The “New” SiteMeter

Over the weekend (September 13-14), SiteMeter, a popular metrics and statistics reporting tool among bloggers, both small and large went offline for updates.  However, those “updates” are now a set of rollbacks to the previous version.  What went wrong and what was missing in the new version?

I was somewhat anticipating the new features – I knew that it would likely streamline the entire interface and bring it up-to-date with other analytics services (its main competitor Google Analytics and StatCounter.  The main elements that I was looking for included an interface refresh, as the current version is just slightly out of date with current web technologies, functionality in terms of finding stats, as well as any other improvements that it could offer.  In its (now) current state, many of those features are at the level they should be, as it offers quickly viewable statistics of your site, without delving into Google Analytics.

“Old” SiteMeter Main Page

“New” SiteMeter Main Page

While I commend the effort on the part of the SiteMeter team, I feel (as they stated in their apology on their blog) that more testing on the part of users should have done, with a gradual rollout – we’ve seen countless times before that rollouts to all users/members can be disastrous, leaving many wondering why the switch was made without their consent and so suddenly.  However, I also believe that members were left in the dark, not expecting the drastic changes that were to be had with the new system in place.

After months of testing, the new interface, feature set, and everything else was prepared for rollout, only to find that many members disagreed with what the “new” site offered.

This post will feature some of the new features coming to the new version, once it is “officially” released, as well as its comparison to a few competitors (although it is rather short, as I only briefly tested the new version – otherwise, my initial reaction/expectations).

Competitive Pricing

As SiteMeter must cater to major blogs (many of the Gawker blogs use the tracking code on their websites), it also had to become more competitive by introducing a one-size-fits-all model, with pricing at $6.95/month or about $59 yearly.  Previously, pricing ranged from $6.95 (up to 25,000 page views) to $199.95 (up to 15 million page views), obviously making the new pricing model more attractive to both large and small-scale bloggers.

Other competing services, including StatCounter and Google Analytics have (had) higher limits separating the threshold before you must upgrade to a premium account.

Prior Pricing – Found Here

From my brief look at the new interface, RSS feed and similar statistics would be unavailable for free members.

Speed – SiteMeter.com and Widget/JavaScript Code

At points, the previous code that you placed on the website was slow and there was no way to make the actual image invisible unless you upgraded your account to a premium version.  With the switch to the new version, members would have been required to implement the new widget code (if applicable), which was designed to speed up your site while providing more accurate statistics.

Accuracy – A Must for Services that are All About “Analytics”

From the short overview of the new features, it appears that they are now able to target and exclude more Bot and RSS traffic from the actual traffic details of your site’s traffic levels, meaning traffic levels would be more accurate.  Visitors would likely be higher, while page views would be lower as a result of this change.  Cookies would be able to track down and exclude your IP address more than before (the old system), up to 100% of the time, rather than just 50% of the time.

Interface – As a Consumer-Based Service, People Expect a Clean and Intuitive Interface

Compared to the “new” interface, the old system was easier to quickly get a snapshot of the daily traffic  - one of the top three main reasons why I was using this service in addition to other services (Google Analytics, for example).  Upon logging in, you were presented a separate view of Visits and Pave Views – with total, average per day, average visit length, last hour, today, and this week all placed in a chart.  To the left, there is more advanced statistics, primarily focusing on providing a single view for each.

Now, when you take a look at the image below of the new version, it is built nearly entirely of Flash/AJAX rather than basic HTML and other technologies that are faster loading.  Much like Google Analytics, I would assume that a user would be able to customize the main page to suit their needs, but it doesn’t appear so looking back at the version.  

New Interface for Stats

While more information is provided, additional views (pie charts, line graphs, and charts) are options for viewing the Top Countries, Search Bot Activity, Entry Page, and Visits and Page Views (in this Summary Report) make it easier to visualize information compared to raw data.  

Users that have become acquainted with the old system would easily find this harder to navigate, not displaying the stats that they were familiar with on the main page, and splitting data into additional areas – Audience Overview, Traffic Trends, Geolocation, Browser Data, Visit Report, Path Report, Demographics, Scoreboard, and RSS/Bot Report – in other words, it would take much more time to find what you only truly need a quick snapshot of.

Other users have commented that some areas, including browser/visitor information doesn’t complement the other areas of the site with poor formatting of this area, in particular.

Transition to New Service

The transition wasn’t expected to be 100% smooth, but the load times during the first couple hours of the new design/features were painfully slow, with times where the site was completely unavailable.  You could say that you don’t need to look at your stats every few hours (especially on the weekend), but some users may have become frustrated trying to access the new service during this time period.  Load time was exceptionally slow, at over 30 seconds for less than 75KB of data.

Conclusion

Much like their apology letter on their blog (excerpted below), I believe that over the next several weeks they will be able to integrate the new features over a period of time (through use of a better Beta program to transition members to the new service – nearly one million of them.  Whether that takes some, I believe that this product transition will be worth it in the end, allowing members to reap the benefits of a (hopefully) improved interface.

What were your thoughts of the new interface/features/pricing if you took a look at them, and what are your overall thoughts of SiteMeter as an analytics/stats service?

Excerpt from blog:

Our intention is and has always been to offer you, our customer’s better tools and more accurate data. Obviously we fell short of this.  The first thing we need to do, moving forward, is to roll out new product releases in parallel to our current platform.  This will give everyone a chance to try out, evaluate, and comment on our new concepts.

We would also like to take this opportunity to ask those of you who had issues or concerns with the new site to participate in future beta testing.  We had originally asked for Beta Tester in two of our newsletters sent earlier this year so we’re eager to build our beta group even larger.  If you’re interested in participating please send us an email using our support ticketing system with BETA TESTER in the subject line of your email.