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Real-Time Web Analytics Solutions

I wrote a post yesterday for the SwellPath Blog on 3 real-time web analytics solutions that are, if nothing else, very fun to use and tinker with. Woopra, Clicky, and chartbeat are the three I talked about. If you have any others you use that you’d recommend, I’d love to hear about them.

Tags: chartbeat, Clicky, Woopra

Thanksgiving is the New Black Friday

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! How many marketing emails have you received today? Not many? Me neither. Makes me wonder: why don’t online retailers take advantage of Thanksgiving as a jump start on the holiday shopping season?

The season essentially starts in early November these days, as most retailers start to ramp up  promotions and marketing. But Black Friday is the first day of heavy marketing. Remember when it was Cyber Monday? That’s no longer the case because most internet shoppers now spend time online at home every day, making the Friday after Thanksgiving more of a play than waiting until for everyone to get back to work on Mondays.

So, why not Thanksgiving itself? I was online for a while this morning – and I bet you were too. A quick scan of the analytics data for the various retailers who are clients at SwellPath shows that traffic isn’t down too much – maybe 25% to 50%. I bet it would be a little more solid if emails had gone out pre-dawn.

I’m going to make a forecast here and now: in the next couple of years, Black Friday will be begin on Thanksgiving morning. Shoppers will start looking for marketing promotions and special deals early Thursday; and they’ll start getting a little shopping in before NFL, turkeys, and pumpkin pie.  But make sure to get those emails (or Tweets, Facebook updates, etc.) out early, because as the folks at Clicky have pointed out, traffic drops off when it’s time to eat.

Analytics App for iPhone – Mobile Google Analytics

My first review of an iPhone application has to be Analytics App.  Just last week I was sitting in a meeting and a client was asking about historical analytics data.  I had only been engaged with the client for a short time, so I wasn’t sure about some conclusions they were drawing from the data.  We were at a location where wifi wasn’t available, so there was no way to access the data.  It was frustrating to say the least.  Had I access to Analytics App on the iPhone, I could have pulled up the client’s account and had access to the data within about 30 seconds.  This application is a must have for any analytics consultant with Google Analytics accounts to manage; if you’re a real analytics freak, it truly gives you reason alone to have an iPhone.

The interface itself is simple but highly effective.  You have access to all your accounts and profiles from the introscreen.  Switching between profiles that belong to multiple account is actually easier than it is in the GA interface.  Once you are in a profile you see a menu of options.  The first is Today which is really handy for just quickly checking in on account to get a read on traffic.  Below that are the rest of the reports you’re used to seeing in the Google Analytics interface.  You can navigate quickly between sections to see the data that’s important to you.

Once you’re in a specific area, you can the basic data from those respective sections in Google Analytics.  If you want to modfiy the date range, this is another feature that is actually faster and easier in Analytics App then it is in the GA interface.  You have access to the same slot-machine-like date interface that is used in the iPhone calendar application.

Without a doubt, you’ll quickly get to a point where you want to dig deeper into the data, and you’ll be unable to in Analytics App.  However, the application isn’t for hardcore analysis, but rather for exactly what it does: offering you a very quick and easy way to monitor your basic analytics data from anywhere.

The one thing that would make this application way more effective is if GA had real-time data: but that is obviously in the hands of Google, and not Michael D. Jensen (@mdjensen) the creator of Analytics App.  Pulling in data from an application like Clicky or Woopra that has real-time data would be really cool.

Overall, pretty impressive and well worth the $5 it costs.  Thanks to Michael for creating such a great app.

Tags: Analytics App, Google Analytics, iPhone Applicaitions

Quarkbase is Site Research in One Step

Quarkbase is one of the best aggregators that I’ve come across on the web in quite a while.  It looks like they just launched in August of last year, but the application is loaded with information.  The tagline is “Everything about a website.”  It’s hard to argue that you need much else when you’re doing a surface level investigation of a site; any additional information and Quantcast will be boardering on being akin to an SEO analysis tool.

