Case Studies on unweb.org

A Hotel Site Quotes a Returning Visitor More for the Same Room

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Picture someone planning a weekend away. They look at a room on Monday, think about it, and come back on Wednesday to book. The price has gone up, and a red label says only two rooms are left. Did the price really change, or did the site just recognise them? This case study runs on a made-up hotel page that behaves the way some real ones are suspected to.

With one browser you can’t tell. Every visit you make carries the cookie from the last one. Unweb can put a returning visitor and two newcomers on the same page at the same moment.

A News Paywall Counts Your Free Articles and a Stranger Starts From Zero

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Many news sites give you a few free articles a month, then ask you to subscribe. The count has to live somewhere, and on most sites it lives in your browser: a cookie that goes up by one with every article. This case study uses a made-up news site, The Daily Ledger, with a meter of three.

For a reader, that explains why a private window sometimes gets you past the wall. For a publisher, it’s worth knowing what a newcomer sees, and how easy the meter is to reset.

A Search Page Puts a Shop You Visited Above Everything Else

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you work in search, you’ve probably had this argument. Your page ranks third. A colleague says it ranks first. You’re both looking at the same query on the same day, and you’re both right, because the results were shaped by what each of you did before.

That makes checking rankings from your own browser close to useless. What you need is the page a first-time searcher sees, next to the one a returning visitor sees.

A Shop Sets Seven Cookies Before Anyone Answers Its Cookie Banner

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A cookie banner asks “Can we use cookies?” and most people assume nothing happens until they answer. This case study runs on a made-up outdoor shop, Peak Outfitters, built the way plenty of real shops are: the banner is there, and so are the cookies.

The strip above every stranger counts the cookies in its store. A stranger starts with none, so the count is exactly what the site handed over since the page opened.

An Airline Fare Climbs Every Time the Same Visitor Looks Again

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most people who book flights have a theory about this. You check a fare, check it again an hour later, and it’s gone up. A warning appears saying four other people are looking. Is the seat really selling out, or has the site learned that you want it?

This case study runs on a made-up airline page built to do the suspicious thing on purpose. Each time the same visitor comes back, the fare goes up a step. Nothing else changes.

Checking Which Ad a News Page Shows Readers in Four Countries

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Say you’ve paid for a campaign that should run in Germany and France and nowhere else. The dashboard says it’s live. But the dashboard is the ad network’s word for it. The only way to be sure is to load the page as a reader in each country would.

Doing that by hand means a VPN, switching countries, clearing cookies between tries, and screenshots you line up later. Unweb does it in one window. A saved setup holds four strangers, each with its own location. You open the setup and type the address once.

Seeing Both Sides of a Checkout AB Test at Once

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A site owner runs a test. Half the visitors get the old checkout, half get a new one with a lower price and a different button. Then someone asks what version B actually looks like on the live site, and nobody on the team can show them, because their browsers were sorted into A weeks ago and the cookie keeps them there.

The usual fixes are a private window, then another, or clearing cookies over and over until the coin lands the other way. Each new try forgets the one before, so you never see the two side by side.