Tracking users\u2019 online clicks and form submits (e.g., searches) is critical for web analytics, controlled experiments, and
\nbusiness intelligence. Most sites use web beacons to track user actions, but waiting for the beacon to return on clicks
\nand submits slows the next action (e.g., showing search results or the destination page). One possibility is to use a short
\ntimeout and common wisdom is that the more time given to the tracking mechanism (suspending the user action), the
\nlower the data loss. Research from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft showed that small delays of a few hundreds of
\nmilliseconds have dramatic negative impact on revenue and user experience (Kohavi, et al., 2009 p. 173), yet we found
\nthat many websites allow long delays in order to collect click. For example, until March 2010, multiple Microsoft sites
\nwaited for click beacons to return with a 2-second timeout, introducing a delay of about 400msec on user clicks. To the
\nbest of our knowledge, this is the first published empirical study of the subject under a controlled environment. While
\nwe confirm the common wisdom about the tradeoff in general, a surprising result is that the tradeoff does not exist for
\nthe most common browser family, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), where no delay suffices. This finding has significant
\nimplications for tracking users since no waits is required to prevent data loss for IE browsers and it could significantly
\nimprove revenue and user experience. The recommendations here have been implemented by the MSN US home page
\nand Hotmail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tracking users\u2019 online clicks and form submits (e.g., searches) is critical for web analytics, controlled experiments, and business intelligence. Most sites use web beacons to track user actions, but waiting for the beacon to return on clicks and submits slows the next action (e.g., showing search results or the destination page). One possibility is to 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