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Friday Favorite: Woopra

A few months ago I was looking for an alternative to Google Analytics and found Woopra. It's still in beta so don't expect it to replace your current solution, but I'm having a lot fun using it on a few WordPress blogs.

Setup is easy, if not a bit time consuming. First you've got to submit your site for approval for inclusion in the beta program. The first site I submitted took weeks to get approved. The second only took two days. The developers claim that they're working on a first come, first-served basis.

Once you're approved, all you've got to do is paste a single line in one of your site's pages and launch the desktop app. The main screen displays a lot of information. Two charts display pageviews and visits. Your top 20 pages are listed in order of popularity, as are search terms and incoming Google traffic.

That's only the start. You can watch visitors come and go in real time (even chat with them via a pop up) or tag certain visitors to chart their history. There are some really nice reports built in. For each of the general categories -- Visitors, System, Pages, Referrers and Searches -- there are several sub-categories. For example, view popular pages, landing pages, exit pages, outgoing links and downloads via easy-to-read, real-time bar graphs. You can even create custom notifications should a given event occur. I love it.

It works with the iPhone provided that you upload a certain collection of files to your server (there's no official app). As I said, it isn't quite ready for prime time, but they're definitely going in the right direction.

A few months ago I was looking for an alternative to Google Analytics and found Woopra. It's still in beta so don't expect it to replace...
 

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mallzombie

baaawwwwwwwwwww

April 04 2009 at 1:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mothershipryan

Very helpful article. And thanks Travis Bell for the extra links.

April 04 2009 at 11:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
glenn

I personally found this very helpful. Thanks for understanding Apple people also run businesses and appreciate posts on programs and apps that can run on Macs that can aid us. Keep up the good work.

April 04 2009 at 6:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Travis

Woopra is alright but when I added some sites and waited a few days for tracking to start, nothing ever showed up. I later found out that they were having server issues that affected a fair few of customers, and some, had gone without stats for over a month (check their forums.)

Reinvigorate ( http://www.reinvigorate.net/ ) has been around for years, and I've never had a single issue with them.

Mint ( http://www.haveamint.com/ ) is a good option as well, especially if you take a look at Ego ( http://www.ego-app.com/ ).

April 03 2009 at 10:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Travis's comment
Tony

I use Mint and love it. Never had any problems...

April 04 2009 at 12:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yaz

Mike, this website offers a Mac client for website tracking. Now you can sleep in peace and calm down, it's for sure Mac related.

April 03 2009 at 8:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Victor Agreda, Jr.

We post about many things Apple has nothing to do with. But they are still relevant, because Mac users do all sorts of things beyond iLife apps.

Our bloggers are passionate Mac users who do many interesting things -- and I'm pleased that we are able to report on those.

So we're not tied to what Apple announces, you're right. Apple.com is a pretty good place for that stuff.

April 03 2009 at 3:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bigdilvey

Looks like a very cool alternative to Analytics. Until google buys them and calls it analytics 2.0.

April 03 2009 at 2:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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