Closed Bug 971963 Opened 10 years ago Closed 10 years ago

GA Implementation on accounts.firefox.com

Categories

(Websites :: Web Analytics, task)

Product:
Websites
Component:
Web Analytics
Type:
task
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: garethc, Unassigned)

Details

Can we please add some Google Analytics tracking to accounts.firefox.com? 

I've created a new profile in GA for it and generated the following snippet. Can we please place this snippet within the <head> of all pages. Thanks.

<script>
  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'UA-36116321-14', 'firefox.com');
  ga('send', 'pageview');

</script>

Once implemented, I'll verify that we can see traffic data and will enable it as a Premium property in Google Analytics. Thanks!

Gareth
Mark: Who can we CC or how would you suggest we get this request into the FxAccounts pipeline? Having basic page data should help on go-live. We can even add GA events to fire on specific user experience steps to better understand how users are using the website. This is what we have on marketplace.firefox.com and other websites.
Flags: needinfo?(mmayo)
CCing some additional folks.
OS: Mac OS X → All
Hardware: x86 → All
I'm definitely very interested in having good analytics on parts of the accounts pipeline (with the obvious metrics around signup_view -> signup_complete conversion), but do have some concerns over getting the approach right. Might need a little 30m kickoff meeting to discuss what we can/can't do, and you guys can show us what we'd be able to access. There may or may not be complications because of how these pages are loaded into browser chrome (I honestly don't know).

-Mark
Flags: needinfo?(mmayo)
(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #1)
> Mark: Who can we CC or how would you suggest we get this request into the
> FxAccounts pipeline? 

I'm your guy.

We certainly do want some metrics like this on FxA, but I'm sure there will be some hand wringing about including third party JS on FxA's most security sensitive (e.g., login) pages.
It's also worth noting GA (at least used the normal way) won't see anything on Android, where the client is entirely native. If we end up having to do our own work there, there may be little gain from using GA for the desktop.
(In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #1)
> > Mark: Who can we CC or how would you suggest we get this request into the
> > FxAccounts pipeline? 
> 
> I'm your guy.
> 
> We certainly do want some metrics like this on FxA, but I'm sure there will
> be some hand wringing about including third party JS on FxA's most security
> sensitive (e.g., login) pages.

Yes, I totally get the concerns and sensitivity. There are a number of options and accessing via the browser's chrome could introduce some complexity. It would probably be worth a 30 minute call to determine if we want to anything in the short-term. As for privacy concerns, we should have enough precedents on implementations like on marketplace.firefox.com and it rendering in-product on a Firefox OS device. 

Shall I set up a 30 minute call next week? Who should I invite?
(In reply to Mark Mayo [:mmayo] from comment #5)
> It's also worth noting GA (at least used the normal way) won't see anything
> on Android, where the client is entirely native. If we end up having to do
> our own work there, there may be little gain from using GA for the desktop.

Correct. By default, GA will only work via http/https requests, but you can integrate GA into Android apps by using the Android SDK or by manually constructing requests to the API. 

Question: What percentage of users do we think will be accessing FxAccounts via https vs. the browser chrome on desktop/android? Just a rough idea since it will probably help determine if it would even be worth using GA on the web side.
(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #7)

> Correct. By default, GA will only work via http/https requests, but you can
> integrate GA into Android apps by using the Android SDK or by manually
> constructing requests to the API. 

We have a 100% firm policy of not integrating Google's analytics code into Fennec, and I imagine that extends to not making behavioral tracking calls to Google analytics endpoints.
(In reply to Richard Newman [:rnewman] from comment #8)
> (In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #7)
> 
> > Correct. By default, GA will only work via http/https requests, but you can
> > integrate GA into Android apps by using the Android SDK or by manually
> > constructing requests to the API. 
> 
> We have a 100% firm policy of not integrating Google's analytics code into
> Fennec, and I imagine that extends to not making behavioral tracking calls
> to Google analytics endpoints.

Yeah, I totally get that from a browser/in-product perspective. I am more just wondering from a web-based perspective since web do have a privacy policy that covers web properties. If we want GA on https://accounts.firefox.com, just let us know.
I'd like to get the Privacy team's input on this.
Flags: needinfo?(smartin)
Hi all,

A couple initial questions come to mind.

