Brandbook for marketplaces: product card design

Why a regular brandbook does not work on marketplaces

A classic brandbook describes the logo, color palette, fonts, and tone of communication for the website, packaging, and advertising. On a marketplace, different rules apply: the platform moderates images based on formal criteria, and the algorithm ranks the product card according to parameters that designers usually do not consider part of their responsibility — text contrast, the share of the product in the frame, and the presence of words from the blacklist. Without a separate section for these requirements, any creative move becomes a risk of rejection.

What different platforms require — and how to consolidate this into one document

The main difficulty is not that the requirements are different, but that they contradict each other. What works on one platform may become a reason for rejection on another. Let’s examine three key discrepancies that must be fixed in a separate block in the brandbook.

Photo resolution — the only parameter that can be standardized without compromise: 900×1200 px, aspect ratio 3:4, JPG or PNG format, file size up to 10 MB is suitable for all major platforms right away. This standard should be fixed in the brandbook as the base — it eliminates half of the technical questions for the team.

A separate category is clothing, footwear and accessories. For MegaMarket, adult clothing, footwear and accessories must be photographed on models or flat lay; for newborns' and children's underwear — only flat lay. Other platforms do not require this strictly. If a brand sells clothing on several marketplaces, the brandbook must contain a separate checklist by product categories, not a general one for the entire catalog.

How to build a template system instead of redrawing product cards from scratch

The key mistake is to treat each product card as a separate design project. If a company has dozens or hundreds of SKUs, the brandbook must function as a constructor, not as a reference of examples. The logic is as follows:

1. Define the 'core' — elements that do not change on any platform: the brand color for infographics, font for captions, category icons, and the style of product outline.
2. For each platform, describe the 'acceptable variation zone' — what can be added beyond the core specifically here: text on Wildberries, infographics on Yandex.Market, clean cover without text on Ozon.
3. Create an infographic slide grid with a fixed number of blocks — no more than 3–5 per screen. A cluttered slide is scrolled through in one or two seconds, and all the designer's work is wasted.
4. Specify the order of photos in the product card: main photo according to USP, detail, sizes, set, usage scenario, proof of quality (review, certificate, measurement). The minimum for appearing in Wildberries search — two photos, but ideally keep 5–6 on any platform.

Such a structure allows the designer not to invent a layout for each new product, but to insert its photo into a ready-made template, changing only the content within the allowed zone.

What visual elements are responsible for product recognizability

Product recognizability on the marketplace is not built on the logo—its presence is often not even visible in the thumbnail in search. Simpler things work:

• A trademark background color or accent strip, repeated across all photos in the product line— the eye catches it in the search results before it even has time to read the product name.
• A unified style for icons used for characteristics (composition, size, weight)—they must be recognizable both on large photos and in the reduced thumbnail 900×1200.
• Permanent placement of the USP block on the first slide of the infographic — the buyer gets used to looking for the main advantage in the same place on the card.
• The same color palette between the product card and the physical packaging. This is not aesthetics for aesthetics' sake: studies show that beautiful delivery packaging reduces returns and increases the probability of repeat purchase, and the match of the product card's color palette with the physical packaging helps create a sense of a unified brand in the buyer's mind.

Each of these elements in the brandbook must be described not as a reference image, but as a rule with allowable deviations: exact HEX code, minimum and maximum size of the icon in pixels, block position as a percentage of the slide area. Without numerical values, the designer interprets 'approximately like this' in their own way, and stylistic unity falls apart already on the fifth card.

How to format the document so that the team uses it, not ignores it

A brandbook for marketplaces should not be a single PDF of a hundred pages mixed with website guidelines. Practice shows that the working format becomes a modular structure:

• General block — brand colors, fonts, logo, tone of communication (to match the overall company brand).
• Technical block — unified photo standard 900×1200, file formats, file weight.
• Platform block — a separate page for each marketplace with a table of allowed and prohibited items, including a list of stop words and requirements for title length.
• Infographic templates block — ready layouts with text, photo, and icon placement marked, with the limit of blocks per slide indicated.
• Checklist before publication — a short list of 8–10 items that the designer checks before sending the card for moderation.

This format is easy to maintain: if Wildberries changes the requirements for text contrast, only one page is updated, not the entire document. The marketer and designer work with different blocks in parallel, without hindering each other.

Errors that repeat in 9 out of 10 marketplace brandbooks

Most moderation issues arise not from ignorance of the rules, but because the brandbook describes the style in general terms instead of specific numbers. Let's examine the most common mistakes.

• A single template for all platforms, regardless of differences in text on the cover — a direct path to rejection on Ozon.
• The absence of a list of forbidden words — a copywriter inserts 'hot sales' into the title or infographic, and the product card loses its rating on Wildberries or gets rejected on Yandex.Market.
• Overloaded infographics: a designer tries to fit all the benefits onto one slide instead of 3–5 blocks, and the user simply doesn't have time to process the information.
• Ignoring the fact that 41% of buyers search for a product by brand or model name, not by category — if a brandbook does not set a unified naming principle for products, taking into account character limits on each platform, product cards will be poorly found in search.
• Clothing photography without accounting for Megamarket's requirements for the model or flat lay — the product category determines the photo format, and this rule needs to be fixed separately, not relying on a general sense of style.

All these mistakes are prevented in one way — by translating abstract style descriptions into specific, measurable rules with examples of 'what is allowed' and 'what is not allowed' for each platform. A brandbook that remains a set of references without numbers is doomed to become a document that is opened once and never remembered again.