PSA: Preview rollout of the new Chrome Web Store

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi everyone,

We’re excited to share that over the next few weeks, we’ll be slowly encouraging users to try an early preview of the new Chrome Web Store we teased at Google I/O, through an opt-in banner on the existing site. See the Chrome support forum for our post sharing the details.

As developers, we know that you’re likely to want to see how your item looks ahead of time, which you can do by navigating to the new store directly: https://chromewebstore.google.com/.

One thing we’ve heard is that you’d love more opportunities to see your extensions featured on the store. Based on that, we’re opening a self-nomination form for the next few weeks. We’re hoping to pick a few extensions from this which we’ll add to the Editors’ Picks collection.

Submit your extension here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4goBOeJDSVwp7xGCZw5vORovPOBhCv_kWM-VXWDhSA0NUQg/viewform?usp=published_options

As part of this rollout, we’re also updating the categories available in the Chrome Web Store. Look out for an email with more details.

Thanks,
Oliver on behalf of Chrome Extensions DevRel

[Oliver Dunk]

And to quickly follow-up - here are a few things which I suspect will be particularly interesting for everyone here on the mailing list:

• Screenshots on the details page for a given extension are now served at significantly higher quality. Thanks for the feedback on this.
• Replies to questions on the support tab now show newlines.
• When replying to a user, your response will now include a “Developer” badge beside your name.

Let us know what you think. We're really excited to be sharing this.

[Robert James Gabriel]

Love the design! As a long time Chrome extension design, this bring me so much joy!

Thank you and all the team for the great work. I will be sure to submit helperbird.com to the editor list.

[Jackie Han]

we’re also updating the categories available in the Chrome Web Store.

 

The new category removes "Productivity" and adds many other subclasses. This results in developers having to manually adjust a large number of existing extension's categories.

My question is if "only adjusting the category" needs to wait for review?

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[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Jackie,

We've automatically selected a new category for every extension, so hopefully you won't need to make changes in most cases.

If you do choose to, that would still need to go through review, but given the minor change I would hope that it would be approved fairly quickly.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Jackie Han]

I have 16 "Productivity" extensions, now becoming "Workflow & Planning" extensions. I hope that my adjustments to categories will not increase the workload of the reviewers too much. Before doing that, I need to carefully distinguish these new categories, some of which are similar.

[Jackie Han]

According to https://chrome-stats.com/c :

The most popular Chrome extension category is Productivity - which has 28.78% of all Chrome extensions. Most of the top extensions belong to the Productivity category. 48,328 extensions are "Productivity" extensions.

[Jackie Han]

Screenshots on the details page for a given extension are now served at significantly higher quality.

 

This is great, 1280x800 screenshots are finally displaying properly. I have confirmed that there's no need to re-upload new screenshots if the previously uploaded screenshots were already 1280x800.

On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 1:07 AM 'Oliver Dunk' via Chromium Extensions <chromium-...@chromium.org> wrote:

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[Jackie Han]

Some suggestions for new Web Store UI.

1. Make the search box more visible and bold

There are hundreds of thousands of extensions in the web store, and most people use the search function to find extensions they want. The current design does not display the search box by default. I hope the search box could display by default as before and highlight it as much as possible.

2. Show More Extensions by Developer

The new UI doesn't display "More from this developer" in the "Related" section now.

Like Apple App Store, there is a "More by developer" section and a "see all" link to all apps by this developer

On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 1:07 AM 'Oliver Dunk' via Chromium Extensions <chromium-...@chromium.org> wrote:

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[Alexander Lindsay]

New store looks clean!

I have a question about the collections that are listed in this store.

For example, the 'works with Gmail' collection: https://chromewebstore.google.com/collection/gmail_extensions

How can I get my extension included in such a collection? It fits exactly within it..

[Patrick Kettner]

Thanks Jackie!

Great feedback - Ive shared it with the store team just now

patrick

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/CAAgdh1KnzpRJhB_ZoBETBqn93JNYDqcH148ATZfmMi4edsOgkw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Browser Extenstion]

1. I do not see the field to write the review.
2. How to sort reviews by language?

[Patrick Kettner]

> 1. I do not see the field to write the review.

There is a button above the reviews, on the right hand side

However, when you click on it, youll get the following 

It will redirect you to the same item on the old Chrome Web Store. From there, under the "reviews" tab, there is a button for them

Clicking it will take you to the bottom of the page, where. youll see a place to give it a rating

Once you select a rating, the text for a review will show up

> 2. How to sort reviews by language?

I do not think that is supported, or was previously - could you elaborate on what you are wanting?

[Browser Extenstion]

[hrg...@gmail.com]

The new store doesn't show the replies to each review. Many people use the review form to ask questions or to comment about things that deserve a reply from the developer. I've had whole conversations with some users on the review section that went on for days or even weeks.

Is this feature not going to be available anymore?

If not, how can we respond to all those users who ask questions in the reviews?

