Solo Technology

I mentioned, more or less in passing, the new Performancing Metrics a month ago. I never really followed up on it until today though. I’m not exactly sure what happened during the last month, but it was re-released yesterday.

The trick with being an analytics or metrics junky is that I have more and more little snippets of JavaScript and html constantly being added to my pages. And this is no exception. Trivial to do, just take the provided snippet and drop it into your page before the closing body tag.

If you’re a WordPress blogger, odds are you’ll find that closing body tag in your theme’s footer.php file. Copy/paste and save and you’re ready to go. I’m sure someone will put together a plugin to make that even easier, but honestly, I added it to my site and both blogs in under 5 minutes.

Once added, I had results showing up within 10-15 minutes. My favorite results come via the “Spy” option. An Ajaxy real-time thing that updates as folks move around the pages. At a glance I can see where folks are coming from (including search words if a search engine), see what they click on and see where they go.

I don’t have enough data yet to really show examples of the various reports (without embarrassing myself) but fortunately the PR Page gives a very nice overview of what to expect. Just keep in mind that pretty much everything is clickable and you can drill down from just about anywhere.

Want to know who else came in on a referral link? Click it. Looking at that resulting list and wonder what else one of those folks looked at? Click them. Etc.

Pricing is pretty easy. Start with free for my volumes (although some days I’m surpised!):

Performancing Metrics is available for FREE to all users with sites that average less than 1,000 page views per day, which is the vast majority of blogs and web sites out there. We also have a premium service that is required for sites with higher traffic levels [...]

Difference between free and premium (besides $14.99/year)?

Free accounts do not have access to our more advanced features, including RSS feeds, Spy, outbound link tracking, and download tracking. Additionally, they only have a few weeks of detailed history and have text ads placed above their stats. As more features are introduced in the future, some of them will be premium only as well.

You get the Premium version for your first 21 days. Spy is so much fun I’m seriously considering paying for the upgrade. Oh, the feeds aspect of Premium might be interesting as well, but I haven’t played with it yet. You can get quite a wide variety of information via RSS Feed:

While not an MLM as I had earlier, half-jokingly, worried about, there is an affiliates program. Basically, you get 20% of any payments from folks coming in on your link and 5% for the second-tiers.

My obligatory affiliate link:

Long story short: I like it. It’s easy to use and actually rather fun as well. Gives Feedburner Stats a run for my attention and that’s what I’ve been using since it came out… I still have Google Analytics, but I find I don’t really log in there more than once a month or so. Soon I need to really make a decision on which I’m using and cut loose some of these extra tracking bits from my pages!

And this one is a contender.

7 Responses to “New Performancing Metrics - Take Two”

1. » pingback » Performancing Metrics Review » Solo Technology on April 27th, 2007 5:22 pm
   
   
2. Robert Irizarry on April 27th, 2007 9:44 pm
   

   Performancing Metrics certainly looks intriguing. I only recently made the move from Blogger to a hosted Wordpress solution and I’m still experimenting with analytics and statistics. Like you, I’ve found the number of bits and pieces of Javascript increasing. Unfortunately, I haven’t quite found the right combination but this looks very promising. Thanks for the lead!

3. Chris on April 27th, 2007 10:34 pm
   

   Thanks for dropping by, Robert. Glad you liked the article. Compliments on your blog — fascinating!

4. Robert Irizarry on April 28th, 2007 10:13 am
   

   You wouldn’t happen to know how long historical data is retained for paid analytics? And, thanks for the compliment!

5. Chris on April 28th, 2007 7:56 pm
   

   I’m afraid I don’t know. Brings up a good point that I’d not really thought of before: I have no clue how long any of the analytics/metrics services I use keep data!

6. DG on April 29th, 2007 5:38 am
   

   HandySolo, the new pMetrics is excatly what the “Clicky” is in terms of everthing. Read more about Clicky on my blog.

   DG…

7. Chris on April 29th, 2007 1:38 pm
   

   DG - yup. Read your post — what’s your conclusion? Using it?

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