There is a big push to focus on mobile experiences nowadays and that is all well and good, but desktops and laptops are not dead yet. Most people who work in an office, spend the majority of their time on one of those devices. One of the ways to reach these users is by building tools(a chrome extension) they can use from the most popular browser in the world(source), Google Chrome.

That’s why today we’ll go over some of the reasons you should consider developing a Chrome Extension for your business or as a hobby.

1- Chrome extensions can increase user engagement

Let’s look at an example: You build a website that helps people browse through multiple online clothing stores to find the cheapest deals.

When your user finds a deal that they like they can click through and go purchase that item.

You could create a browser extension that checks if the user is on a purchasing page for a competitor’s website, compares the price of the item they are about to buy and gives them a notification saying that they can buy the same item cheaper, if they do it through your service.

That example shows how you can provide value to the user even after they have left your website and how you can keep them engaged with your product. Essentially allowing you to communicate with your users at the moment where they might be making the switch to a competitor’s service.

Of course this can be very annoying for your users if misused, so you will have to pay attention to how the notification is delivered and make sure that it doesn’t feel creepy or off-putting.

2- Google Chrome’s market share

The second reason why you should develop a chrome extension is the fact that the browser has the largest market share(source) when compared to its competitors, which means that you will have access to over 2 billion(source) people. This means that most people that you will be marketing your products to, will be Google Chrome users.

Even with the large amount of users, the Google Chrome Web Store is still not as polished as Google’s Play Store for the Android Operating System, which to me sounds like a great opportunity to establish your products on that platform.

3- Development technology

The third and final reason has to do with the technologies that a developer can use to build a chrome extension.

Google has opted to essentially make a chrome extension be as close to a webpage as possible, which means that any web developer can jump in and build a chrome extension using their favourite front-end development tools, such as JavaScript, VueJS, ReactJS and more.

This will save you time and money, especially if you have already developed a website or know people who can develop a website.

All in all, having a companion chrome extension for your service can be a great way to keep users engaged and make sure that they return to your service.

You might be wondering how to get started with building your very own chrome extension and after having gone through that process several times, I decided to write a guide on how to easily get started with it.

Thanks for reading

– Gásten Sauzande