[Stefan Van Damme]

Hi Chrome team,

Beautiful page. However, why are the 1-star reviews highlighted at the top (All 3 reviews) for my "Turn Off the Lights" Chrome extension? You can find it here: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/turn-off-the-lights/bfbmjmiodbnnpllbbbfblcplfjjepjdn
This is not good; they are showcasing even the older reviews that mention bad experiences and bugs that have already been fixed. This is a poor algorithm.

Should you not show the review from the latest Chrome extension version? (Compare the extension version)

Thanks,

Stefan vd

[Oliver Dunk]

Thanks all for the continued feedback!

On the reviews screenshot - are you looking for other languages? At the moment, I believe we only show reviews from your own language. I'll pass on the feedback!

hrg - I'm not sure on that one, I'll reach out to the team and try to follow-up :)

Stefan - I believe the default sorting order is "helpful", but I'm not certain exactly why they are showing up in the order they are. It does look somewhat surprising to me, again I'll try to follow-up on that.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/d16fa1c9-9614-4f83-9ac3-e93b3019afe6n%40chromium.org.

[Ian Miller]

Very exciting!  The new design looks great!  One feature that may already be accounted for that I've wanted for a long time is a way to deep link into the "write a review" feature.  A common practice we have is steering users to the CWS to write a review for the extension when they get to a part of the extension experience where we think they're excited about the product (for us, that's when they complete a shopping trip with cashback and coupon savings, we like to hit them up and ask for a rating if they haven't given us one yet).  In the existing CWS we can link to the reviews page but the user has to scroll down and find the write a review button which is asking a lot, especially if there are a lot of reviews to scroll past.  Will there be a deep link to open the write a review panel so the user can get right to that without having to search for the button?

[Browser Extenstion]

One more question: is the link to the store will be https://chromewebstore.google.com ?
If so, will the old link (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/) automatically redirect to the new domain?

[Oliver Dunk]

Ian - Thanks for the feedback! I definitely see how that would be useful - I'll pass it on. I don't think anything is set in stone yet given that feature hasn't shipped but it's good to know that it's something like that would be useful.

On the webstore URLs - during this preview things are a little different, since we only want people to see the new store once they've opted in. But I expect we will have a full redirect in place by the time this fully launches.

As a note to everyone - you can also use the "Give feedback" option in the top right menu to share feedback. That goes directly to the web store team (and they do read them!) so is preferred to some extent, but I also understand if you want to ask questions here.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Hao Nguyen]

With the new UI, can we please show the actual user count instead of rounding down? Currently, an extension with 1,999,999 users will be rounded down to 1,000,000+, which is a huge difference!

[apell...@copper.com]

I've found a bug in the search functionality.

If your extension title contains special characters, for example a ™ character, then clicking on your extension name in the search dropdown will take you to an empty search results page. You must remove the special character for the results to show.

Steps to reproduce:

1) search for "copper"

2) click the first result "Copper CRM for Gmail™"

3) remove the "™" from the search and resubmit

[Patrick Kettner]

Thanks Hao!

I'll make sure to pass on the feedback with the store team

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[Simeon Vincent]

One feature that may already be accounted for that I've wanted for a long time is a way to deep link into the "write a review" feature.  A common practice we have is steering users to the CWS to write a review for the extension when they get to a part of the extension experience where we think they're excited about the product (for us, that's when they complete a shopping trip with cashback and coupon savings, we like to hit them up and ask for a rating if they haven't given us one yet).

+1 on this request. When I talk to developers about how to promote their extensions, one of the ideas we often discuss is exactly what Ian described here. Right now I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary friction around the flow for submitting an extension review. It would be great if you could link directly to reviews using a URL like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/<name>/<ID>/reviews#write or even a dedicated URL.

I'm also very excited to see the self nomination form. One of the most common questions I get when talking to developers is about merchandising opportunities or ways to get their extension promoted in the store. I'm elated that we now have something more concrete that we can use to try to get the CWS team's attention and consideration. 

Simeon - @dotproto

incremental.software

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[Oliver Dunk]

Hi all,

Following up on a few open threads...

The new store doesn't show the replies to each review.

I confirmed with the team that we are still showing replies to reviews, but only from the developer. If you sort by Recent here you should see some: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca/reviews

Definitely interested in feedback on that, do let us know if there are concerns :)

How to sort reviews by language?

At the moment, we show reviews filtered based on your current language. If you'd like to see reviews from other languages, you can change your overall language in the store. Again, definitely interested if there's any feedback on this.

It would be great if you could link directly to reviews using a URL like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/<name>/<ID>/reviews#write or even a dedicated URL.

Noted!

I'm also very excited to see the self nomination form. One of the most common questions I get when talking to developers is about merchandising opportunities or ways to get their extension promoted in the store. I'm elated that we now have something more concrete that we can use to try to get the CWS team's attention and consideration.

Really glad to hear that - it was in direct response to those sorts of questions which we have definitely heard on our side too. This specific form won't be around forever, but I hope we can use it to demonstrate that there's interest and keep doing this going forward.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Jackie Han]

How to sort reviews by language?

At the moment, we show reviews filtered based on your current language. If you'd like to see reviews from other languages, you can change your overall language in the store. Again, definitely interested if there's any feedback on this.

