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Web Logs Finally Meet Sim City
l0rd writes "A good piece on wired says :
A few games of Roller Coaster Tycoon don't usually translate into productive work, but for one developer the diversion planted the seed for making website analysis more intuitive.
Several years after playing those inspirational games, Robert Savage came up with VisitorVille, a website-traffic analysis package that essentially crosses the DNA of SimCity with that of the traditional chart- and graph-centric tools businesses have long been using.
Screenshots included."
A fre trial would have been really great. It looks like a good tool, but I would need to see how usefull I found it before I lay down my cash. Even if you cancel in the first month there is a %10 processing fee
paul reinheimer
If you read the article, you'll notice that the fee structure is a monthly rate - $30 per month for sites with less than 1k unique visits per day.
Useless? Keep an open mind - this is a tool that can help smaller web sites and less experienced webmasters analyze their web traffic and make better decisions based off that information. True, these folk may not fit your ideals b/c they can't grep their own logs, but alas, even your underlings deserve consideration.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Installing the product involves tagging each of your pages with some specific code so you can monitor whats going on, this leaves a couple questions:
Where is the data being generated stored?
Is the creator's website storing it all for me?
How secure is their site?
Most importantly (for those who care about their code)
If I choose to uninstall the product, will it rip all of its code off of my pages?
paul reinheimer
I guess I don't see how this is anything but eye candy for people with websites. Maybe that's the point.... I don't always understand the point behind everything. For instance, those segway things....
I know you're joking, but to use the actual Sim City metaphor, you should see a building/web page turn into an archology with the /. logo, then it blasts into space and the vacant lot that is left behind has a server message (depending on server and settings) that says the building/page is inaccesible.
I was going to check it out. Then I stopped.
First of all, the lowest package is $30/month, that's very expensive for a personal site. Second, like you said, even if you cancel, they keep 10% of the fee you paid.
I see it more as a toy than anything else. For any more serious stats, you would use a log analyzer. A $30/month toy is out of my reach.
Depends what you're looking for, really. AWStats is pretty good and goes further than Webalizer in terms of visits and visitors (see comparison with Webalizer), while tools like aWebVisit can give you a better idea of the traffic flow.
But the notion of visit and visitor is always subject to discussion - what you see (in your server logfiles) is not always what you get (people viewing your content through proxy caches etc.)
If it works anything like all of the other 3rd party tracking tags I have implemented over the years you specify params in the request, so you pass one of the identifying post vars with the page name.
On another note, they do have an "Enterprise" version that you can license to run on a server you have control over. No mention of price without requesting a quote, maybe when the hammering it's getting slows down.
Very good idea, with a stupid convoluted license.
Things like this from their pricing page.
If you want to use VisitorVille for Windows on up to three personal computers -- office, laptop, home -- then the optional Power User plan is for you. Note that this is not a multi-user option, but rather a way for you to exercise your single-user license on more than one personal computer
Its licenses like this that made me stop upgrading Webtrends as well. (The 'we can audit you at any time' in the webtrends 3.5 license did it for me)
meh, if i want to be acosted by sales clerks trying to make me buy something, i'll GO to a B&M store. my online shopping experience is so great because i don't have to talk to anyone, just add to cart, pay and go.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
I have to agree, that is the best metaphor for the /. affect.
I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me...
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
I admit this application is very creative and interesting. However, as much as I find it amusing to look at, it also seems to be a great example of unproductive, wasted, metaphors further encouraging the ADHD'ification of the populace.
Do we really need web site traffic represented as little people wandering around?
This to me seems ultimately as useful as Microsoft's stupid talking paperclip. Yea, it's amusing for the first few days, then it becomes an inefficient, time-wasting distraction. In other words, corporate America will probably love it.
As Edward Tufte points out in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations, the meaningful display of information is about removing visual clutter, not introducing it.
Just as a PowerPoint presentation doesn't really increase our ability to grok the quarterly sales figures, the visual fluff of metaphorical buildings and busses doesn't help us understand traffic data. Simple bar graphs do not introduce the distortion of perspective. They're not sexy, but they do not make it more difficult to discern relationships between data elements, the way a 3d urban representation does.
I'm also reminded of good old Microsoft Bob, and some of the more antiquated websites from the 1990s that forced a metaphor onto something that didn't need one in the first place. Back in those days, Web designers felt that people wanted an "experience" when what they really wanted was an attractive and clean interface to information, organized in a way that would be useful.
Professional web developers and marketers (I know, they're all stupid, they all want dumbed-down visual information, blah blah blah) need information they can drill down into quickly and easily without a lot of superflous distraction. There are already several good tools, like Summary and FunnelWeb, on the market. I don't think this experiment will make it in an already saturated market.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Judging by the screen shots, the primary way of representing site activity is skyscrapers in a rectangular city grid.
The city-grid metaphor fails to capture the essential hierarchical structure of a Web site
In addition, showing page popularity by the height of buildings favours pages that are designed primarily to route users to other pages. For instance, the home page would typically get the most hits.
However, the objective of a home page is to route users to pages that provide some information specific to their interest. These pages are inherently less popular but what the site manager needs to know is whether people who go to the home page are ultimately getting to the less popular pages that interest them further down the hierarchy.
In effect, it's the traffic between pages that's more interesting than the hits on the page. The service does provide this information but in a more conventional form of percentages and lists.
A pinball machine metaphore might be more useful with visitors represented by the pinball. The pinball should get through the maze of bumpers with as few rebounds as possible before exiting the game. If users spend a lot of time bouncing around, the site is failing to get them to the pages that interest them quickly.