[tmashara]

Docs counterpart of metabase/metabase.github.io#6645, same change. Closes GRO-1076. Decision and trade-offs: VWO vs mb_track (we chose approach A).

• VWO now loads on every docs page (it used to need vwo: true, which no page set), so docs visits can be VWO goals.
• We tell VWO the visitor's analytics consent (VWO.init(1 | 2 | 3)) so its "Partially Block" mode can hold tracking until consent.

Important

Ship together with metabase/metabase.github.io#6645. Right after both are deployed, switch on Enable Cookie Consent → Other → Partially Block in the VWO account. Until it's on, VWO ignores consent and tracks every visitor.

How to verify

1. Start the docs dev server: bunx astro dev.
2. In a private window, open http://localhost:4321/docs/latest/. Without seeded docs it renders the 404 page, which uses the same <head>, so that's fine for this check.
3. DevTools → Network, filter visualwebsiteoptimizer, type All, tick Disable cache: j.php and collect/v.gif show that VWO is loaded.
4. Console, window.VWO.consentState: 1 outside restricted countries, or 2 (pending) if you're in one.
5. Simulate an EU visitor: DevTools → Network request blocking → block get.geojs.io (a failed geo lookup is treated as restricted). Clear site data and reload: consentState is 2.
6. Click Accept cookies: consentState becomes 1.
7. Clear site data and reload, then Settings → uncheck Analytics → Save settings: consentState becomes 3.
8. Reload: consentState is 3 right away, because the stored choice is passed to VWO before the snippet runs.

[linear]

GRO-1076

[github-actions]

The deployments were removed when this pull request closed. Reopening it deploys again at the same address.

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

Standalone HTML docs still bypass VWO, and site-wide body hiding can temporarily blank pages when VWO is slow.

2 open findings

• Site-wide SmartCode can blank docs pages during slow VWO loads · New
• Standalone HTML docs pages omit VWO and consent initialization · New

What changed in this PR

This PR aims to make docs visits available as VWO goals and pass analytics consent to VWO.

Changes:

• Loads the VWO snippet without the previous page-level condition.
• Initializes VWO from stored consent and updates it when a visitor makes a choice.

File	Description
public/​docs/​js/​cookie-consent.js	Sends analytics consent changes to VWO.
_includes/​marketing-vwo.html	Loads VWO and sets its initial consent state.

🧠 Review effort: Lite

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[tmashara]

scoped this to experiments pages paths only (empty for the docs repo)

[tmashara]

good catch, injected the vwo script into those pages

[losrebellos]

• Agree with Copilot regarding hide_element='body', it should be "" or a narrow selector
• VWO should be available on production only, like other tracking, etc. libs we're using. WDYT?

[iethree]

Is there a way we can get vwo tracking behavior on every page while keeping the render-delaying behavior only on pages we're a/b testing?

Ben is right!

[tmashara]

Is there a way we can get vwo tracking behavior on every page while keeping the render-delaying behavior only on pages we're a/b testing?

yes, by keeping a hardcoded list of experiment page paths and only enabling hide_element on those pages. A bit fragile since we’d need to keep the list up to date, but I think it’s worth it

Agree with Copilot regarding hide_element='body', it should be "" or a narrow selector

updated, now we have only for the tested pages (no such pages in the docs repo btw)

VWO should be available on production only, like other tracking, etc. libs we're using. WDYT?

agree, updated