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