Does Your Web Site Need a Workout?

I recently turned one of my blog rants into an article and I thought you, my dear readers, would enjoy it.

Does Your Web Site Need a Workout talks about how some companies waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on their web site without ensuring that it's working hard for them. Extract:

"I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking visitor activity, analyzing trends or checking for search engine compatibility and usability.

These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are doing the same."

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Web Site Statistics in Video Game Format

Think that ClickTracks has the most advanced graphical displays of web site visitor statistics? So did I. But today I came across a web site analytics program that has the visualization cool factor x 10!

Visitorville uses video game principles to help you more easily visualize your web site traffic statistics. If you've ever played SimCity, you'll recognize the avatar-populated 3D virtual world created by Visitorville. But what's cool is that each building represents a web page, each bus a search engine and each animated character is a real visitor to your site.

You can watch your live stats and see people "walking" around your site in real time with IP labels attached to them. Each visitor has certain additions that appear with their avatar, depending on their status. For example, repeat visitors wear a halo, paying visitors wear a coin on their head and repeat/paying visitors have both. Your VIP visitors are flown in by virtual helicopter. Each visitor has a "passport" associated that contains 24 pieces of information about them. Clearly, the developers of this program have a LOT of time on their hands.

If you run PPC campaigns, you can even watch Google or Yahoo branded buses drop people off at your buildings (pages)! How cool is that? You can even watch an entire day's traffic activity fast-forwarded to speeds of up to 1000 x real time. Another great feature is that the service buys you both a stand-alone log analyzer AND a hosted service.

With prices ranging from USD 15 to 170 per month, Visitorville is not cheap. But the fun factor makes it worth a look if you view your site stats on a daily basis. As the reviewer from Wired Mag said: "It's SimCity for traffic nerds".

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