Plugin/Template/Element Reviews - How can our community can improve it?

Idea
1

I was just thinking about something brought up before by @skylershelton, about how the number of reviews are lacking for plugins. Now with Templates and Elements coming soon, I think reviews will be important for us Users, especially new users, to judge the quality of a plugins/elements/templates.

I would guess that if we brainstormed a couple simple and actionable ways to implement a change around reviews then maybe the Bubble team could make it happen.
Key word being ‘actionable’, as the team has always been great to respond when we request very specific ways to solve problems.

I believe the spot where we leave a review is hard to find and is just one of many barriers for someone to leave a review. For a template you have to be in an app using the template, then it is available through one of the left tabs. I have never left a plugin review, probably because it is in the editor, and I am always in ‘Build Mode’ and don’t want to get off track writing a review (although if I want to write a negative review that is probably the spot to let out the frustration of creating)

Random idea: A notification on the main dashboard, that when clicked opens a popup to a random used Plugin/Element/Template and you can either leave the review there, or click ‘review later’
This spot would randomly cycle through the elements you’ve used so you can review them
Just a rough brainstorm here, start rough then refine… so any other ideas?

I thought of this as one of my Free templates just received a great review judging by what the user wrote, yet the star system has a rating of 0/5. And I noticed that there were no other reviews on any templates. So thanks to that first brave user :thumbsup:, hopefully others follow suit

Although this is likely a user error, this is the first template review maybe the workflows around leaving a review could be double checked? @emmanuel

2

These things take time, but we’re always happy to add/change things if that makes the process faster. One thing to keep in mind right now though is that we don’t really have a place in the app where we show plugins that people use, while we know for templates (so we offer a way to add a review at bubble.is/template-XXX).

Regarding the issue, I don’t see a bug on our end, but if you can reproduce let us know.

3

I agree - the UI for leaving reviews has a lot of friction. It makes sense, as it’s a really large module attached to the core of the platform. All things considered, it’s still a commendable integration, but there are definitely places where the idea outshines the performance.

In the vein of “nothing is truly free”, I think it’d be a healthy implementation to engage users which have publicly written and monetarily free plugins installed in their apps through nagging messages to leave a review of their experience with them.

I could visualize a couple of different ways to implement this, such as a popup in the editor upon initial app entrance or banners on the app selection screen. I think that wouldn’t be such a hassle as to anger anyone, and the benefits of having a robustly reviewed marketplace of plugins/templates outweigh the risk to give it a try, at least.

Ultimately I imagine something along these lines as a temporary solution for engagement until J&E have had time and the energy to revisit the UX for the plugin/template product.