1191887 - Sticky behavior tracking in the discovery pane when doing a search

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Discovery Pane, defect, P2)

Description

[Mathieu Agopian [:magopian]]

This is a follow up of bug 1128713

When doing a search from the about:addons page, a XML is returned by AMO with the search results. Here's an example result:
https://services.addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/api/1.5/search/adblock/all/30/Darwin/40.0/normal?src=firefox

Those results are then rendered by Firefox with install buttons. Those are not rendered by AMO, and as such don't use the javascript that's doing the google analytics push.

When clicking on those links, they point to eg https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/322900/tab_mix_plus-0.4.1.8-fx.xpi?src=api, which is a 302 to the CDN.

We either need to use something like https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide to post to google analytics from the server (when we do the 302), or have the client do it.

Going to ni :dveditz and :mossop to see if they have advice on that, if it's even possible.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Mathieu Agopian [:magopian] from comment #0)
> We either need to use something like
> https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/
> devguide to post to google analytics from the server (when we do the 302),
> or have the client do it.
> 
> Going to ni :dveditz and :mossop to see if they have advice on that, if it's
> even possible.

It's possible, but I think we'd see a decent freakout if the client started making Google analytics submissions when clicking UI. It would also be hard to make changes if you needed them (six week cycles and all).

Comment 2

[Mathieu Agopian [:magopian]]

Would it be better if we do that from the server (AMO) then?

Gareth and Michaela, do we need to do that at all?

Comment 3

[Gareth Cull [:garethc]]

I'm pretty sure we aren't going to put GA in the product. I'd expect if we want to attribute addon installs to marketing campaigns, we'd be sending traffic to addons.mozilla.org. Is there any other way we can get data from about:addons?

Michaela, does that work?

Gareth

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Gareth Cull [:garethc] from comment #3)
> I'm pretty sure we aren't going to put GA in the product. I'd expect if we
> want to attribute addon installs to marketing campaigns, we'd be sending
> traffic to addons.mozilla.org. Is there any other way we can get data from
> about:addons?
> 
> Michaela, does that work?
> 
> Gareth

Ultimately, we know that add-on installations are indicative of sticky behavior. We run multiple campaigns every month directing users to add-on collections, and even specific add-ons. If Google Analytics isn't possible per add-on, I would look to ya'll to see what is. 

This is a part of a larger effort to track behaviors that impact retention so that we can get better at user retention.

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Mathieu -- thanks for your comment in the connected bug, and also keeping this on your radar while you're working on other things. As a drop deadline, would you be comfortable with setting a date for mid-October for this to be completed by? This will give us time to set up for the Fall campaign.

Comment 6

[Mathieu Agopian [:magopian]]

Not sure about the mid-october date, I've got quite a lot on my plate at the moment, and for the coming weeks. Things might change in the near future.

Comment 7

[:shell escalante]

tracking for metrics work via github bug

Comment 8

[Andy McKay]

Tracking here: https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/41

Since we are redoing the discovery pane, we should track it there. Picking a random resolved status, because none of them feel right.

Comment 9

[Andy McKay]

To be honest, I'm not actually sure whats being asked for here. We are launching the new discovery pane (what you see at about:addons) soon. What do want us to do for it?

Is it this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1128713#c1 ?