Something worrying which WILL affect you if you use Aweber

[Harry Behrens]

This may not be news to all of you veteran or techy guys out there. But for people who don't keep abreast of this stuff I thought it important to point out:

I use Firefox browser with the Adblock Plus addon. Now as everybody knows Firefox is one of the most popular browsers and Adblock is one of its most popular addons for obvious reasons. Normally I wouldn't say this is a problem at all, because people who don't want to see "ads" that badly aren't going to be clicking anyway.

However... today I noticed something unfortunate. For a few weeks now, it's been happening that I would read a fellow marketer's page somewhere, and at the end where the opt-in form was supposed to be there would be nothing. The first times this happened I got confused, then annoyed, then I figured out that it was in fact the adblock. I turned it off, the opt-in form appeared, I went on with my life, thought nothing of it.

Then I noticed it was actually happening with annoying frequency. Today I finally had enough and went into my adblock settings to see what was the matter. Turns out that 1) the Adblock Plus plugin has an filter auto-update feature, meaning that it adds in ad filters without you knowing, and 2) inline Aweber forms are now included for blocking. The filter is "/forms.aweber." which literally means, ALL inline forms from Aweber no exceptions.

This means that if you use the inline javascript form from Aweber for your opt-in, your form WILL get blocked out by adblock programs automatically, even when the person on the browser doesn't want it and has no idea that it's happening. What percentage of your users will have this happen to them is impossible to say.

How to avoid this? You can either use a custom HTML form for your opt-in, which will very likely not get blocked, or you can add a small line under your inline form saying "If you don't see the form above, turn off your adblocker" or something like that.

This might seem obvious to some I guess, but it needs to be said because of all the forms I've seen blocked the past several weeks, many of the from very veteran marketers, none of them had any indication of a form needing to be there. In fact, in many cases there was not even any mention of a form which was very confusing and gave the impression of sloppy work.

Keep this in mind and you may save your readers a bit of confusion, and yourself some lost opt-ins!

[nick1123]

Yes this is definitely a problem. I noticed this about a month or so ago when I was trying to opt in to someone's e-mail list but I couldn't find where to put my e-mail address in. After a few minutes I realized that it was the ad blocker.

That's one of the reasons I use the custom HTML code provided instead of the JavaScript snippet.

[Harry Behrens]

Ok, here's a small tip in case you think you can't use a custom HTML form because you want the conversion tracking that you can do with the inline form.

What you do is put BOTH on the same page, both the inline and the custom HTML form. So that you have two opt-in forms actually on your page, and then you just hide the inline form with the following code:

<div style="display:none;">
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://forms.aweber.com/form/xxxxxxxxxx.js">
</div>

In other words you put the inline form in an invisible div. This gives you all the tracking benefits that the inline form provides with the stability (and customization) of custom HTML.

[rtrotter]

I may be a little confused here, but I think the HTML form is tracking now. If you look at it, there is an img tag at the end for tracking purposes. I always use the HTML and get impressions count and conversion rates.

Rodney

[xiaophil]

Another popular Firefox addon is called NoScript, a JavaScript blocker with over half a million weekly downloads, which I also use myself.

Web 2.0 AJAX sites are of course completely dependent on JS and it's easy to whitelist sites you use frequently.

What surprises me is the number of sites that use JavaScript for no good reason that I can see but are completely broken without it. Sometimes the graphics don't even show up!

Almost 50% of my visitors are using Firefox and of course the analytics package is only counting those not running a script blocker.

With the increasing awareness of malware I think it's safe to expect a lot more users applying script blockers - the download counts speak for themselves.

Adblock and NoScript combined are about 1.3 Million weekly downloads according to addons.mozilla.org.

[joelraitt]

How can you test you if this is happening to me?!?!

[Istvan Horvath]

Assuming you are using aweber as the OP - you don't need to learn anything. Aweber gives you the opt-in form code in two formats: as JS script and as HTML code.

[AndrewCavanagh]

That's just one of the many reasons you should use the html code you get from Aweber instead of using their line of javascript.

Thanks for letting us know about this.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[Marian]

Seems like I'll be back with HTML forms then but how to hide the redirect visible in the source code? ;-)

Marian

[Harry Behrens]

Originally Posted by rtrotter

I may be a little confused here, but I think the HTML form is tracking now. If you look at it, there is an img tag at the end for tracking purposes. I always use the HTML and get impressions count and conversion rates.

Ok, this may be the case, I'll check it out... I'm kind of techy but not *that* techy I do remember it used to be that if you used the HTML you wouldn't get tracking. But if that's not longer the case then it's even easier to work around!

Originally Posted by joelraitt

How can you test you if this is happening to me?!?!

Joel, just install firefox with the Adblock addon on your computer (both are easily found on google and can be installed both on windows and mac I believe) and go to the page where your opt-in form is, and if you can still see it, you should be fine.

