Formal JIRA Request for Google Analytics on Store/Listing Pages

[Toysoldier Thor]

Even though most merchants of MP have requested, begged, pleaded, asked for, screams, complained to LL Commerce Team to finally address the utterly useless Traffic / Sales reporting that is currently broken and not available on our store / listing pages, LL Commerce Team to date has completely ingored all our requests.  They have consistently pushed it as one of their lowest priorities.

I have noticed also that as important this this broken MP feature is to Merchants, I could not find a formal request to fix traffic reporting... or at least effective traffic reporting.

As such and to put it clearly and formally on LL Commerce's radar, I have created a formal JIRA to request the MP traffic Reporting be addressed and to be addressed by allownig Merchants to interface their Google Analytics to their Store / Listing pages.

If you are a Merchant of MP and would love to see the ability to use Google Analytics on your Store / Listings, please WATCH and VOTE for the JIRA I created.

 

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4291

[Toysoldier Thor]

Wow... 45 Merchants have viewed this thread and only 5 votes for improved merchant store / listings traffic reporting and analysis???

Maybe most merchants dont want improved traffic reporting and alaysis.  Or maybe most Merchants have not seen the amazing power of Google Analytics and how powerful it would be to better understand your customers on MP.

I guess the Merchant need for improve MP reporting is a myth.

[Magnet Homewood]

The first thing I thought when I saw your second post was, huh, voting? I thought voting was disabled on the jira some time ago, they can never make up their minds, can they!?

[Toysoldier Thor]

well on JIRA u now vote by WATCHING a jira

its stupid and dont know what LL would rather a person WATCH than VOTE to think its important.... but u vote by WATCHING IT.

[Sassy Romano]

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Wow... 45 Merchants have viewed this thread and only 5 votes for improved merchant store / listings traffic reporting and analysis???

Maybe most merchants dont want improved traffic reporting and alaysis.  Or maybe most Merchants have not seen the amazing power of Google Analytics and how powerful it would be to better understand your customers on MP.

I guess the Merchant need for improve MP reporting is a myth.

---

Yes Toy, I have exactly the same feelings with regard to the very long and systematic delivery delays between 12:30 and 5:30am.

When there's a group of probably 40+ in the Commerce Merchants group and similar things get mentioned, maybe 1 or 2 bother to go and sign up on the JIRA's.  It's really lame, it takes no effort.

When such apathetic behavious is exhibited by those who complain, it does make you wonder, especially when others then complain about LL's actions but are prepared to put absolutely zero effort into effecting change.

[Lasher Oh]

Voted and watched - You know it takes a mighty powerful reason to persuade me to risk my sanity with the jira interface but this is  pure common sense.

Does anyone recall  Pink tub thumping about Etsy being one of their inspirations and even directing us to the Etsy sellers guide as an example of best practice?

It's a pity that the CTLs didn't pay heed to the quality of the reporting tools that Etsy are smart enough to have installed.

^L^

 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Agree in spirit, can't vote on this simply because I'm not familiar enough with Google Analytics and how well it would work as an external tool as opposed to any other library used on LL servers, or a custom rolled solution.

Lots of Google projects also on the chopping block lately, as the company optimizes their efforts, although I seriously doubt Analytics is in danger of going away anytime soon, it appears to be one of their successful revenue generators.

Also I see costs involved for premium Analytics usage, but haven't checked into those costs to see if it looks like a realistic consideration for LL.

Sorry, just not armed well enough for this particular battle at this point.

[Ann Otoole]

I have all facebook and google domains/subdomains blocked in my hosts file so they cannot track my movements. Therefore I won't be asking for any google spyware. Sorry.

[Harm Xue]

I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy to jump in and sign up for better report tools.

The ones in place are indeed so pathetic, I'm just happy to retrieve at least the sales file (with more or less bugs depending on another deployment), and do my own report sheets.

But requesting this by using an external app like Google Analytics, I believe it's deterring a few people from voting.

If all we can get are the current reports we have, then at least, I would be quite happy with an option to reset counters (if this could be done per item, that would be awesome) and also, some way, to delete the entries of old, long forgotten items that just clutter the list.

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Ann Otoole wrote:

I have all facebook and google domains/subdomains blocked in my hosts file so they cannot track my movements. Therefore I won't be asking for any google spyware. Sorry.

