Filed under: Software, Internet, Internet Tools, Friday Favorite
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.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
bigdilvey said 2:17PM on 4-03-2009
Looks like a very cool alternative to Analytics. Until google buys them and calls it analytics 2.0.
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mike said 3:08PM on 4-03-2009
You're on a roll.
I guess you want to be known as the unofficial, everything but apple, weblog.
Stop wasting our time.
We have lots of resources for non-apple news.
We read you for apple news.
If there's no apple news, then there's no reason to read (and bye-bye ad revenues).
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 3:55PM on 4-03-2009
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.
Yazdgerd said 8:46PM on 4-03-2009
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.
mike said 5:39PM on 4-03-2009
Fair enough, but I think the actual apple related content is diminishing and if you want to expand you should change your name.
I'm not expecting you to track apple.com, just cut down on the news that isn't directly apple related and that I can find elsewhere.
The misleading article about Texas and Vista, besides being factually incorrect, also suffered from this lack of apple focus.
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sucks! said 1:54PM on 4-04-2009
baaawwwwwwwwwww
Travis Bell said 10:49PM on 4-03-2009
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/ ).
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Tony said 12:01PM on 4-04-2009
I use Mint and love it. Never had any problems...
glenn said 7:00AM on 4-04-2009
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.
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mothershipryan said 11:48AM on 4-04-2009
Very helpful article. And thanks Travis Bell for the extra links.
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