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How many sites break because of Google Analytics being blocked? Do they even realize that their content appears broken? Many sites use JavaScript client-render
by idoubtit 6y ago
How many sites break because of Google Analytics being blocked? Do they even realize that their content appears broken?
Many sites use JavaScript client-rendering, even for static content. Sometimes, the analytics failure blocks the rendering. I've experimented it recently, with a blank page for a French governmental site (securite routiere) and with a truncated content for an American newspaper (Boston Globe, IIRC).
When you send a server-rendered page, you know the content is present, and very probably it renders correctly on the client. Transmission errors are logged by the web server. With a SPA, many factors could break the rendering, and the web server won't hear about it unless hard work is done to collect JS errors.
- macNchz 6y agoI think the most common and critical failure mode I’ve seen is when websites wrap click handlers for important conversion events (ie “Complete Purchase” or “Join Mailing List” buttons) in a call to a tracking script. Google Tag Manager has a callback system that makes it really easy to trigger an event and wait for all the tracking pixels to fire before you advance someone to the next page, “guaranteeing” that you capture the events. If GTM is blocked and no effort has been made to handle a case where it didn’t load, however, the Complete Purchase button just straight up won’t work. I debugged this behavior in a high traffic site several years ago and have since noticed it all over the internet. With how widespread ad blockers are these days–especially in some demographics–I’d consider it an important QA step to ensure that customers can actually pay you even if they’re blocking ads and trackers.