store page or search the Snap store.

Make sure the installation documentation and/or project README.md is updated to include instructions for installing the Snap, it really does make a difference to user adoption!

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