Where? I can't find the place to change language on the new UI.

As developers, I must see all languages' reviews, otherwise I can't reply to them that come from all world users.

As users, some users would like to see other languages' reviews, because

1. Many users understand multiple languages.

2. There is no review for the user's language.

For example, 

• If there are 5 reviews in total, 3 of which are in English, 1 in Spanish, and 1 in Japanese, then Chinese users, French users, and German users cannot see anything.
• Users who use minority languages may not see anything. e.g. Norwegian, Serbian, Hebrew

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/CAOsQqBkc45shRken4Mc_kvemC-O6gRODVEjN3aaTUDzkcxfEjQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oliver Dunk]

Hey Jackie,

I think you would need to change your browser language at the moment. Definitely appreciate the feedback and understand the tradeoffs there, and it's definitely something we'll keep in mind.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Dima Nabok]

I confirmed with the team that we are still showing replies to reviews, but only from the developer. If you sort by Recent here you should see some: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca/reviews

Definitely interested in feedback on that, do let us know if there are concerns :)

As I see it's showing only older replies, if you sort by Recent you won't see replies on 3 latest reviews, but it's available in the old CWS for Momemnum.
Another issue is if I reply several times with updates, the old CWS shows all, the new only the latest one.

[Dima Nabok]

Where? I can't find the place to change language on the new UI.

I found a trick how to see reviews in another language in the new CWS, just add ?hl=de with a locale name to the URL https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca/reviews?hl=de

[Dima Nabok]

Great design!

However, I have several suggestions:
1. Top reviews on extension page(or sort by hellpful) are outdate. I see reviews from 2019 in my extension https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pockettube-youtube-subscr/kdmnjgijlmjgmimahnillepgcgeemffb/reviews Also it's not clear why the reviews are on top and how they were range by hellpful, it seems is not updated the list more than year.

2. [Bug] When the user updates the reviews, it's not showing on the new CWS. Example: user Grayonic 123 updated the review today, I see it in the current CWS, but is not available in the new one.

3. In my point of view reviews are underestimated in range search algorithms and on category pages. For example, if I open the page https://chromewebstore.google.com/category/extensions/productivity/communication and sort by highest rated I see all extensions with 5.0 next 4.9 next 4.8, but there are some extensions with 200+ reviews and 4.9 and 4.8 they will be lower than extension with 1 review but 5 star. I think it's not fair. The same for the search page. Currently, there is an extension that has 5M+ installs and 10 reviews, and the search algo ranges it at the top, but it looks suspicious.

4. [Bug] When you open the link https://chromewebstore.google.com/category/extensions/productivity/communication?sortBy=highestRated with [?sortBy=highestRated] scroll to the bottom and click Load more it'll not work

5. [Bug] Black lines on top and bottom on the video preview, example: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/loom-%E2%80%93-screen-recorder-sc/liecbddmkiiihnedobmlmillhodjkdmb

6. From the user's perspective I would see some collection by site. For example selected extensions for YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

7. I would see some way to discover new extensions which fast-growing, maybe "Favorites of Month" categories where you nominated the extension and shared it with the users, like Favorites of Year now. But it depends on your capacity.

8. +1 for the dedicated URL for submitting a new review. I'm really waiting for it!

Thank you for your great work!

[hrg...@gmail.com]

I confirmed with the team that we are still showing replies to reviews, but only from the developer.

This is acceptable as long as all members of the "group publisher" are allowed to reply and are identified with the "Developer" mark next to their user names. Otherwise, this new restriction will be quite problematic because the account that owns an extension is not necessarily the account that engages with users.

[Oliver Dunk]

Thanks all for the continued feedback (Dima especially!). We're continuing to pass this on to the team.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

Great 😍! This is the update we all deserve 🙏!

Especially I'm glad to finally see the screenshots in high resolution 🎉.

I have some comments, but I want to give myself a few days and give more meaningful feedback.

One quick question for now: as part of the redesign, will most of the collections be updated? Are there any chances that new good extensions will end up in old collections that have not been updated for a long time?

Also, is there a "For side panel" collection planned?

🥹

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Uladzimir,

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm not aware of any specific plans with collections, but I'll definitely pass along the suggestions. I know this is a common request which is why we launched the Editors' Picks nomination :)

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Hao Nguyen]

It would be nice if the new Web Store can support description in markdown format. Being able to create anchor links in the long summary text would be quite useful.

Also, it appears that related extensions from the same developer are not shown any more. I hope that can come back as it would be useful for a developer to promote their other extensions.

[Sachin Jain]

Hey Oliver, 

I really like the new design for Chrome Store and especially the Developer Badge when responding to queries. A couple of suggestions/feedback --

1. Can we receive an email when people post their questions/queries?

2. The ranking of extensions in the collection seems to be by the total number of Installations (or at least this looks like a major contributing factor) which creates a starvation problem for new, other high-quality extensions because they can never be featured in the collections. I believe other factors like recent reviews, the overall rating of the extension, and some random factors should also be involved when deciding the order of extensions in a collection.

