5 ms·

The real problem with this is from the merchant side of things. This bot generates thousands of "Abandoned Carts" on one of our sites... thousands... We send

by Alupis 6y ago

The real problem with this is from the merchant side of things. This bot generates thousands of "Abandoned Carts" on one of our sites... thousands... We send cart reminders to Abandoned Carts after a few days, sometimes with a coupon offer to complete checkout. This bot is responsible for thousands of bounced emails each week, which impacts our metrics with Mandrill among other things. Maybe we shouldn't care, but it's sloppy and ruins all sorts of stats we keep track of regarding cart abandonment rates, recapture rates and more.

px1999 6y ago
Do your users consent to contact before you send them reminders or coupons? If not, you've earned your bounce rate.
- Alupis 6y ago
  Of course we have consent. Not sure what kind of question that is? Violate CAN-SPAM Act and risk a $16,000 fine per instance? No legit business is going to do that. Just ask Papa Johns how painful those fines/settlements can be[1]. [1] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/4146-papa-john-s-agrees-to-16-5m-text-spam-class-action-settlement/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...
cortesoft 6y ago
I personally find the 'email abandoned carts' behavior to be a dark pattern
- Alupis 6y ago
  Dark pattern or not, it's super effective - particularly when accompanied with a coupon ;) Besides, the user is opting-in to receiving these emails. They don't have to provide an email address - so some are probably playing the game and seeing if they get a coupon or not. As an aside - if the internet worked the way SV hipster brogrammers thought it should work, nobody would use it. Yes, ads are crazy effective - you can ignore or block them, we don't care because enough people don't block them and are happy to click. Yes, emails are crazy effective - you can ignore or opt-out or never opt-in, we don't care, you just cost us money if you're not engaged anyway so we'd rather you not be on our mailing list.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    So you are saying these bot accounts have opted in to receiving emails? You don't validate the email when someone signs up?
    - Alupis 6y ago
      The site terms and conditions are displayed very publicaly and accessible to anyone who cares to read them. By entering your email address you are opting-in for transaction related emails, including new order confirmations, shipment notifications, and yes cart reminders. It's spelled out for you. It's the same for almost every ecommerce site. That's different than marketing emails, which require a separate explicit opt-in - ie. the user has to go and type their email address into another form and click "Sign up". It doesn't get any more transparent than that. Don't call something a dark pattern just because you can't be bothered to understand what you're consenting to when using someone else's website and start entering information like your email address or more. That's entirely on you.
      - cortesoft 6y ago
        I am not sure what your conception of a dark pattern is, but the idea that adding something to a TOS means it can't be a dark pattern is simply false. The whole concept of a dark pattern is about UX choices that lead people to agree to things that they don't actually want; it isn't about whether you break your TOS or not. I am saying, I think that if you asked people point blank "do you want websites to email you reminders if you leave something in the cart?", most people (myself included) would say, "no, I don't want to get that email" You can put whatever you want in the TOS, but it doesn't mean users like it, and a user agreeing to something doesn't mean they like all the things they are agreeing to. Whether it is "on me" or not, it is still a dark pattern. Also, as a user entering my email, I am not promising you that I will always accept email to that address from you. If you try to send me email and I reject it, that is 'on you' to deal with what that rejection does to your spam scores.
        Alupis 6y ago
SquareWheel 6y ago
>We send cart reminders to Abandoned Carts after a few days, sometimes with a coupon offer to complete checkout. I consider this spammy behaviour, and mark the emails as such. I can only hope this discourages such practices in the future.
- Alupis 6y ago
  It doesn't. If you mark it as Spam through most email programs, it's reported to the sender (Mandrill in our case) and Mandrill automatically black-lists your email address so we don't continue to send to someone that doesn't want the emails. That's a win-win.
  - matchbok 6y ago
    Still an annoying and anti-consumer practice. Another "growth marketing" tactic that doesn't take into account the number of people who never visit that site again because of the spammy stuff.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      The overwhelming majority of folks aren't so principled as to black-ball a website they like, selling products they like, from brands they like, and prices they like all because they received a cart reminder email with a special coupon inside. Maybe you are? Just don't project that onto everyone else.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
malux85 6y ago
Can’t you useragent sniff the bot and cut it off? If u want help coding this or advice happy to help (for free)
- Alupis 6y ago
  If you cut it off, you get penalized in Google Merchant Tools, and possibly have your product feed suppressed, which will dramatically impact your search visibility for both text and product searches. It can also impact your Google Ads if you link that with your product feed, and more. So, effectively, no you cannot cut this bot off. To make it worse, the bot doesn't always follow the same pattern. Sometimes slightly different names, addresses, etc. We initially thought it was fraud attempts, but none of them actually attempt a checkout. They just enter all their info on the checkout page, get the final quote, and bail. It would have been nice if Google told people about this instead of it just happening. Or allowed you to schedule a time slot for it to do what it's going to do.
  - dzmien 6y ago
    I wonder why Google didn't include a "cleanup" routine that empties the shopping cart after the data is collected. It seems like it would be a trivial thing to do, unless I am missing something. I guess the answer is because it would not benefit them in any way.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      We'd still have an abandoned cart, since the session was created and held some sort of data - but it would be far less disruptive for sure. Empty Abandoned Carts are useless anyway (for stats and other things - we track bounce rates in other ways), so that would be a large improvement from what is going on right now.
  - Felk 6y ago
    It sounds like you interpreted malux85 suggestion as cutting the bot off from putting things in the cart altogether. What I understood is that, given it's recognizable by user agent, those carts can be marked as created by a bot to exclude it from statistics and reminder mails only.
joegibbs 6y ago
What kind of emails does the bot use?
- Alupis 6y ago
  johnsmithus95@gmail.com john.smithus74@gmail.com johnsmith.us43@gmail.com and more variations...

by Alupis 6y ago

px1999 6y ago

Do your users consent to contact before you send them reminders or coupons? If not, you've earned your bounce rate.

