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Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

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Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#181

Post by FalconSensei »

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…

I agree with you on the importance of GA for the e-Commerce. But you shouldn't actively prevent users from buying things because GA is not not working (in that case, because of uBlock).

Because of the pandemic, I go to stores wearing a mask. That might prevent me being identified by the cameras (IDK), but the cashiers still sell to me.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#182

Post by Beldin »

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…

No.

The standard web analytics tools of the late 90s basically parsed the http log. Even those will give you info equivalent to "looking through cameras".

You might want GA, you might even need it, but you're absolutely not blind without it unless you choose to be so.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#183

Post by FalconSensei »

suprfsat wrote: post #11
tyingq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that, though if I'm TeeSpring, I'd fix it anyway. It's silly to throw out incoming business. I assume the same thing would happen if there were a brief GA outage.

If GA is unreachable then window.ga wouldn't be defined. The author is running an extension that specifically injects code to make window.ga into something unexpected, and then complaining about it.

Doesn't matter. Anything that is not the main goal (in that case, the checkout process) should be isolated and not break it.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#185

Post by npsimons »

NoGravitas wrote: post #110

IMO, this points out the inherent and unresolveable contradiction between browsers being a user-agent, and browsers being a precisely-specified execution environment for arbitrary applications. A browser that is built to operate in the interests of its user will not run code that is harmful to them, whether that's code to track them, code to mine bitcoin, or code to display advertisements. On the other hand, a browse…

> The web platform standard as we know it essentially specifies that the browser belongs to the website operator (within some sandboxing guarantees), not to the browser user.

And that is precisely the problem. Once website operators get it through their thick heads that the browser is user property, not theirs, things might start to improve.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#186

Post by pseudalopex »

sofixa wrote: post #174
LaGrange wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tim…

You can see those things with just server logs.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#187

Post by nybble41 »

IvanK_net wrote: post #161
tux3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do not consider a browser with site-modifying extensions to be a standard web browser What do you consider a standard web browser? If someone ships a browser with Tracking Protection (like Firefox), or with NoScript preinstalled (like Tor Browser), or with another adblocker preinstalled, is that a standard browser because the user didn't modify it? Or is it based on the number of user. Is your standard browser rea…

A standard web browser is a browser, which runs a website according to web standards. If an extension e.g. replaces every image in a webpage with the image of Bill Gates, it is not a standard browser in my opinion, and users should not report it to me as a bug in my website.

The web standards leave quite a bit up to the implementation. Support for scripting is completely optional, for example; a compliant browser is not obligated to load or run your JavaScript. Or to render images, for that matter—the standards do not exclude screen readers. If your site is unusable when scripts are disabled it's your site which is non-compliant, not the user agent. On general robustness grounds you would do well to ensure that your site continues to operate properly even when third-party resources are unavailable, including Google Analytics. After all, the script could fail to load because the server is down and not because it's being blocked by an extension.

Certainly it's not a bug (on your part) that the user agent rendered the page as the user directed, but that isn't the actual complaint. The issue is that the page is over-complicated and fragile, proving unfit for purpose when faced with the slightest deviation from the default behavior of the top two or three most popular web browsers.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#188

Post by MomoXenosaga »

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 have a backup browser for this. My main browser is locked down so tight it would take me ages to disable all the protections.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#189

Post by LaGrange »

sofixa wrote: post #174
LaGrange wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tim…

I get the gist, you believe you’re so bad at running a shop and/or writing you can’t survive without creeping on people.

Also, look at both of your examples. They’re bad. They’re both best replied to with that diagram of holes on a WW2 airplane.

Re: Ad block shouldn't break your checkout

#190

Post by jccooper »

mjevans wrote: post #136
vinceguidry wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No excuse for breaking the website with the tracking though. NULL is a valid field in databases for good reason.

It checks null. It doesn't check for some nonsense thing inserted by a third party.
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