For example - An extension that recently introduced malware until detected by Google can continue to remain featured in the collection because it has the most number of downloads. Secondly, an extension with very simple functionality like an Image swapper, and the custom mouse cursors will continue to be on top in the featured collection because their use-case may be very very generic while a nice high-quality extension like SEO Analyzers may not get a chance to come on the top.

3. The "See all Reviews" button is not visible upfront which is a major decision factor when installing the extension.

4. Reviews shown on the store are not the best reviews and are very old, and completely random at times. As simple as "Latest Reviews" can do the trick here.

5. The ability to submit reviews directly from within the extension UI would be super helpful just like it happens in the Play Store.

6. Can we add a sub-category "Open-Source" inside the Developer Tooling category?

I hope it helps!

[Simeon Velichkov]

Hi, I really like the new design. One thing I noticed is that now, only the header and the extension screenshots are above the fold on 1080p monitor, and then when you scroll down the summary is folded down into just 300px in height and then what follows is this giant reviews block, and so IMO it is very easy to completely miss the Overview section, especially if you have to expand it, which is an extra click. Not to mention that review excerpt in that particular case occupies almost half of the entire listing page, the folded summary contains just 9 lines of useful information, and the review block underneath it, holds 27 lines without the extra padding on all elements there.

But what's even more puzzling for me is how were those 3 reviews picked to be placed directly on the extension's listing page?

For example, I have an extension where the first review is from Jan 20, 2016 (almost 8 years ago) with no helpful flags on it, giving me 4 stars and asking for a missing feature, which is fair, but then that issue was fixed long time ago, and in fact there is a response from me underneath it from Jul 2, 2016 confirming that the issue was fixed. The second and the third review picks are a bit strange to me as well, but at least the second one has 3 out of 5 useful flags about a feature that I am most likely not going to implement ever, and instead it was somewhat alleviated by introducing another feature that got in later on. But now that sits there and it is literally the first thing you see, most likely without even looking at the full Overview section above it.

[Brian Shultz]

Hey Oliver – this new update is fantastic. The new emphasis and quality of screenshots is an awesome improvement. 

Not sure if this is the right forum to post feedback on other aspects, but one thing I noticed is that the "Add to Chrome" button can be easily missed when the browser/screen size in under a certain width. Had a frustrating moment wondering where the button went before realizing that I just needed to full screen the window. Example here: https://share.cleanshot.com/NmMMmVqw

Cheers!

Brian

On Thursday, August 24, 2023 at 10:07:32 AM UTC-7 Oliver Dunk wrote:

And to quickly follow-up - here are a few things which I suspect will be particularly interesting for everyone here on the mailing list:

• Screenshots on the details page for a given extension are now served at significantly higher quality. Thanks for the feedback on this.
• Replies to questions on the support tab now show newlines.
• When replying to a user, your response will now include a “Developer” badge beside your name.

Let us know what you think. We're really excited to be sharing this.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

I'll join too. I've already praised the team, so let's get straight to the point.

1. I agree with @Brian. While testing the new design, I was also surprised that it was practically devoid of adaptability. The minimum layout width is 1250px. This seems to be a real UX problem. Of course, we shouldn’t fight for 320px width, but at least 900px, or better yet, 640px.

2. I don’t understand why users lost access to changing language and location. Did research really show that no one used it? If so, good. But this will definitely make life more difficult for the developers who were involved in ASO.

3. It is now possible to zoom in on screenshots of products. I don't think this will be necessary or useful. But now, when I zoom in on a screenshot, I lose the ability to go to the next one in one click - this is a bad and annoying UX. I would remove this feature.

4. I don't understand how to view and respond to reviews in other languages.

5. I don’t understand why only replies from the developer are visible. On the one hand, this is good. Less motivation for spammers. But what about the situation when an extension is transferred from one account to another? Will all reviews lose their displayed replies? In addition, we never allowed managers to support accounts with the extension - now it seems that we never respond to reviews.

6. Interested to know when this design is planned to be launched as the main one?

7. Will everyone who filled out the form to be included in the Editor Choice collection receive a response?

8. What about the mobile version? At least the product page. It used to exist, and we had at least some chance of installations from mobile traffic. And now? I tried to load the mobile version of the product page and just got a redirect to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/unsupported :( 

[Alex Leonov]

Hi,

It all looks and feel great.

Functionality-wise, we've found one issue: when redirecting from the old URL, it loses the query string, including all UTM tags:

[Besart Ç.]

Hey Oliver and team,

A small UX request, but it would be fantastic for the user to scroll the product screenshots in the focused view, maybe by pressing the arrows on the keyboard. Right now you have to click in and out of each image.

Keep up the great work, loving the new look!

Besart

[Roberto Oneto]

There is a big mistake in italian translation.

Same extension, privacy section.

Someone could have a heart attack :-)

ENG

ITA

[hrg...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 7:40:12 AM UTC-3 Oliver Dunk wrote:

The new store doesn't show the replies to each review.

I confirmed with the team that we are still showing replies to reviews, but only from the developer.