[Sue Brettell]

Originally Posted by Harry Behrens

This may not be news to all of you veteran or techy guys out there. But for people who don't keep abreast of this stuff I thought it important to point out:

I use Firefox browser with the Adblock Plus addon. Now as everybody knows Firefox is one of the most popular browsers and Adblock is one of its most popular addons for obvious reasons. Normally I wouldn't say this is a problem at all, because people who don't want to see "ads" that badly aren't going to be clicking anyway.

However... today I noticed something unfortunate. For a few weeks now, it's been happening that I would read a fellow marketer's page somewhere, and at the end where the opt-in form was supposed to be there would be nothing. The first times this happened I got confused, then annoyed, then I figured out that it was in fact the adblock. I turned it off, the opt-in form appeared, I went on with my life, thought nothing of it.

Then I noticed it was actually happening with annoying frequency. Today I finally had enough and went into my adblock settings to see what was the matter. Turns out that 1) the Adblock Plus plugin has an filter auto-update feature, meaning that it adds in ad filters without you knowing, and 2) inline Aweber forms are now included for blocking. The filter is "/forms.aweber." which literally means, ALL inline forms from Aweber no exceptions.

This means that if you use the inline javascript form from Aweber for your opt-in, your form WILL get blocked out by adblock programs automatically, even when the person on the browser doesn't want it and has no idea that it's happening. What percentage of your users will have this happen to them is impossible to say.

How to avoid this? You can either use a custom HTML form for your opt-in, which will very likely not get blocked, or you can add a small line under your inline form saying "If you don't see the form above, turn off your adblocker" or something like that.

This might seem obvious to some I guess, but it needs to be said because of all the forms I've seen blocked the past several weeks, many of the from very veteran marketers, none of them had any indication of a form needing to be there. In fact, in many cases there was not even any mention of a form which was very confusing and gave the impression of sloppy work.

Keep this in mind and you may save your readers a bit of confusion, and yourself some lost opt-ins!

Thank you so much for this Harry. A lovely clear explanation for non-techies like me. And some useful replies, thanks to everyone else.

I happened to receive two invitations at the same time and knew they couldn't both have forgotten to include the sign-up. I realised it might be a Firefox issue, so I opened them in Safari and all was well.

I knew one of them was using Aweber, so I googled "aweber issue firefox" and found your link. I've sent it to both ladies which will help them fix the problem and ensure their campaign's success (and make me look a lot more techy than I really am!) Thanks again!

I'm pleased to join your forum. I'm a graphic designer so I can possibly help with design-related issues. And I'm currently going through a marketing course, so I'll be back picking your brains!

[mikeyman120]

Oh boy I just put up all java aweber forms because it keeps the person from seeing your code and knowing the next page they will be taken to which would allow them to bypass the opt in.

Mike

[entry]

Is this worrying aweber problem only affecting them Aweber users who use the Javascript version of the Optin form on their page?

if you use the HTML version, can you get away with Not facing this problem?
and avoid it? (using the html version of the aweber code for your campaign on your webpage)

is that a way to solve it? or what other solutions are there?

[JordanFrancis]

I noticed this problem MONTHS ago... but at the time didn't know what was causing me to not see opt-in forms. Then a couple months back, I found that when searching on Google, no paid ads were showing up for me. Period. And I thought that was odd... and eventually found that it was the Adblock plugin in my FF browser which was the cause. And after disabling it, opt-in forms appeared again as well...

I'd highly recommend people install it and test their pages out as part of the cross-browser checks you might (should) already do.

[entry]

if you use the HTML version, can you get away with Not facing this problem?
and avoid it? (using the html version of the aweber code for your campaign on your webpage)

is that a way to solve it? or what other solutions are there?

[entry]

Originally Posted by Nathan Segal

FWIW, I heard about this on another site. I'm not sure if the HTML will work, but I heard about the JavaScript. Thanks very much for this post.

What is the solution to this aweber problem?

[Spinethetic]

I always use raw HTML, so that I have direct control over its styling without having to leave cPanel.

[A Bary]

Ok Warriors, what do you think about this?

When you use a an optin template ( squeeze page template, a ready graphical optin form..etc) you don't paste Aweber code directly, you insert the values from the code to your template...

Do you think this will solve the problem??

[Michael James]

One of the many reasons I now run my own autoresponder script hosted on my own server.

[Kevin-VirtualProfitCenter]

Raw HTML solves the problem and now AWeber tracks impressions via an image tag even on HTML forms so you don't have to use the Javascript form.

[Dan Liptak]

Originally Posted by mikeyman120

Oh boy I just put up all java aweber forms because it keeps the person from seeing your code and knowing the next page they will be taken to which would allow them to bypass the opt in.

Mike

A person can look at your js and get the same info.

Later,
Dan