Besides extracting basic meta data and general indexable data from the site homepage, the Quarkbase results pool data from (or equivalent to) WHOIS, Alexa, Bloglines, CrunchBase, Twitter, Technorati, and countlesss other social bookmarking sites.  It also pulls in data from Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia, as well as business oriented links to Hoovers and Zoominfo.  It is impressive how much data is aggregated in the results already; knowing that Quarkbase is going to add more features and data makes it even more impressive.

The data is grouped into sections like Popular, Technical, and People that you can navigate to independently.  This makes it a littel easier to get around the data for larger, more established sites.  An example of Quarkbase’s “smart” data is the People section.  For example, it listed me as associated with SwellPath, an association it derived from Twitter.

Visit the Tools section in the bottom navigation on Quarkbase to get the bookmarklet.  I have it prominitely featured on my toolbar with a question mark as the name; a quick click when I’m on a site and I have a wealth of info in seconds.

Tags: Alexa, data aggregator, research sites, WHOIS

Firefox Plugins for SEO and Web Analytics

There are a few Firefox plugins I use that make my life (job) incredibly easier.  If there are any that are similar to these, that people find to be better for their desired tasks, I’d love to hear about them.  Here we go.

WASP

Web Analytics Solution Profile/Debugger (WASP) is a wonderful plug-in developed by Stephane Hamel.  I haven’t indulged in the paid version yet, but I may have to, as WASP’s current version only lasts 20 minutes.  But the best thing about WASP is it allows you to quickly identify the web analytics solution(s) being used on a site, via the status bar.  The tool also allows you to glance at the parameters and values being sent with the request, by toggling a side bar.  This is nice if you need to check if you’ve correctly set up the tagging on a given page.  The paid version provides some additional benefits, so it may be worth checking out in more detail.

HTTPFox

If you need to see your analytics data in more detail, HTTPFox is perfect.  It monitors all http requests from your browser, allowing you to filter out the analytics requests and see in greater detail if things are in order with your tagging.  You can view the query string for any request, and also view any cookie requests being made.  It really is a necessity if you are either tagging a site yourself, or verifing that tagging was correctly setup on a site.

SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox provides so much data, I can’t describe all of its features.  You have to use it if you even remotely care about SEO for your own website, or for your clients.  If there is a better SEO plugin, I want to know about it.  The two features I use the most with SEO for Firefox are the abiltiy to “X-ray” a page and see the SEO oriented details in a snap; and the ability to see intricate details for all pages on a Google SERP.

SearchStatus

I think SearchStatus may really slow page loading in Firefox, but I’m not sure about that, and it hasn’t deterred me from using the plugin.  The simple benefit I get from SearchStatus is the Google PageRank in my status bar.  This means I don’t have to run the Google ToolBar, and I can still see the PageRank in a glance.

Foxmarks

I discovered Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer a little while ago when I found myself switching to my 6th laptop in 30 months.  Foxmarks stores all your bookmarks and passwords, and then syncs them with any machines you use.  If you use two different machines, and want the same bookmarks on both, this tool is what you want to use.  If you just want the security of being able to setup a brand new computer, and quickly be able to access all the sites you’re used to visiting, without having to plugin the URLs and rememeber the passwords, then Firefox is also for you.  I love this plugin, and have never had any problems with it.

Firebug

If you develop then you know about Firebug, and if you don’t develop you probably don’t need Firebug.  But if you’re kind of in the middle like me, and you don’t know about it, then you may want to check it out.  It helps me out in one major way: working with CSS.  I am a total amature with CSS, and Firebug saves me so much time when it comes to identifying the correct elements, properties or values that I need to change or “fix” when things aren’t looking the way I want.  I couldn’t finish this post without giving credit to Firebug for being one of the most useful Firefox plug-ins available.

There are a few more that I use, but these plug-ins help me out when it comes to productivity.  If you have any other plug-ins you find value in using, I’d love to hear about them.

Tags: SEM, SEO tools, web analytics tools, web development tools