lehtu.github.io a blog by lehtu

ADHD Reader: Feedback is Crucial

2023-08-18

It's about a year now since I published ADHD Reader, a chrome extension, to Chrome webstore. First feedback from the users I got via webstore reviews, but other than that I had no idea why so many has removed the extension, nor why some of still keeps using it.

Webstore Reviews

At first I got amazing reviews in Chrome webstore, eventhough there were several bugs, still kind users left a review with 4-5 stars and they wrote in the review bug reports, feature requests and other feedback. Some just thanked me or were amazed how they are able to read websites now! That feelings was so amazing I must say.

After first update I made some changes and fixed some bugs, installations went high, but so did uninstallions. I have been getting even 1 star reviews in the last few months. The update was a risk, I knew it, but it took a while before it affected to the reviews.

ps: I made bad technical decision in the first update and that's causing half of the problems. But maybe I'll write more about that later.

One of the problems is that people are giving the feedback in reviews, and all new users will see those in the webstore. And not all reviews are that verbose as one would hope.

People Love ADHD Reader

I didn't add an easy way to connect me in the extension nor the website, or the youtube video. Still, some really nice people, users of ADHD Reader found me via Twitter and Instagram and thanked me in DM. Some asked new features and I have seen nice public posts also in social media.

Without Feedback You Are Blind

This could have been the name of this post. I have been developing ADHD Reader for almost a year, without getting much feedback of the reasons why people removes it. So I'm pretty much being in the guessing game here about what users want, what is wrong and what needs to be changed and which feature to add. So instead of being blind and getting to know what my users want: I decided to add feedback forms!

The Feedback Form(s)

As a first thing I decided that there needs to be a way for users to report bugs, and request new features. So I created a Google Form and added "report a bug" link in the extension as shown below:

ADHD Reader Feedback Form Header Image

What comes to this the actual form, I made a friendly header image for it with Canva and in the form I have only one textarea: Feedback. There is also a long text about why feedback is important to me and more background about who I am and how I would appreciate the feedback. Header image shown below:

ADHD Reader Feedback Form Header Image

On top of that I have been curious of the reason people are uninstalling, or removing the extension from their browsers. There is a feature in Chrome that if user removes an extension, you can open a website for the user afterwards. Spesifically for getting feedback!

So I made another form in Google Forms to be shown after someone has removed the extension. Here is the message in the form:

Hey you, I'm truly sorry to see you go! I know there can be multiple reasons for removing this extension from your browser, but without feedback I can only guess the reasons. It would be highly appreciated if you could share your reason with me <3

And here is the form's header image:

ADHD Reader Uninstall Form Header Image

Results

After two weeks adding the feedback and the uninstall forms, I couldn't be happier! While writing this my extension has 16K users, and just in two weeks I have got 3 feature requests/bug reports and 45 answers to my uninstallation form!

Now I actually know why people are removing it, and I can do something for that.