Definitely interested in feedback on that, do let us know if there are concerns :)

Would it be possible, please, that the Group publisher feature is taken into account in order to allow multiple accounts to reply to reviews?

The old webstore is now automatically redirecting to the new one, so all our replies to reviews are no longer showing because we use a separate account for that (in spite of the account being in the group publisher).

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi all,

Checking back and I see there's been a lot more feedback - thanks once again. Know that we're making sure everything is seen by the Chrome Web Store team, even if we aren't able to reply to all of it.

One big change that addresses what a few of you brought up is that reviews now default to sorting by recency. We'd like to look more at that in the future but agree that "most helpful" wasn't better in its current form.

Hao - appreciate all of the feedback. These are both known requests but good to hear more interest.

Alex - I believe the preservation of query parameters when redirecting should be fixed. Let me know if you're still seeing any issues there.

Roberto - thanks for pointing that out, it's a really good catch. That should hopefully be fixed now.

hrg, Uladzimir, and Besart - appreciate the feedback on using a group publisher to reply to reviews, I'm not sure if that is something that was considered so I'll make sure to raise it - it sounds like a possible bug if it's behaving as you say. I think being able to switch screenshots (maybe with buttons, at least with the arrow keys) seems like a good idea as well. I can ask the team what they think about that.

Brian + Simeon - thanks for the feedback on the general layout. I'm not sure if we have any changes planned there but I can pass it on.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Sachin,

I wanted to reply to your questions as well. Thanks for sending so many thoughts!

Can we receive an email when people post their questions/queries?

When I spoke to the team about this last, they were open to it, but it wasn't something that was on the roadmap. I'll make sure to flag that there's additional interest.

The ranking of extensions in the collection seems to be by the total number of Installations

There are definitely other factors involved, but it's good feedback. We definitely want to keep improving the scoring there.

The "See all Reviews" button is not visible upfront which is a major decision factor when installing the extension.

Do you mind expanding on what you mean here?

The ability to submit reviews directly from within the extension UI would be super helpful just like it happens in the Play Store.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not sure we would work on that in the short term but it's an interesting idea.

Can we add a sub-category "Open-Source" inside the Developer Tooling category?

I'll pass this feedback on too.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Uladzimir,

I replied to some of your feedback in the previous email, but wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I agree with @Brian. While testing the new design, I was also surprised that it was practically devoid of adaptability. The minimum layout width is 1250px. This seems to be a real UX problem. Of course, we shouldn’t fight for 320px width, but at least 900px, or better yet, 640px.

The site is designed for desktop, but I definitely appreciate the feedback (supporting smaller windows is useful, and of course supporting all screen sizes would be great in the long run).

I don’t understand why users lost access to changing language and location. Did research really show that no one used it? If so, good. But this will definitely make life more difficult for the developers who were involved in ASO.

I'm not sure what the exact decision process was there, but I'm sure the team will be keeping an eye on feedback. Hopefully at least from your side this will be less of a problem if we solve the next question?

I don't understand how to view and respond to reviews in other languages.

This is a good question, once we've fully moved over I'm not sure what the intended flow is there. I've passed this along.

Interested to know when this design is planned to be launched as the main one?

I don't think we've announced a launch date yet.

Will everyone who filled out the form to be included in the Editor Choice collection receive a response?

We received a significant number of submissions and they were generally very high quality, so thanks to everyone for doing that.

We still need to finish off the work here but I don't expect we'll be able to respond to them individually. In many cases it would just be "we can only pick so many, but otherwise your extension looks great!". I'm also hopeful we can keep anyone not picked in mind for promotion in the future, but that's just a personal hope, I haven't spoken to the rest of the team about it.

What about the mobile version? At least the product page. It used to exist, and we had at least some chance of installations from mobile traffic. And now? I tried to load the mobile version of the product page and just got a redirect to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/unsupported

I'm not sure about this one. I'll try to follow-up.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Roberto Oneto]

Roberto - thanks for pointing that out, it's a really good catch. That should hopefully be fixed now.

I just checked and saw the issue has been fixed

Bye

[Oliver Dunk]

One more thing - I know a few of you mentioned wanting to be able to link directly to the write a review section. I'm curious to know more about exactly what would be needed there.

On the current store, you can link to /reviews and there's a button that takes you straight to the bottom of the page. I assume the concern is that users might miss this button and then be less inclined to do anything?

In that case, I assume the desire would be for users to land immediately somewhere with a text box showing?

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Hao Nguyen]

Oliver - I am doing some data comparison between the old and new UI. It appears that in some cases, the old UI may show the developer address, but the new UI does not. For example: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zksafe/nehdcpkmooagohgkdchblmnfljmnbihg vs https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/zksafe/nehdcpkmooagohgkdchblmnfljmnbihg. Is this intentional?

Also, in the old UI, an unlisted extension would have `<meta name="robots" content="noindex">` tag, whereas in the new UI, that tag does not exist, which may increase the likelihood that it may show up in the search engine. e.g., https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gopher-buddy/cgbbbjmgdpnifijconhamggjehlamcif vs https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gopher-buddy/cgbbbjmgdpnifijconhamggjehlamcif

[Alex Lashkov]

I am also interested in the collections: is there a way to somewhow apply to be included there? Folks in Edge store offer such a way, which is nice. 

