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Chrome Web Store Analysis - Screencastify

I've seen a lot of great posts popping up recently where someone reviews a page (website, gumroad page, etc), so I wanted to take that similar approach and apply it Chrome Extension pages on the Chrome Web Store.

The first extension I looked at was Screencastify and there is quite a bit to learn from how they setup their page.

The full analysis can be found here: https://chromeextensionkit.com/blog/breakdown-screencastify/

Would love any feedback on the format or recommendations for future reviews!

posted to Icon for group Growth
Growth
on October 3, 2020
  1. 1

    Great stuff, thanks for sharing!
    Maybe can you take some advice how to improve my PocketTube?

    1. 2

      Awesome extension! I think your web store page is done well overall and it's great to see keyword usage in the extension title. A couple suggestions I can offer after taking a quick look are:

      • For screenshots, it may be helpful to zoom in on the feauture portion a bit and add some text beside explaining it. It's a pretty common template and it works great to show the main features off. Here's an example from Honey.
      • It might be worth re-working the first 2 sentences in the overview to summarize the extension and it's features. This part of the Overview is prime real-estate since it's more easily seen and doesn't require someone to click "Read more". For example, instead of "The best manager to group Youtube subscriptions. Make YouTube folders and sort Youtube channels. Using this Youtube extension you can create collections that seamlessly fit into YouTube layout. This is easy way to manage Youtube subscription.", you may be able to do something like "PocketTube is the easiest way to manage all your YouTube subscriptions. Create collections and sort your subscriptions effortlessly, all within YouTube's own interface."
      1. 1

        Ryan, thanks! Much appreciated!
        What service do you prefer for creating screenshots with text beside?

        1. 2

          No problem! I normally just use Sketch, but there are a ton of online tools that you could use as well, like Figma or Canva.

  2. 1

    The complexity of Chrome Extension development is usually underestimated but intensely complicated. I loved the idea behind your product @rfitz. It's trying to solve an excellent problem in the space of development.

    In case you find it interesting, you should check out my product, ruttl.com too. I have built a product on the similar lines, but for the design community.

  3. 1

    Great job! I haven't spent a ton of time analyzing my chrome extension page. Curious if you would do an analysis of it: Weather Extension

    1. 2

      I'm a developer PocketTube I've seen your extension and can give some advice:

      1. Seo title is very important for the Chrome market. I think the weather is enough simple, you can use more keywords there.
      2. I didn't find Privacy Policy. Do you have it? For some users it is important.
      3. In the right sidebar I see Language -
        English in the description on the left side I see support more language. You can add localizations using chrome.i18n You have to create file messages.json in folder _locales/locale code for some supporters languages. It could boost your installs.
        Also, I'm from Ukraine and I can help you with translate into the Ukrainian language. Send me your translation file to twitter @danatolna and I'll do it.
      4. You can make a version for Safari. Safari became a supporting web extension. I've done it in the previous week. It is easy:)
      1. 1

        Thanks for the feedback! These are great ideas.

        1. I've debated updating the title. May consider this in the future
        2. I do have a privacy policy but it may not be listed in the chrome store. I'll see if I can add it.
        3. Unfortunately the translation files are stored server-side. This is a good idea but would require a lot of work to switch.
        4. Safari would require dealing with Apple but it's on my list :)
    2. 1

      Love the extension! The page is pretty good despite not spending a ton of time on it. A couple suggestions I could offer:

      • Like @nabok mentioned, you could take advantage of the extension title to include more detail about your extension (+ potentially increase SEO). Maybe something like "Weather - Instant Updates and Detailed Forecasts" or some variant. I wrote a blog post on the topic here if you're interested in reading a bit more.
      • Rather than show the whole browser window for your screenshots, you could potentially just screenshot the feature you're detailing which would free up more room beside to explain the feature in a sentence or two. Screencastify has some good examples of this, such as this one.
      • The features list is great, but there may be some room for some optimization here. For example, some points may not be needed like "DarkSky API" (not sure if a potential user would necessarily care where the weather data comes from, but I could be completely wrong here) or "Easy to Use" (you mention it in the opening paragraph). Instead, I would try and trim the list down and make it as succinct as possible since you won't get much attention from users, so you want to make it as easy as possible for them to scan through your main features / selling points. One other thing is you could potentially group items to cut down on the overall list size as well, such as "Hourly forecast" and "7 day forecast", which could become "Hourly and 7 day forecasts".
      • Rather than link to the FAQs, I would list some of them directly on the page (ideally the most commonly asked) and place it directly under the features list. Asking a user to copy/paste the FAQ list may be a lot, so this would simplify it for them and then you could add the link underneath the questions if they want to learn more.

      Hope that helps a bit!

      1. 1

        Thank you! I'm planning to try adjusting the title to include "forecast". I think that will help SEO. I'll also clean up the description to be a bit clearer on features.

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