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Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

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Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#171

Post by DigitallyFidget »

waynesonfire wrote: post #69
barrkel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about a checkout. We're at the end of the sales funnel, where the monetary exchange is finalized, the deal is sealed, the value delivered. Breaking this based on an ad blocker just loses you money.

> Breaking this based on an ad blocker just loses you money. That's false. Similar thinking to how the MPAA said that downloading a MP3 is a lost sale. There was never a sale to begin with, the user is not interested in a purchase regardless of whether the pirated content is available. Here, the user will just go through the checkout again in a browser without ab-block or disable it. Why would they suddenly not need…

This is so horrendously wrong. I've experienced this on many different online retailers. I don't suddenly not want/need the product, I just go elsewhere. If a physical store I go to has their checkout system go down, I'll go elsewhere. Online isn't an exception to me, prior to this article, I NEVER realized that it was a possibility that my adblock was the cause. I just went to a retailer that didn't have a broken checkout. Going elsewhere is a more simple and easy fix than troubleshooting "WTF is wrong with this site?".

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#172

Post by ohyeshedid »

IvanK_net wrote: post #160
IvanK_net wrote: post #17

I am an author of a photo editor https://www.Photopea.com . Whenever someone reports a bug to me, I ask them if they use any site-modifying extensions. If they do, I ignore them completely, even if they wrote a long, detailed report. Web authors make websites for standard web browsers. I do not consider a browser with site-modifying extensions to be a standard web browser, and it is not my job to test my website with…

An update: almost nobody pays for Photopea, and all my reports are from users who use it for free. I fixed over 3000 issues so far, some took minutes, others took weeks: https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%... A "popular" issue is, that people use an extension, which renames files saved by Photopea to .TXT. It is reported several times a week and every time, I tell people to disable an extensi…

How does having GA integrated into your sales flow prevent these situations from happening?

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#173

Post by inetknght »

shadowgovt wrote: post #104
rchaud wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not on TeeSpring, that's on Ublock Origin, which replaces the GA object with a dummy. The user is running code on their local machine that breaks his/her own ability to complete the sale.

And practically speaking, the back-stop is that if uBlock Origin causes too many high-profile websites to break, it'll get a reputation for degrading user experience and fewer users will install it. When two independently-owned systems on the web break each other, "who needs to fix their stuff" is a question more of social networks and business politics than technology. TeeSpring's "fix" could be to pop a banner that…

> TeeSpring's "fix" could be to pop a banner that says "WARNING: uBlock Origin breaks this site and we can't test for that."

That'd be great. Then I, as a user of uBlock Origin, can nope-out of the site before wasting too much of my time and the site's resources.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#174

Post by sofixa »

LaGrange wrote: post #103
sofixa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm about to give you money. That's the only 'analytic' you should care about Yeah, but who are you? Are you an impulse buyer? Returning? Did you spend an hour on the product page? Did you jump between 20 different product pages? You can't deny that this kind of analytics can be very useful for user conversion and website design. And the site in question tries to do the proper thing, checking if GA works before try…

> Yeah, but who are you? I am none of your business.

You, personally, are not. You, one of a cohort, kind of are.

If i run an e-commerce site, and see the vast majority of my users, but the minority of those that buy stuff, are on mobile and from India, maybe i need to optimise my site for mobile and lower-speed connections? Maybe something is wrong with my payment for specific currencies?

If i run a blog, ans the majority of my viewers come from France, maybe it's time i start writing localised content in French?

You get the gist.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#175

Post by KeepFlying »

rchaud wrote: post #91
ookware wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but all of that tracking is pointless if I can't actually complete the sale

That's not on TeeSpring, that's on Ublock Origin, which replaces the GA object with a dummy. The user is running code on their local machine that breaks his/her own ability to complete the sale.

That's on the site for requiring tracking to be successful in order to take my money.

They shouldn't require tracking to succeed in order for me to buy the product. If they want tracking, sure. But be resistant to it erroring out. Don't let errors in 3rd party tools prevent your user from getting their core goals completed.

The same goes for client apps. Don't crash the app if it fails to log to a file. Don't crash the app if it can't sync your cache. Etc, etc. Don't let these unnecessary conveniences get in the users way.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#176

Post by KeepFlying »

jfengel wrote: post #149
LaGrange wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, but who are you? I am none of your business.

If you're trying to buy from me, who you are is literally my business.

What I buy from you is your business. The information I give you to complete my transaction is your business.

Who I am is not.

You don't need to know if I have kids, have a disease, my age, my race, my gender. You don't need to know anything. Sure that information would help you make a better experience for me, I get that. But that's up to me. If I want a better experience, allow me to provide that information in exchange for the benefits that information gains me. But peeking over my shoulder as I walk through your store so that you can overanalyze everything I do isn't okay.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#178

Post by benhurmarcel »

dawnerd wrote: post #162
shadowgovt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the invasive part that the data is going to GA or that the failure-to-close-sale is explicitly being logged at all?

abandoned carts are pretty commonly stored in a database so a followup email can be fired off later in the way. You don't need GA for this.

I hate when they do that. Obviously if I've abandoned the cart I had a reason for it, most likely the shipping fee is too high. If you haven't changed it don't spam me.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#179

Post by rascul »

vinceguidry wrote: post #87
wai1234 wrote: post #30

Your checkout shouldn't trigger ad block. Stop slavishly bowing to GA everywhere. I'm about to give you money. That's the only 'analytic' you should care about. I'm tired of being treated as little more than a data cow, always ready for milking. Just. Stop. To the person who ignores people who complain because their 'non-standard' browsers fail on their site, why do you have a site if you don't care about your users…

I worked for an e-commerce outfit for several years. Let me tell you they don't have massive budgets to use for R&D. Every last one of them uses off-the-shelf solutions, they have to, because they can't afford to pay a programmer to customize one for them. Their marketing teams work around the limitations of the software. And they'd be absolutely blind without GA. There's no magic window into customer behavior. If yo…

There might be other solutions besides Google, though. I'm not knowledgeable in the field but Matomo [0] (used to be Piwik) might be interesting, and there's likely other options which might be better in some ways.

[0] https://matomo.org/

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#180

Post by FalconSensei »

rchaud wrote: post #91
ookware wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but all of that tracking is pointless if I can't actually complete the sale

That's not on TeeSpring, that's on Ublock Origin, which replaces the GA object with a dummy. The user is running code on their local machine that breaks his/her own ability to complete the sale.

The checkout shouldn't rely on GA.

Tracking should rely on the tracking service, not the checkout process

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