Also, can the redesign somehow influence the impressions for extension due to the changes in categories? For our product, the impression count has dropped like 3x this week, which is very serious.

[Ian Miller]

+1 for submitting a review from within the extension using a standard (Google-powered) UX.  Basically, any tool that is common now for Android should be considered for Chrome extensions.  I think a lot of users are simply too busy to jump out of the extension and try to find where to leave a review in the Chrome Web Store.  Prompting the user at the right time (the magic moment when we think they just had a good interaction) with a standard UX to leave a quick rating would go a long way to increasing rating engagement for extensions.  Short of that, a deep link that we can use to get the user from the extension to the "Add a rating/review" in the Chrome Web Store would be nearly as good.  The callout today to rate the extension is too hidden, doesn't have a clear CTA and just doesn't elicit interaction.  I think a part of a page or a modal that is clearly meant for ratings and reviews that we can link to is a must-have in the CWS extension listing.

Chrome web store rating with tiny stars that look filled in (rather than ones asking you to make a selection) with no button to write a review until AFTER you click on the stars (which don't look interactive):

Android/Google Play Store rating with larger stars, not filled in (light background) and a clear "write a review" button:

-Ian

[Sachin Jain]

Thanks, Ian for supporting thoughts on the ability to submit reviews from In-app or through deep-link support.

@Oliver Please take a look at the questions to your answers below 👇

The "See all Reviews" button is not visible upfront which is a major decision factor when installing the extension.

Oliver -- Do you mind expanding on what you mean here?

Sachin -- Please check the screenshot below. "See all reviews" link is hardly visible. In the older design a lot of reviews were being shown but now only 3 reviews are shown so it becomes important to make this option better visible.

Another feedback that I have is options inside the "Developer Tools" category are not all developer tools. Looks like we have added SEO-related chrome extensions inside the developer tools as well.

Best,

Sachin

[Connor]

Thanks Chrome Team I'm loving the preview of the new store, I think it will be super useful for all involved, and I think my peers have outlined some good concerns and steps to take. I have just submitted Mobile View for Editors Choice, but regardless of outcomes I'm super excited to see what ends up on the Editors Choice list

I love extension development and plan to keep making quality extension, and thats why I've also created the largest live server for extension developers.

Happy developing and keep up the good conversations, everyone is doing a great job here.

Connor

[Oliver Dunk]

Hao - It looks like we're investigating the address fix and we've already fixed the noindex bug. Let me know if that looks resolved on your side too.

Alex - We don't have a way to apply for inclusion in specific collections at the moment, I'm afraid. We definitely know it's common feedback though and I'm hopeful we might be able to offer more there in the future. Sorry about the drop in impressions - I know we discussed this externally and I hope it is looking better for you over time.

Thanks everyone else for the continued feedback :)

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Alex Lashkov]

Oliver, thanks for the reply!

Also, I have a question about the CWS analytics dashboard. Are there any plans to develop its functionality? Like, for example, recently we've got our app published in the Miro marketplace, and their dashboard features recurring users, which is a very useful metric. Thanks!

- Alex

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

You can start by allowing us to embed our Google Analytics counter on the Chrome Store page 😂.

--

Uladzimir Yankovich,

Founder @ Manganum (manganum.app).

[Oliver Dunk]

Also, I have a question about the CWS analytics dashboard. Are there any plans to develop its functionality?

I'm not aware of any specific plans, but we definitely appreciate the feedback!

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Jackie Han]

Fix some typo in my previous email.

Since the new version of the web store is now officially launched, I need to repeat this basic function I mentioned before.

Developers must see all languages' reviews, otherwise we can't reply to all-languages users' reviews.

BTW: URL + "?hl=locale-Code" is a bad solution.

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 10:41 PM Jackie Han <han.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

Since the new version of the app store is now officially launched, I need to repeat this basic function I mentioned before.

Developers must see all languages' reviews, otherwise we can't reply to all-languages users' reviews.

BTW: ULR + "?hl=locale-Code" is not a bad solution.

On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 8:16 PM Jackie Han <han.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

How to sort reviews by language?

At the moment, we show reviews filtered based on your current language. If you'd like to see reviews from other languages, you can change your overall language in the store. Again, definitely interested if there's any feedback on this.

Where? I can't find the place to change language on the new UI.

As developers, I must see all languages' reviews, otherwise I can't reply to them that come from all world users.

As users, some users would like to see other languages' reviews, because

1. Many users understand multiple languages.

2. There is no review for the user's language.

For example, 

• If there are 5 reviews in total, 3 of which are in English, 1 in Spanish, and 1 in Japanese, then Chinese users, French users, and German users cannot see anything.
• Users who use minority languages may not see anything. e.g. Norwegian, Serbian, Hebrew

On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 6:40 PM 'Oliver Dunk' via Chromium Extensions <chromium-...@chromium.org> wrote:

Hi all,

Following up on a few open threads...