---

@ ANN  LOL Seriously?  You really do?  You remind me of the boy that stuck his finger in the hole of a dike.  Unfortunately what the fable failed to mention about this story is if there is a visible hole in the dike that the boy stuck his finger into, it would be a little too late.

If you dont trust facebook (which I dont) and google for tracking your site visit, how are you blocking the countless other site trackers that use more obscure methods and are not 1/2 as trustworthy as Google?  I have a better idea for you Ann to protect your safety from site visit trackers.... UNPLUG YOUR INTERNET CABLE.

@Dartagan  I am shocked you have never used one of the internets most widely used site tracking tools.  Even LL itself uses Google Analytics to track your activities on www.secondlife.com.  Major enterprises use the free service including the company I work for now.  Why?  its free and powerful and even integrates with several of Googles other services.  I have used Google Analytics for 2 years on many of my sites and I love the tool. 

OMG... and you are suggesting that instead of LL doing what so many other CMS and ecommerce systems / sites do (that is to integrate Google Analytics into their customer's pages), you want LL's overworked and under skilled developers to create customer tracking and reporting for Marketplace???  /ME takes Dart's temp to make sure he doesnt have a fevor.

Not only is that an idea which will never be delivered with any value, but now you will further stress out Ann who will have to block the entire SECONDLIFE.COM domain because they would also start spying on her.... ROFL!!

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

It's just like any other discussion on marketing.  You're talking to like maybe 6 people who care or have any kind of motivation.  Most don't have a clue what tools like this could do to triple their income.  Nor are they going to try.

You got dead weight here.  That's probably why we don't get a real marketplace.

I voted on a Jira for CATEGORIES a while back - there were like 5 votes maybe.  And they sure as hell did not come from the people who sit in this forum all day long and bitch and moan and make other Jiras and insist that it is our civic duty to go vote on THEIR Jira.

Nope.  No teamwork here. 

FAIL.

You gotta manage on your own.

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Harm Xue wrote:

I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy to jump in and sign up for better report tools.

The ones in place are indeed so pathetic, I'm just happy to retrieve at least the sales file (with more or less bugs depending on another deployment), and do my own report sheets.

But requesting this by using an external app like Google Analytics, I believe it's deterring a few people from voting.

If all we can get are the current reports we have, then at least, I would be quite happy with an option to reset counters (if this could be done per item, that would be awesome) and also, some way, to delete the entries of old, long forgotten items that just clutter the list.

---

@Harm,

The reason I recommended Google Analytics is for many reasons:

1. Of website tracking and analytics tools/services, it is clearly the LEADER and no one else comes close to this tool  since even enterprise operations use the free version of the tool because of the power in it.  Since it is the leader, it would be the best candidate that most Merchants would already be familiar with IF they ever had an interest in site traffic analytics.
2. Knowing LL's staffing and resourcing and limited development skillset, the option of having LL create custom developed MP site tracking reports of any value is basically not a viable option.  You want proof?  Look how they improved (cough cough) the level of merchant reporting when they upgraded us from XSTREET to MP.  This is who we are dealing with at LL.   As such, asking LL to develop custom reports is not possible.
3. Brooke has already stated in the spring that she has very little interest in allocating any resources to improving reporting - her team has better things to do (like screwing up our MP transaction processing/delivery) to focus on reporting.  Brooke stated that she envisions just giving us the data and letting Merchants (those with the skills) figure out their own reports.  This benefits the technically skilled merchants but not those merchant that only know how to create and sell content.
4. Since Brooke has no plans to spend much effort on improving MP reporting then the only feasible solution is to have LL OUTSOURCE the reporting to a vendor that is the leader in this field.  Others already do it... why not LL?

 

Now, the only issue is that as much as Google Analytics would be great to better understand my MP store's traffic dynamics, I dont believe GA will be able to provide the other critical information from MP.... SALES ANALYTICS and REPORTING.  This is a set of reports that LL will have to custom write for the general MP Merchant userbase since these numbers are not captured by tracking a visitor's movements... the data is in LL's backend DB.

Until LL develops these SALES ANALYSIS reports, only those merchants with the skills and/time/resources to capture their own MP sales data will have these reports since they created it themselves.