Alupis 6y ago
Of course we have consent. Not sure what kind of question that is? Violate CAN-SPAM Act and risk a $16,000 fine per instance? No legit business is going to do that. Just ask Papa Johns how painful those fines/settlements can be[1]. [1] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/4146-papa-john-s-agrees-to-16-5m-text-spam-class-action-settlement/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...

cortesoft 6y ago

I personally find the 'email abandoned carts' behavior to be a dark pattern

Alupis 6y ago
Dark pattern or not, it's super effective - particularly when accompanied with a coupon ;) Besides, the user is opting-in to receiving these emails. They don't have to provide an email address - so some are probably playing the game and seeing if they get a coupon or not. As an aside - if the internet worked the way SV hipster brogrammers thought it should work, nobody would use it. Yes, ads are crazy effective - you can ignore or block them, we don't care because enough people don't block them and are happy to click. Yes, emails are crazy effective - you can ignore or opt-out or never opt-in, we don't care, you just cost us money if you're not engaged anyway so we'd rather you not be on our mailing list.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  So you are saying these bot accounts have opted in to receiving emails? You don't validate the email when someone signs up?
  - Alupis 6y ago
    The site terms and conditions are displayed very publicaly and accessible to anyone who cares to read them. By entering your email address you are opting-in for transaction related emails, including new order confirmations, shipment notifications, and yes cart reminders. It's spelled out for you. It's the same for almost every ecommerce site. That's different than marketing emails, which require a separate explicit opt-in - ie. the user has to go and type their email address into another form and click "Sign up". It doesn't get any more transparent than that. Don't call something a dark pattern just because you can't be bothered to understand what you're consenting to when using someone else's website and start entering information like your email address or more. That's entirely on you.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      I am not sure what your conception of a dark pattern is, but the idea that adding something to a TOS means it can't be a dark pattern is simply false. The whole concept of a dark pattern is about UX choices that lead people to agree to things that they don't actually want; it isn't about whether you break your TOS or not. I am saying, I think that if you asked people point blank "do you want websites to email you reminders if you leave something in the cart?", most people (myself included) would say, "no, I don't want to get that email" You can put whatever you want in the TOS, but it doesn't mean users like it, and a user agreeing to something doesn't mean they like all the things they are agreeing to. Whether it is "on me" or not, it is still a dark pattern. Also, as a user entering my email, I am not promising you that I will always accept email to that address from you. If you try to send me email and I reject it, that is 'on you' to deal with what that rejection does to your spam scores.
      - Alupis 6y ago

SquareWheel 6y ago

>We send cart reminders to Abandoned Carts after a few days, sometimes with a coupon offer to complete checkout. I consider this spammy behaviour, and mark the emails as such. I can only hope this discourages such practices in the future.

Alupis 6y ago
It doesn't. If you mark it as Spam through most email programs, it's reported to the sender (Mandrill in our case) and Mandrill automatically black-lists your email address so we don't continue to send to someone that doesn't want the emails. That's a win-win.
- matchbok 6y ago
  Still an annoying and anti-consumer practice. Another "growth marketing" tactic that doesn't take into account the number of people who never visit that site again because of the spammy stuff.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    The overwhelming majority of folks aren't so principled as to black-ball a website they like, selling products they like, from brands they like, and prices they like all because they received a cart reminder email with a special coupon inside. Maybe you are? Just don't project that onto everyone else.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

malux85 6y ago

Can’t you useragent sniff the bot and cut it off? If u want help coding this or advice happy to help (for free)

Alupis 6y ago
If you cut it off, you get penalized in Google Merchant Tools, and possibly have your product feed suppressed, which will dramatically impact your search visibility for both text and product searches. It can also impact your Google Ads if you link that with your product feed, and more. So, effectively, no you cannot cut this bot off. To make it worse, the bot doesn't always follow the same pattern. Sometimes slightly different names, addresses, etc. We initially thought it was fraud attempts, but none of them actually attempt a checkout. They just enter all their info on the checkout page, get the final quote, and bail. It would have been nice if Google told people about this instead of it just happening. Or allowed you to schedule a time slot for it to do what it's going to do.
- dzmien 6y ago
  I wonder why Google didn't include a "cleanup" routine that empties the shopping cart after the data is collected. It seems like it would be a trivial thing to do, unless I am missing something. I guess the answer is because it would not benefit them in any way.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    We'd still have an abandoned cart, since the session was created and held some sort of data - but it would be far less disruptive for sure. Empty Abandoned Carts are useless anyway (for stats and other things - we track bounce rates in other ways), so that would be a large improvement from what is going on right now.
- Felk 6y ago
  It sounds like you interpreted malux85 suggestion as cutting the bot off from putting things in the cart altogether. What I understood is that, given it's recognizable by user agent, those carts can be marked as created by a bot to exclude it from statistics and reminder mails only.

joegibbs 6y ago

What kind of emails does the bot use?

Alupis 6y ago
johnsmithus95@gmail.com john.smithus74@gmail.com johnsmith.us43@gmail.com and more variations...