I found an interesting announcement over at 97thfloor.com of a new Web Analytics tool, BLVD Status.
Two significant impediments have historically hindered the uptake of Web Analytics by businesses. The first has been cost. Professional Web Analytics systems have been fairly expensive, both in server and hosted forms. The second issue has been the great quantity and complexity of available reports in commercial systems, sufficiently intimidating many business professionals away from Web Analytics.
Google’s Google Analytics
Google, with their release of Google Analytics in November 2005, removed the first obstacle, cost, by releasing the first free “full featured” Web Analytics system. Previous free tools, such as AWStats, lack robust visitor recognition and click stream analysis, among other things. Yet a significant obstacle still remained to general Web Analytics usage: how to find the “important” data, without getting lost in a sea of confusing and often redundant reports? In May 2007 Google released an updated Google Analytics with a significant focus on the user interface, specifically as a response to this need.
So why a new take on Web Analytics?
From the announcement, it appears that the primary design goals for Blvd Status Web Analytics are to put actionable information in front of an ordinary user, in near real time. Similar to the acknowledged competitor, Mint, but with a greater emphasis on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) data, such as referrer and keyword information. BLVD Status also offers a strong focus on conversions and an advanced drill down capability. Very understandable. Not all Web Analytics systems are focused on this data. As an example, consider Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics. To get to a keyword report, you need to really drill down: Referrals > Inbound Referrals > Inbound Totals > Referrals – Natural Search > google > phrase > www.google.it (or > msn > phrase > search.msn.it ) etc. To be fair, Microsoft’s Analytics is still in beta; I’m sure it will be improved in the future.
Bloggers, Feedburner and RSS feeds
Bloggers will be pleased by an additional strength of BLVD Status Web Analysis, the inclusion of traffic data from RSS feeds via integration with Feedburner. I’m actually a bit surprised that Google, Feedburner’s owner, has not yet at least offered a tab to view existing Feedburner reports in Google Analytics, while working on more extensive integration.
Illustration 1: Blvd Stats Web Analytics Demo Dashboard
The difference between entry level and enterprise tools
While BLVD Status looks promising as a tool for Web Analytics neophytes, old hands will become frustrated when they try to segment traffic, such as that to a particular page by keyword or referrer. But then BLVD Status would be in good company. Microsoft’s AdCenter Analytics allows you segment a page by demographic data from MSN users, but not referring web sites nor keywords. Not all web Analytics systems were created equal, the devil is in the details!
BLVD Status current limitations
In its current beta state, BLVD Status naturally has several limitations. The initial detail views truncate essential data in the first column, making report interpretation a bit difficult. In the keyword detail report, it appears necessary to select either Session or Visitor Information on the right in order to view the full keyword phrase in an extended panel which then opens below. There may be a way to resize the first column in the data detail views, I just didn’t find it. In the site URL report, many page titles show up blank, probably due to use of a special character. In the same report, it would be nice to have an option to see URLs instead of titles, and to search on URL. A registered user may only track and report on one domain. I didn’t see a logout button which currently means you need to delete a cookie if you want to view the online demo while you are logged into your account. While data should show up in reports in minutes, this didn’t happen for me. An e-mail to the developers quickly resolved the problem. They are clearly committed to Blvd Stats long term success.
The usual Web Analytics deployment considerations apply
I suggest putting hosted Web Analytics tracking code at the bottom of a web page to avoid impacting the user experience, even though some pages might not be tracked for some users. There are risks in putting someone else’s JavaScript on your web pages. Since they can change the source of the JavaScript code on your pages at any time, you really need to trust them. Finally, to enable the blog feed tracking feature, you need to provide BLVD Status with your Feedburner logon credentials. Again, you need to have confidence in the professionalism of BLVD Status to protect your data.
The BLVD Status Analytics blog promises better reporting to come. I wish them well.
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Sean Carlos is a web marketing consultant & teacher, assisting companies with their Search (SEO + PPC = SEM), Social Media & Digital Media Measurement strategies. Sean first worked with text indexing in 1990 in a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then he worked for Hewlett-Packard Consulting and later as IT Manager of a real estate website before founding Antezeta in 2006. Sean is an 
Thank you Sean, as usual!
an observation: this time it seems (to me) that your goal was to PR BLVD project, did they pay you for that? J/K!
OK, seriously- if you’re still available for the further discussions- let’s discuss next time the enterprise-scale systems, those required ownership of web analytics data?
I told you for example I can’t suggest using Google Analytics or any its web hosted clone (“better” or “worst” I don’t care) to my company, ‘coz I need the system that puts the data to a database installed on my server, so I’ll have access to this data for any other purpose, not only to see these sexy reports in my web browser
Today we’re seriously considering the use of http://piwik.org project, I suggest you to have a look at this article on ReadWriteWeb:
“Piwik: Open Source Google Analytics Alternative”
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/piwik_google_analytics_alternative.php
thank you in advance. Andrey
@Andrey,
BLVD Status is the main protagonist of this post as it is new, thus news worthy. I discussed Google Analytics when it first came out, and will eventually write a review of Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics.
Piwik is not new… and, at least until recently, presented significant scalability concerns, as noted in a Web Analytics discussion group post by Matthieu Aubry, one of the developers:
I think the best take away would be that Web Analytics reporting needs are varied, as are the tools available to support reporting and interpretation. While I mentioned various tools above, I only scratched the surface. There is no one right tool – the answer depends on a company’s potential competitive advantage from Web Analytics and the resources (people, time, money) available to invest. If Web Analytics is important, than a company really needs to do due diligence before committing to a solution. Naturally, there are consultants like me available to help them through the selection process.
I am going to try this it asap!