Metrics are one of the most important parts of any blogger’s routine. Without them, nobody would know how many visitors their site had, where they came from, or what articles they were interested in. The rise of Web 2.0 has brought dozens of easy-to-use web analytics tools. Established plugins such as SiteMeter and Google Analytics are facing stiff competition from several startups throughout the web. The server side solution Mint has garnered praise from hundreds of users across the Internet. The David in this David v. Goliath fight seems to be Reinvigorate.net, a small but ingenious hosted analytics offering by Sean McNamara.
Reinvigorate provides numerous features that the other services lack, including their “Name Tags” feature which allows you to keep track of visitors by name instead of by IP address. Most important, however, is Reinvigorate’s design scheme and interactivity. The recently redesigned Google Analytics includes integration with Google Adsense and Adwords, along with improved traffic metrics and measurements. Similar to the other established solutions like SiteMeter, Google Analytics can’t hold a candle to Reinvigorate’s design scheme. All metrics are presented in a visually appealing manner, and Reinvigorate provides dozens of options, creating the possibility for dozens of graphs to display visitor data.
Reinvigorate’s Trend Graphing
Reinvigorate has made some slight changes to their beta over the course of the past several months, but the service seems ready for the prime time. Recently added was the ability to add multi-user accounts and to allow access to analytics to partners on a project. Reinvigorate’s biggest announcement, however, came today. Currently, the majority of web analytics services are solely accessible online and they provide access minutes after something occurs. Today Reinvigorate announced Snoop, freeware for Mac and Windows computers to be used in conjunction with their online analytics offering. The company claims that Snoop allows users to “know the instant someone makes a comment on your blog, posts in your forum, purchases an item, gets referred from another site, etc.” In a brief test with the service, I can confirm that it does indeed do what it claims. I think of Scoop as Twitter for websites, something that notifies you constantly about the site’s activities.
Opinion
I’ve been a big proponent of Reinvigorate’s services for a long time, and their recent announcement should help to make their services more attractive to potential users as soon as the service emerges from beta. The desktop application should help those constantly focused on site metrics, providing them with a non-intrusive pipeline into their website’s activities. The Windows version resides in the System Tray, while the Mac version can live in the Menu Bar. The announcement should not take attention from the terrific web analytics software offered at the Reinvigorate website. The service is still in private beta, so if you’d like to sign up, put your name on the mailing list [click Beta Registration]. Reinvigorate trumps Google Analytics and SiteMeter in terms of both ease of use and data presentation. Once it emerges from private beta, the service has the potential to become the next web analytics Goliath.