[Toysoldier Thor]

sadly you are correct.  Its bad enough that even if you get a jira with a lot of WATCHES (i.e. LL's understanding of a VOTE as opposed to the VOTE button) that LL Commerce will ignore it anyways, but when you get so much apathy by the Merchant community to want to see change that would improve their income by improving the current MP, it just proves to LL Management like Brooke that most Merchant dont care what her team has on its priority list.  I tell her management team that "see we do know better than the merchants since they dont even know what they want"

Its sad.  But at least when it comes to MP Reporting, I tried.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Well, you can't really blame people.  You go so long without any positive news, without positive efforts, without positive direction....yeah, that's an apathy-maker.  I'm really tired of seeing the Bring back Last Names emails mixed in with all of my sales notifications every day, as well as a dozen other Jiras that did not get touched.  I'm not voting on any more unless it is absolutely crucial. 

But deal is....we shouldn't have to ask.  We shouldn't have to have a campaign to beg for votes on a tool that is basic and should already be in place.

People that go to sell in another venue probably do not know that each tool in place is a gold mine.  So they start clicking around, trying some stuff out, then they land on something that they get excited about, and figure out, and realize, holy cow, this tool is gonna make me a fortune!

But the tools are there.  Already in place.

They have that information, Toy.  They know where the site hits are coming from.

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Thank you for taking the time to submit that Jira.  It is much appreciated.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Actually I just got a TWITTER comment to my suggestion about Google Analytics being a solution for MP store/listings traffic analysis... and it made me realize that many Merchants are not aware of how Google Analytics (and countless other websitre tracking services/tolls work).

at ToysoldierThor I'm a google-a-holic, too, but giving them access to SL marketplace might be risky because that's tied to RL

 

So to anyone that has not used Google Analytics, my proposed solution to MP using GA does not involved GA intimately integrating into MP's internals or financials or backend systems.  It is not even what the computer industry calls a "SERVER SIDE" operation.  What that means is that the GA solution does not even execute on the site that its tracking. 

GA is a small insert of Client Side executing Javascript that runs on every visitor's PC that visits the page and reports back to the Google Analytics cloud what activities the visitor did on the page and as well as some basic general information about the visitor (browser type, screen resolution, visiting IP, etc.).  This might sound  shocking but this kind of code is happening on almost all sites you visit.  Javascript is used ALL THE TIME as is site tracking.

With GA, the entire conversation is between the visitor and Google.  LL's MP listing pages are only need to insert the launching GA javascript when the page is loaded.  That is the ONLY integration LL would have with Google.

Can visitors like ANN block GA from working?  Sure they can.  But you might as well pee into the ocean if your intention is to stop this form of "spying".

I will post this into the JIRA too.

 

[Ann Otoole]

I have an extensive hosts file and yes it is effective.

But you go ahead and ask for what you desire. Maybe LL will do it.

I just don't support the spyware of google and facebook and a number of their minions. Yes I really do read site source code and identify the spyware widgets and block those domains. Recently the New York Times pushers (push down) had to change it's service since so many people are blocking the previously used spam provider. Well I have the new one all blocked now too.

 

For those unaware if you see a facebook like button your movements were logged by facebook whether you have an account or not. And facebook admitted this surreptitious surveillance activity too.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Well, I'm not sure where they all get their analytics from, but wordpress, blogspot, ebay and etsy give very detailed analytics, so if someone has a problem with that they need to log off the computer for good. 

Everyone that has an SL blog already has access to all that.  If someone has a problem with that, they need to stop hopping around to all the blogs then.

LL already has the stats.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

You don't ever read your blog stats?

[Nicolette Lefevre]

If anybody besides LL would have access to the IPs of people who are visiting MP pages, then I'm STRONGLY OPPOSED to that!!!

Has everybody already forgotten the privacy implications of this? Have all (well... most) of you already forgotten the Redzone and Emerald scandals? Well, looks like it's about time to remind you of those.

To make things absolutely clear to merchants and to LL: If I ever see Google Analytics on any Marketplace page, then that will be the moment I'm gonna stop using Marketplace! It is my decision where to spend my money. And I will NOT spend my money on people who try to invade my privacy!

BTW: Ann Otoole is not the only one who has Facebook blocked in their Hosts file. All Facebook domains resolve to 127.0.0.1 on my computers. And I have Javascript disabled for all but trusted sites too. And Google is NOT trusted by me.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I doubt that anyone here is talking about collecting IP addresses.

