A great feature for any developers looking to improve their apps

Jun 21, 2012 09:51 GMT  ·  By

Google is making it easier for developers to get direct feedback from their users via the Chrome Web Store by making it possible for users to write feedback replies rather than general reviews or comments on an app. It's an obvious addition, but one that is lacking from most major app stores.

"As Chrome Web Store apps and extensions have become more popular, users have been generating a large amount of reviews and feedback for developers," Siddhartha Saha, a software engineer at Google, wrote.

"Until now, there was no way to separate a user’s review of an app’s features and quality from developer-focused feedback, such as the reporting of bugs, feature requests, and general questions," he explained the problem.

Developers have to enable the feature first. The option is available in the Chrome Web Store developer dashboard, you'll find it under "Edit your User Feedback preferences."

Google also encourages developers to let their users know that they can send direct feedback, a good idea if you have the feature enabled. It's also a good idea to have the link to the feedback page made available as prominently as possible.

With the feature enabled, users will have the option of either submitting a regular review or comment on the app, or something that should go directly to the developer.

A lot of people use the reviews and comments to ask for new features, try to get in touch with the developer or report bugs. The new option will ensure that developers will get all that feedback without having to sift through all of the regular reviews.

"We hope that this new feature will give users a better experience in reporting issues, requesting new features, and asking questions. Similarly, developers will now have a much easier forum to use to have an ongoing social conversation about their products," Google added.