The problem with the power of web developers

There is a lot of people out there who is capable of designing and building websites. If I could do it (see: how i built this website ) anybody can do it. What most developers lack to acknowledge is that they have plenty of power on the decisions they make, and those decisions end up affecting their users, their newsletter readers.

We became accustomed to the idea that we can't live without optimizing. But optimizing what? We need to know the age group of our visitors, what links they followed, where they came from, how often they come back, how much money they spend on our products. We need to be sure that if someone comes and does not finish a purchase, they'll see an ad luring them back to our store.

When was the last time you received a newsletter that didn't track you? Newsletters can detect when you open them (see: how can a newsletter track you ), when you click on any link. And the amount of information they can collect is huge: they can know what device you use to check your e-mail, at what time you do it, if you do it more than once. With a bit of ingenuity they could understand if you do it at home or at work.

But, honestly, do we need to collect all that data from our users? We, webmasters, newsletter creators, blog owners, have a responsibility towards our visitors, our readers. Because remember, it is not us who collect the data. We give Google the data of the visitors to our pages, we give Facebook information about the unfinished purchases, we give Mailchimp the data of all the e-mail recipients in the world.

We have, collectively, the power to make a change. Yes, we will need to work in different ways. We will, probably, struggle at the beginning to understand how to deal with the lack of infinite information. In this website, for example, I don't track the visitors , and I decided to self-host my newsletter .