Simple stuff like this:

a Featured Listing - 5 page hits to that product between 3pm and 3:15pm

(we're paying for those - I want a score)

how many hits to product A came from twitter

how many hits to The Store page came from a site search

how many hits to a CATEGORY (which we don't have yet) came from within your own store

which products were added to favorites

what google search terms led to your product or store

stuff like that.  almost every site gives that.  this is the only site I use that does not supply that.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

@Nicolette:

a couple points:

1) Unless you never use your internet browser, and/or you are using it and have a firewall that blocks everything known to man (like Ann seems to do), you are being watched by a Google Analytics account ALL THE TIME!!

Let me ask you a qestion?  Have you ever gone to WWW.SECONDLIFE.COM ?  I hope you have or else you would never even be a SecondLife Resident.  OOOPSIE... guess what?  LL is a GA account holder and uses GA to watch all visitor traffic on secondlife.com .  I guess you better stop going to secondlife.

2)  As already mentioned, if you are so against basically being traffic watched by a GA account, then you have the full rights to do exactly what Ann did.  Block all traffic to GOOGLE.COM.  I think that is silly but do it.

3)  What Google or the countless other website tracking services do with IP address is nothing like what REDZONE used it for.  GA uses IP address capturing to provide GENERAL source of visitor tracking - i.e. how many visitors are from New York?  Your IP address is not used to identify you as a person.  This is not possible unless someone underhanded (like REDZONE was) uses your specific address and combines it with your activity to personalize it.  If you have never used GA, you will see that the tracking has nothing to do with "I know that IP address X is = to Nicolette Lefevre".

Please do not compare GA to a man in the basement of his home developing code like REDZONE with the primary objective of identifying you as a person and then selling it off to others as a database. 

That is pure fear mongering.

[Nicolette Lefevre]

You really don't seem to get it, do you? Let me explain...

Avatar XYZ views an obscure product offered by merchant ABC on Marketplace. So obscure in fact that XYZ is the only person on that day to watch that page. Even further, XYZ buys that product. Now merchant ABC has the name of avatar XYZ in his/her transaction log. And with Google Analytics merchant ABC would also have the IP-adress of XYZ.

I dont like this scenario. It can be abused. And that means it WILL be abused! I agree with you that most merchants would not abuse this. But it only takes ONE bad guy.

Second Life relies A LOT on the fact that avatars can't be traced back to their RL identities. If that separation breaks down it will hurt SL deeply.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I don't think that YOU get it.

We are not talking avatar names here.

I fought Redzone hours a day for weeks on end, so I take offense at you flying off the handle without proper information here, and equating merchants who spend a significant amount of money here to some kind of griefer dudes. MANY merchants fought that daily at significant time expense to try to protect people.

Chill.  We're not talking about tracking avatar names or IP addresses.

If you have that much fear - then you need to log the Internet for good, or at least do some serious reading up on what goes on out there.  And I'm not talking about Second Life.  THE  INTERNET.

[Toysoldier Thor]

 

---

Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

I don't think that YOU get it.

We are not talking avatar names here.

I fought Redzone hours a day for weeks on end, so I take offense at you flying off the handle without proper information here, and equating merchants who spend a significant amount of money here to some kind of griefer dudes. MANY merchants fought that daily at significant time expense to try to protect people.

Chill.  We're not talking about tracking avatar names or IP addresses.

If you have that much fear - then you need to log the Internet for good, or at least do some serious reading up on what goes on out there.  And I'm not talking about Second Life.  THE  INTERNET.

---

I could not have said it any better.  Nicolette, you dont get it.

Like Mickey I was a HUGE ACTIVE opponent of Redzone.  I had private LL Sr. Management discussions on the critical danger of RedZone.  I even lost a couple long term SL friend because of my opposition to REDZONE vs their love and use of it.

I am also a RL Information Systems Architect with a specialty in networks and security and I am also one that takes anonymity of my RL identity very serious.  I know what REDZONE did and I know how Google Analytics works.

Your AVATAR identity has ZERO interaction with what Google Analytics tracks (and what a GA account holder can use the data for).

Trust me when I say that your concepts of GA and comparing it to anything close to Redzone are not valid in any way.

But if you are that scared of Google Analytics.... stop posting here and stop using the secondlife.com website... because you are being tracked by LL via Google Analytics NOW!