Google Apps Marketplace Gives ISVs, Developers More Voice

Cloud ISVs, integrators and app developers can now respond to customer questions and comments in the Google Apps Marketplace as part of a sweeping update bent on improving customer engagement and discovery.

Application developers can now respond and engage with customers. Google billed the new comment feature as a way for ISVs and developers to gain insight into problems customers are having and to get ideas for and has out new features.

"It's no secret that engaging your customers and responding to their feedback is critical to success," wrote Steven Bazyl, Developer Advocate for Google Apps and the Google Apps Marketplace, in a blog post highlighting the Apps Marketplace updates. "It's now possible to engage in conversations with customers based on comments and reviews for your app in the marketplace."

Along with the engagement enhancements, Google also added a new feature called rich application snippets to the Google Apps Marketplace, which Google launched in March 2010. Rich snippets were recently launched for applications, which give users enhancements search results for applications from marketplaces like the Android Market and others. The snippets, which are basically short summaries, give insight into the application and let the users determine if the application is what they were looking for. Bazyl wrote that Marketplace applications will soon appear as rich snippets with ratings and pricing details.

Lastly, Google introduced new home pages for each application category in the Marketplace, which feature the top installed and newest apps for that specific category. For example, the home page for customer management applications features the top installed customer management apps in the main body of the page and the top new apps in a box on the right-hand side.