It’s awesome having a theme or extension on WordPress.org but something you don’t get much of is data. We know WooCommerce has had millions of downloads to date but who, what, where, how and why? Not so much.
As of WooCommerce 2.3 we’ve made it possible for store owners / developers to enable usage tracking from within the WordPress admin area. This feature sends us non-sensitive data about the size of the store, how WooCommerce is installed and how it is being used.
Which is golden.
The only sensitive thing we store is the admin email. We do not track or store any personal or business critical data from you or your clients and keep track of the admin email address simply to get in touch regrading potential vulnerabilities and information on fixes. Tracking data is sent automatically to our servers once you opt-in and then every two weeks from there on.
Perhaps you agree to share the non-sensitive data but then for some reason wish to opt-out. No problem, you can do so by going to your WordPress admin dashboard and then by visiting: WooCommerce -> System Status -> Tools and then clicking the Reset Usage Tracking Settings button.
Below is the list of the data we track:
This is all done in the name of making WooCommerce better. By seeing how our customers are using WooCommerce and what their setups looks like we are able to draw the kind of conclusions that lead to helpful features, better documentation and more good things.
We send everyone willing to opt-in for the greater good a coupon for WooThemes.com (one per admin email address). If you have activated usage tracking before or on another site you will not get a new coupon if you activate usage tracking again.
If you don’t get a coupon and wonder why, it might be because we don’t use data coming from local machines or development machines – only sites with valid domains will be tracked (i.e. so if you are activating usage tracking from your site running on your local machine or a development server you won’t get one).
The fact that you are reading this post means you had at the very least an active interest in helping make WooCommerce more awesome and for that we thank you. If for some reason this user tracking isn’t for you, we understand and we say goodnight and good luck.