Offer listing best practices

  • Article

This article offers suggestions for creating and engaging Microsoft commercial marketplace offers. The following tables outline best practices for completing offer information in Partner Center.

For a complete list of marketing best practices including best practices to drive traffic to and improve customer engagement with your listing please see the Commercial Marketplace Marketing Best Practices Guide.

For an analysis of how your offers are performing, go to the Marketplace Insights dashboard in Partner Center.

Online store offer details

Setting Best practice
Offer name For apps, provide a clear title that includes search keywords to help customers discover your offer.

For Consulting Services, follow this format: [Offer Name: [Duration] [Offer Type] (for example, Contoso: 2-Week Implementation)
Offer description Provide a clear description that describes your offer's value proposition in the first few sentences. These sentences may be used in search engine results. Core components of your value proposition should include:
  • Description of the product or solution.
  • User persona that benefits from the product or solution.
  • Customer need or pain the product or solution addresses.

Use industry standard vocabulary or benefit-based wording when possible. Do not rely on features and functionality to sell your product. Instead, focus on the value your offer delivers.

For Consulting Service listings, clearly state the professional service you provide.
Offer logo (PNG format, from 216×216 to 350x350 px): app details page Design and optimize your logo for a digital medium:

Upload the logo in PNG format to the app details listing page of your offer. Partner Center will resize it to the required logo sizes.
Offer logo (PNG format, 48×48 px): search page Partner Center will generate this logo from the Large logo you uploaded. You can optionally replace this with a different image later.
Learn more documents Include supporting sales and marketing assets under Learn more; examples include:
  • white papers
  • brochures
  • checklists
  • PowerPoint presentations

Save all files in PDF format. Your goal here should be to educate customers, not sell to them.

Add a link to your app landing page to all your documents and add URL parameters to help you track visitors and trials.
Videos (AppSource, consulting services, and SaaS offers only) The strongest videos communicate the value of your offer in narrative form:
  • Make your customer, not your company, the hero of the story.
  • Your video should address the principal challenges and goals of your target customer.
  • Recommended length: 60-90 seconds.
  • Incorporate key search words that use the name of the videos.

Consider adding additional videos, such as a how-to, getting started, or customer testimonials.
Screenshots (1280×720 px) Add up to five screenshots. Incorporate key search words in the file names.

Important

Make sure your offer name and offer description adhere to Microsoft Trademark and Brand Guidelines and other relevant, product-specific guidelines when referring to Microsoft trademarks and the names of Microsoft software, products, and services.

Important

When creating media for your offer, make sure that the assets you create are welcoming and inclusive for all. To learn more about how to create accessible media, see Create accessible media.

Link to your offer page from your website

To easily direct users to your offer in the commercial marketplace, leverage our Get It Now badges on your website or in your digital marketing collateral. Find these badges in our Marketplace Marketing Toolkit.

When you link from the AppSource or Azure Marketplace badge on your site to your listing in the commercial marketplace, support strong analytics and reporting by including the following query parameters at the end of the URL:

  • src: Include the source from which the traffic is routed to AppSource (for example, website, or LinkedIn).

  • mktcmpid: Your marketing campaign ID, which can contain up to 16 characters in any combination of letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens (for example, blogpost_12).

The following example URL contains both of the preceding query parameters: https://appsource.microsoft.com/product/dynamics-365/mscrm.04931187-431c-415d-8777-f7f482ba8095?src=website&mktcmpid=blogpost_12

After adding these parameters to your AppSource URL, review the effectiveness of your campaign in the analytics dashboard in Partner Center.

Listing creation technical best practices

Navigating Markdown can be tricky. To help, we've compiled some best practices for revising and reviewing offer listings for the commercial marketplace in Partner Center. The commercial marketplace listing technical best practices guide shows how to edit your listing and preview your Markdown code.

Next steps