The new store doesn't show the replies to each review.

I confirmed with the team that we are still showing replies to reviews, but only from the developer. If you sort by Recent here you should see some: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca/reviews

Definitely interested in feedback on that, do let us know if there are concerns :)

How to sort reviews by language?

At the moment, we show reviews filtered based on your current language. If you'd like to see reviews from other languages, you can change your overall language in the store. Again, definitely interested if there's any feedback on this.

It would be great if you could link directly to reviews using a URL like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/<name>/<ID>/reviews#write or even a dedicated URL.

Noted!

I'm also very excited to see the self nomination form. One of the most common questions I get when talking to developers is about merchandising opportunities or ways to get their extension promoted in the store. I'm elated that we now have something more concrete that we can use to try to get the CWS team's attention and consideration.

Really glad to hear that - it was in direct response to those sorts of questions which we have definitely heard on our side too. This specific form won't be around forever, but I hope we can use it to demonstrate that there's interest and keep doing this going forward.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 12:16 AM Simeon Vincent <sim...@chromium.org> wrote:

One feature that may already be accounted for that I've wanted for a long time is a way to deep link into the "write a review" feature.  A common practice we have is steering users to the CWS to write a review for the extension when they get to a part of the extension experience where we think they're excited about the product (for us, that's when they complete a shopping trip with cashback and coupon savings, we like to hit them up and ask for a rating if they haven't given us one yet).

+1 on this request. When I talk to developers about how to promote their extensions, one of the ideas we often discuss is exactly what Ian described here. Right now I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary friction around the flow for submitting an extension review. It would be great if you could link directly to reviews using a URL like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/<name>/<ID>/reviews#write or even a dedicated URL.

I'm also very excited to see the self nomination form. One of the most common questions I get when talking to developers is about merchandising opportunities or ways to get their extension promoted in the store. I'm elated that we now have something more concrete that we can use to try to get the CWS team's attention and consideration. 

Simeon - @dotproto

incremental.software

On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 2:18 PM 'Patrick Kettner' via Chromium Extensions <chromium-...@chromium.org> wrote:

Thanks Hao!

I'll make sure to pass on the feedback with the store team

On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 1:51 PM Hao Nguyen <hao...@gmail.com> wrote:

With the new UI, can we please show the actual user count instead of rounding down? Currently, an extension with 1,999,999 users will be rounded down to 1,000,000+, which is a huge difference!

On Friday, August 25, 2023 at 10:02:12 AM UTC-5 Oliver Dunk wrote:

Ian - Thanks for the feedback! I definitely see how that would be useful - I'll pass it on. I don't think anything is set in stone yet given that feature hasn't shipped but it's good to know that it's something like that would be useful.

On the webstore URLs - during this preview things are a little different, since we only want people to see the new store once they've opted in. But I expect we will have a full redirect in place by the time this fully launches.

As a note to everyone - you can also use the "Give feedback" option in the top right menu to share feedback. That goes directly to the web store team (and they do read them!) so is preferred to some extent, but I also understand if you want to ask questions here.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 3:24 PM Browser Extenstion <browsere...@gmail.com> wrote:

One more question: is the link to the store will be https://chromewebstore.google.com ?
If so, will the old link (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/) automatically redirect to the new domain?

On Friday, August 25, 2023 at 6:10:26 PM UTC+4 Ian Miller wrote:

Very exciting!  The new design looks great!  One feature that may already be accounted for that I've wanted for a long time is a way to deep link into the "write a review" feature.  A common practice we have is steering users to the CWS to write a review for the extension when they get to a part of the extension experience where we think they're excited about the product (for us, that's when they complete a shopping trip with cashback and coupon savings, we like to hit them up and ask for a rating if they haven't given us one yet).  In the existing CWS we can link to the reviews page but the user has to scroll down and find the write a review button which is asking a lot, especially if there are a lot of reviews to scroll past.  Will there be a deep link to open the write a review panel so the user can get right to that without having to search for the button?

On Thursday, August 24, 2023 at 12:07:04 PM UTC-5 Oliver Dunk wrote:

Hi everyone,

We’re excited to share that over the next few weeks, we’ll be slowly encouraging users to try an early preview of the new Chrome Web Store we teased at Google I/O, through an opt-in banner on the existing site. See the Chrome support forum for our post sharing the details.

As developers, we know that you’re likely to want to see how your item looks ahead of time, which you can do by navigating to the new store directly: https://chromewebstore.google.com/.

One thing we’ve heard is that you’d love more opportunities to see your extensions featured on the store. Based on that, we’re opening a self-nomination form for the next few weeks. We’re hoping to pick a few extensions from this which we’ll add to the Editors’ Picks collection.

Submit your extension here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4goBOeJDSVwp7xGCZw5vORovPOBhCv_kWM-VXWDhSA0NUQg/viewform?usp=published_options

As part of this rollout, we’re also updating the categories available in the Chrome Web Store. Look out for an email with more details.

Thanks,
Oliver on behalf of Chrome Extensions DevRel

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[Browser Extenstion]

Completely agree!

Checking each language using ?hl=locale-Code is a very bad option.

