Are you curious about usage tracking in Product Feed plugins? Usage tracking helps our team to better understand our users and their website needs by looking at a range of variables in their Product Feed plugins, WordPress, and web host.
This information allows us to continuously improve our product as well as our QA/testing process. In this article, we’ve shared the details that AdTribes collects through usage tracking and why we track this information.
Important
The only sensitive data we store is the site URL and email address of the opted-in WordPress user. We do not track or store any personal or business-critical data neither from you or your site users. We keep track of the name and email address simply to get in touch regarding potential issues or updates that would be relevant to you. Tracking data is automatically sent to our servers once you opt-in and then every 7 days henceforth (for as long as the plugin is active or you choose to opt-out).
What Is Tracked & Why?
Below is the list of information that Advanced Coupons collects as part of the usage tracking:
Advanced Coupons
- Versions and activation status of Product Feed plugins – So we know which versions of each of our Product Feed plugins are potentially responsible for issues when we get bug reports, allowing us to identify issues and release solutions much faster.
- License details & activation status (paid customers only) – if you’re an AdTribes customer, then we use this to determine if there’s an issue with your specific license key, and to link the profile of your site with the configuration to allow us to determine if there’s issues with your AdTribes configuration.
- Product Feed plugin settings – Knowing which settings people are using allows us to determine potentially which new settings or areas of Product Feed people want us to expand on, and which settings people aren’t using so we can make the interfaces more streamlined and usable.
- Usage tracking config – The Product Feed option contains the information on when the usage tracking data sync will happen (once a week), so we can gauge the server load for the usage tracking servers.
- Effectiveness stats – Anonymized statistical data relating to the effectiveness of general feed settings, field mapping, and general settings. This data is viewed in aggregate and not personally identifiable to your site.
WordPress
- Theme/Plugin names and versions – So we know which themes and plugins to support and test against. Product Feed runs on over 90k websites. While we can’t test with all 50,000+ plugins in the WordPress/WooCommerce universe, we do our best to test against the top plugins and themes from this list.
- Site and user count and is multisite – This allows us to gauge how important it is to support specific types of multisites like multi-network and similar styles of configuration and gauge how much we need to scale our servers before launching features. Knowing the sub-site count helps us ensure Product Feed scales properly for large networks.
- Locale – We want Product Feed to be accessible to everyone, and knowing the site’s locale helps us focus our translation efforts.
- Timezone – We have users across the globe, so knowing the densities within various time zones helps us provide the best support coverage possible.
- Site URL – The website address allows us to properly store usage tracking records so that we can avoid duplicated details.
- WordPress/WooCommerce versions – knowing which versions of WordPress and WooCommerce our customers are using helps us better tune compatibility with differences in those particular versions. It also helps us identify gaps in our testing/QA processes.
Server
- PHP and MySQL Versions – These details help us make sure our testing procedures have proper coverage to avoid compatibility issues.
- Server Software – This reports if the web server software is Apache, Nginx, or similar, which is used for testing purposes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I opt into (or out of) usage tracking?
The answer to this question depends on whether you’re using the paid or free version of Product Feed.
If you have a paid license with Product Feed Elite, then you will be opted into usage tracking by default. To disable this, please reach out to support and they will happily help out.
If you’re using the Product Feed PRO version and would like to enable usage tracking so that our team can keep making our product better, then please go to Product Feed Pro > Settings > Other Setting. On this screen, you’ll need to toggle off the Allow Usage Tracking option.
