Hot on the heels of the release of the Automattic Stats came the sending of invitations to the beta version of Reinvigorate, a hosted free website metrics service that appears to trump most of the free website metrics services available today.
A day after installing and using the service, I think Reinvigorate is the most impressive website metrics package I tried. (Blogger’s note: the images in this post were taken a few hours after I installed the tracking code for the service). I found it so impressive that I immediately used it for my other blogs. Normally, I’d try out a stats package in this blog and then after a few weeks, I’d use it for the other sites I manage.
What distinguishes Reinvigorate from other hosted website metrics services I tried is that it tracks “paths,” the trail of web pages a reader visited in your site. The data it provides is really enlightening. I haven’t found a comparable feature in the several blog and website metrics services I’ve used.
For instance, in my blog, the most popular paths are 1. pages that relate to editing WordPress themes, and 2. posts that relate to the Sony Ericsson K750i.
Most visitors in the WordPress themes paths typically go into my site by searching for ways to edit WordPress themes. The common entry point is my post on using Dreamweaver to edit WordPress themes then they’d go to my theme guide for non-geeks. Another entry point is my post on using WordPress to manage a news or magazine site, which I’m in the process of updating.
Of the Sony Ericsson paths, the popular ones are my posts on updating the firmware of the K750i. Many of the readers go through the different firmware versions. Another common entry point is my round-up of Sony Ericsson themes.
The different paths vary on the succession as well as number of pages being read by the visitor but most share common “highlight” articles on the topic.
What this tells me is that the adding of related posts really works. This is, of course, a no-brainer but it’s interesting to study how readers go through your website. The feature also confirmed a long-held suspicion on another site I run, that it’s design and placement of navigation elements get in the way of readers going to related posts.
Reinvigorate, as expected from any decent website metrics service, tracks the usual data: number of visitors an hour, a day, a month, and a year; their operating systems, browsers, screen resolution, user agents; the location of the visitors, their local time etc.
It also tracks referrers, including search engines, and the top keywords readers use to go to your site. It tracks the most popular posts and even the pages that got the most visitors via referrals, again including from search engines.
It’s detailed activity data for website readers lives up to its label–it’s really detailed. When you click on it, you get a listing of the latest sessions. You can also view active sessions or sessions of readers who are still in your website. The listing gives you data on the session ID, browser, operating system and IP address. It also indicates the referral used by the visitor to go to your site (i.e. search engine, link from another site). It then lists all the pages the reader visited and how much time they spent on each page.
Reinvigorate also allows you to actually track specific persons who visit your site via name tags. This feature allows you to track visitors based on data already in your site such as their usernames or e-mail addresses. This feature, however, needs a bit of coding to make it work for your site. This is helpful if you run a community site or blog but I don’t see use for it in this blog, a single-author website.
Reinvigorate provides comparable service to Clicky but on certain aspects exceeds it. I just hope that the website is able to manage its growth properly and services don’t suffer with the deluge of website and blog owners who’ll be signing up for its services.
If you’re still waiting for that MeasureMap invitation, forget about it. Line up to get a Reinvigorate account instead.
Max is a journalist and blogger based in Cebu. He has written and edited for such publications as The Freeman, The Independent Post, Today, Sun.Star Cebu, Cebu Daily News, Philstar Life, and Rappler.
He is also a mobile app and web developer and co-founded InnoPub Media with his wife Marlen.
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