1) Do we feel confident that this use would fall into what we describe on our websites privacy policy, which is: 

How We Use Cookies and Clear GIFs. Mozilla's websites use cookies to help Mozilla identify and track visitors, their usage of Mozilla websites, and their website access preferences across multiple requests and visits to Mozilla's websites. Our websites, and advertisements that Mozilla may run occasionally on thirdparty advertising networks, also may use clear gifs for these purposes. The basic idea is to gather aggregate data about how people use the Mozilla websites. The term usually used to describe this is "web analytics" and the cookies and clear gifs are the tools by which a website owner collects this web analytics data.

Mozilla will use the web analytics data only to determine aggregate usage patterns for our websites as described above. Mozilla websites do this by using either our own internal analytics software or by sending this information to a third-party service provider to help Mozilla analyze this data. Mozilla has agreements with its third-party service providers that they will not share this information with others or use the information for purposes other than to maintain the services they provide to Mozilla. It is possible to link cookies and clear gifs to personally identifying information, thereby permitting website operators, including our third-party analytics providers, to track the online movements of particular individuals. Mozilla does not do so and its third-party service providers are not allowed to correlate Mozilla data with any other data.

Mozilla uses the information provided by cookies and clear gifs to develop a better understanding of how Mozilla's visitors use Mozilla's websites, and to facilitate those visitors' interactions with Mozilla's websites. Mozilla may make the aggregate data obtained from web analytics (including from our third-party analytics providers, if applicable) publicly available. If this data is made available, none of the information will be personally identifying information or potentially-personally identifying information.

2) Would this opt-out functionality still apply:

If you do not want data about your visits to Mozilla websites to be collected by Google Analytics, you can install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on keeps your visits anonymous and prohibits any data from being sent to Google Analytics.
Flags: needinfo?(smartin)
Our websites privacy policy would cover this usage, IMO.

That said, I'm making the decision right now that we will not integrate GA on any of the accounts.firefox.com login pages for now. We can revisit later when we have more specifics of what signup/signin/signout flows we're looking to track for quality purposes.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 10 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Note that the website privacy policy has been revised. The latest one is located at
https://github.com/mozilla/legal-docs/blob/master/websites_privacy_notice/en-US.md
Mark: with recent growth in Firefox accounts and to aid in making data-driven decisions, should we revisit having GA on this page? For the sync/accounts funnel analysis, we are missing data on how well this page is working for users and if there is opportunity for improvement. It is challenging to determine opportunities without having a baseline of data across the entire funnel.
Flags: needinfo?(mmayo)
In general, I don't like building when there are fine existing solutions, but due to the sensitivity of the accounts page, we decided to build our own metrics infrastructure for FxA. 

The FxA metrics infrastructure is live now, and kparlante can provide more detailed information on the status of the data it collects.
Flags: needinfo?(mmayo) → needinfo?(kparlante)
(In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #15)
> In general, I don't like building when there are fine existing solutions,
> but due to the sensitivity of the accounts page, we decided to build our own
> metrics infrastructure for FxA. 
> 
> The FxA metrics infrastructure is live now, and kparlante can provide more
> detailed information on the status of the data it collects.

Oh nice! That's great. Would love to learn how we can do tests or when we run promotions that we can see the entire accounts/sync flow.
(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #16)
> (In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #15)
> > The FxA metrics infrastructure is live now, and kparlante can provide more
> > detailed information on the status of the data it collects.
> 
> Oh nice! That's great. Would love to learn how we can do tests or when we
> run promotions that we can see the entire accounts/sync flow.

Hi Chris,

We're collecting data now; its currently accessible in kibana and heka dashboards, which are only available to devs working directly on cloud services. 

We're about to make a dashboard available with more information about the signup flow, similar to the main accounts dashboard: https://metrics.services.mozilla.com/accounts-dashboard/

We have the data flowing now, so I expect that dashboard to be up next week.

For the most basic support for running experiments or tracking promotions, we need to be able to pass along an experiment/promotion id to the flow (presumably to about:accounts). I see you've already figured that out: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1053939

I'll go ahead and log bugs in desktop and the auth content server for getting that wired up.

The other side of the equation is getting the results to you. We could generate a custom dashboard (from which you could download json data), or automate getting the data back into GA. (I'm handwaving here, but assuming GA has some facility for this).

Obviously, tracking the effectiveness of the promotions is important; lets make this happen!
Flags: needinfo?(kparlante)
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