As I was preparing to deploy the new version, I noticed I should replace the screenshot on the Chrome Store because the UI had changed with new buttons and functionality. The screenshot should include the browser window, without showing some of the other extensions I use. So in order to capture the right shot, I decided to uninstall a couple of extensions.

As soon as I uninstalled Grammarly (awesome one, btw), I noticed that I was redirected to a web page with a form that asked me why I decided to give up on using it. Now: that was pretty clever, I thought.

If a user is uninstalling something, for whatever reason, that moment is super precious and it is the best time to collect feedback, bug reports or general user views on the product. It is the precise moment the user is not satisfied with the current solution or thinks it doesn’t meet their needs, so putting them in touch with developers at that point is a very smart choice.

Upon uninstalling Grammarly, the user is redirected to a form and is asked to provide feedback

Grammarly's uninstall form was simple, yet personal and easy to fill out. It showed users that the team cares about their individual experience and gave users a chance to express their reasons or frustration. It allowed them to be heard. Well done!

It took me less than 30 seconds of googling to figure out that setting up a URL to be opened when uninstalling Toby was technically quite simple. All I had to do was add one line of code to my extension:

chrome.runtime.setUninstallURL("http://myURLhere.com");

Of course, I would also have to create the page and the form itself, but that'd be super straightforward.

So I made the best decision of the day: I decided to create a similar form for Toby and include it on that release. It wasn’t fancy or anything, but if users chose to remove the new version of Toby, they’d see a page telling them that we’re deeply sad to see them leaving and asking for feedback. They could then write a quick message, optionally add their name and email, and every entry to the web form would immediately be sent to my email inbox. Pretty neat, eh?

When users uninstall Toby, they see this form.

I hoped that the form would be helpful to understand user reasons and behavior, but obviously I didn't want it to be used much, as I prefer to see users installing Toby rather than getting rid of it. After pushing the form to the site, I was confident everything was ready for the new update. I had tested the new version a million times and I was eager to use it myself with my own Toby lists. It seemed like all was good to go and it'd be another success.