Tips for launching extensions on Chrome Web Store?
👋 IndieHackers, I am working on a Chrome Web Extension (plug-in) – 0 experience with launching on the Chrome store. What would be your top resources and experiential tips for placing the Alfa version successfully into the store?
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Organic traffic depends on a category of your extension.
There are high-traffic categories in Store e.g. VPN, cashback, adblockers.
B2B tools have some traffic too (if they are natural in browser) - lead generation, automation for FB/Instagram/Linkedin, e-commerce scraping.
From talking with b2b companies that have chrome extensions, most of them also drive traffic from somewhere else e.g. tool for IG is reaching customers on IG.
For b2b you can rely on install stats for extensions in the same category.
As for optimization - I work on an analytic & ASO tool for chrome extensions https://extpose.com
Check out my getting started guide; it's a bit outdated but covers the topic - https://docs.extpose.com/getting-started
This is useful, Aleksey. Thank you. From your hands-on analytics experience, is the store overall getting more or less popular? What are some of the latest numbers that you think are important to determine the health of the store (i.e., #users, #apps, monthly growth)?
CWS is steadily growing, maybe 30-50% year-over-year.
Top extensions in the store are growing; a year ago ~10 extensions had 10mln+ users, now 15 extensions reached this milestone. If some top extension like uBlock Origin grows, it actually means the userbase reachable through CWS is growing.
A number of extensions is also growing. Most of them are not popular and abandoned.
8702 extensions have 10k+ installs
20240 extensions have 1k+ installs
and 147565 have less than 1k installs
30-50% is OK. That's about a similar number that I have.
Do you think it makes sense to consolidate the market through acquisitions? Or do you think if not popular and abandoned already - it doesn't make sense - google will do it at some point.
It's a viable idea to buy an extension with an existing userbase if you know how to monetize it. Many extensions in the store have no monetization and owners will be happy to sell them. If they have no users they are buried at the bottom of the ranking and don't matter.
Google enforces the privacy of extensions by restricting permission usage and other policies. Now they apply policies during review. https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/program_policies If they decide to clean the store from extensions that violate these policies it would be massive.
Also, Google will eventually rollout manifest v3 initiative https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/migrating_to_manifest_v3
Abandoned extensions will be delisted when v3 completely replaces v2.
Thanks, Aleksey. What services do you provide?
https://extpose.com - SaaS for chrome extension analytics, market research, and optimization.
I have consulting contracts too
You can contact me by email [email protected]
will do
I lunched 6 months ago a Chrome Ext for solving a very specific problem for a very small niche! on the 2k downloads only one person reported to me she found it via organic search in the store search, all people find it via the link from our website and social media.
The description for the extension contains all relevant keywords that normally help search engine to better rank it!
I have kinda feeling that most Exts can't survive if not linked to external word by links from social media.
One would conclude that you get very little to no benefits from the store. Perhaps when you increase the number of reviews or you strike a deal with the store you might get more exposure. Otherwise it seems that the website/SEM/communities/WoM would drive most of the downloads. Please share your extension here if you'd like. Thanks 🙌
As a customer, I don’t even remember last time I browsed through Chrome web store to look for products/ solutions.
Drawing customers for chrome plugin through product websites, communities may be a better option!
Makes sense Vinay. Thanks
We are in the same boat. Our Chrome Extension is not even publicly listed yet. We are just driving traffic to it through our website (once a person signs up). I am not even sure we'll try to optimize placement in the Chrome store anytime soon -- seems like a total blackbox.
Thanks Jay. Let's keep an eye on this thread hopefully IH share some wisdom with us 🦉