Even if you assume that you receive an email about a new review:
a. You can't be 100% sure in which language it's written.
b. The developer doesn't receive notifications if there's an additional comment added to a specific review.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

I'd like to remind as well that the new Web Store is only showing replies from the extension's owner. We need that all members of the "group publisher" are allowed to reply to user reviews and are identified with the "Developer" mark next to their user names.

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi all,

Definitely still aware of the feedback on wanting to see reviews from other languages. I don't have any specific updates to share but I believe it's something the team is actively looking at to see if there's a change we can make.

For the group publisher replies and the "Developer" badge, this should be working (and I've tested in the past). There can be a delay of up to a few days at the moment because of it taking some time for data to sync up between the two stores. Do you have any examples where this is a problem after a longer period of time?

Thanks,

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Hao Nguyen]

While the Chrome Web Store team is working out a solution for showing reviews in all languages, you can use https://chrome-stats.com/ to see reviews for all languages for your extension. Simply search for your extensions there and go to the Reviews tab (for example, https://chrome-stats.com/d/jbfeongihppeenfnaofmdeikahaefljd/reviews). You will see the user reviews as well as the language it is written in, and clicking on the language link will take you to the CWS store page for that language, allowing you to reply to it if needed. You can also track your Chrome extension on Chrome-Stats to receive notification via Email / Slack when new reviews is posted.

[Jeff]

Is anyone else disappointed in the placement of the "Support" button on the Chrome Web Store redesign? It is way down at the bottom. So if an otherwise happy user has a question, they can't find the "Support" button so they write a review instead and put a 1 star rating to get attention. Even after their question is resolved the user never bothers to re-write their review with a better star rating. I think the "Support" button should be near the top like it used to be before the redesign. 

[Alexei Miagkov]

YES! Huge plus one to this. Users basically never update their reviews. Do they even get notified of developer replies? Doesn't seem like it. "Get help" should be more prominent than "Review".

On Mon, Feb 12, 2024 at 4:53 PM Jeff <jeffs...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is anyone else disappointed in the placement of the "Support" button on the Chrome Web Store redesign? It is way down at the bottom. So if an otherwise happy user has a question, they can't find the "Support" button so they write a review instead and put a 1 star rating to get attention. Even after their question is resolved the user never bothers to re-write their review with a better star rating. I think the "Support" button should be near the top like it used to be before the redesign. 

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[Oliver Dunk]

Thanks both - I've passed that feedback on to the Chrome Web Store team.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Juraj M.]

Could we also get a "Reply to review" link in the email? Or maybe "Show review" link.
Since they are often used as support request, it would save me a lot of time finding it, especially if someone edits their old review.

[Oliver Dunk]

Thanks Juraj, I've passed that on too. Definitely agree it would be nice.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Sergey]

Hello, Oliver, how can I reply to the review? 

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

Use a developer account. Previously, you could reply from any account, but now you can only reply using the account that published the extension.

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[Sergey]

Hello, I'm a developer who published this extension but can't find the reply button. I also noticed that only extensions marked "Featured" have replies from developers.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

[Sergey]

Yes, I know the button should be there, but no, I think you have a reply button because your extension has the "Featured"  badge.

[stev...@hotmail.com]

Love the new Chrome Web Store! Great work team!

The only issue I have encountered is with the web store search results as outlined in this ticket -> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/i3vaclXcOyA/m/yBISxm-YCgAJ

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

This is some nightmare. I've been looking for this review for 20 minutes and can't find it.

Please pass the required locale (?hl=xx) to the Reply button.

[Oliver Dunk]

Thanks Uladzimir. We're already tracking the general difficulty in replying to reviews in all languages and I've just updated that bug with your suggestion.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Zombie Byte]

Great work with the new UI/UX. 

For feedback, do you think we can add reCaptcha for users submitting reviews? This might help to deter some of the review services that uses bots.

[Oliver Dunk]

I can pass that on. I don't believe we have reCaptcha anywhere at the moment, but I agree it might be nice in certain places.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Zombie Byte]

Yes, it will definitely be helpful. 

We are now having issues with people providing us spam review and then offering to remove them for money. Their operation does not seem to be that sophisticated at all, they are just using  bots to create reviews. The review providing services also works in a similar way.  Adding recaptcha before review submission, and have it a little dialed up initially would shutdown many of them. At present it is too easy. Otherwise it is an endless cat and mouse game. 

Also, it might be a good idea to have a recaptcha ever before someone views the email id on chrome store page. YouTube has something similar to this in the about section before viewing the email. This way we wont get so many spam emails from services offering review and other services for chrome store 

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi all,

I just wanted to share that you can now switch to "All languages" when looking at reviews.

Thanks for the feedback and patience there, I know it was a little tricky finding reviews in the meantime.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Jeff]

Thank you for letting us know Oliver! That is great that we can see reviews in "All languages" again. Now if the "Support" button could be moved to the top of the page like it used to be then users will be able to find it.

[Jackie Han]

Thank you for bringing this feature ("All languages") back. It is not only useful for developers, but also for users.

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