One of the new things I learned about at OpenCamp was Woopra, two years ago when I followed all the SEO and Internet Marketing blogs like a bloodhound I would have know about it a long time ago. The truth is I have known about it for quite a while but figured it was just another analytics program. I have so much data to look at already what the hell could I need any more for right? Wrong!
Get Woopra it Rocks!
Woopra is a pretty good analytics program from the classic stand point. It gives you some views and data in a more friendly way than Google Analytics and conversely Google Analytics does some things Woopra does not, again from the classic stand point of historical data. It is when we move to real time data that Woopra begins to shine and provide a level of transparency into your web traffic that really makes it stand out as something special.
Installing Woopra took me literally 10 minutes to do, that was signing up for the account, confirming the account with an email, creating the site profile and pasting at bit of code into my blogs footer. Honestly I installed it on two sites in 10 minutes. WordPress users just go to “appearance” in your admin area, click on “editor” and drop the code they give you into the file called “footer” for your active theme.
Now as for what make Woopra so damn awesome it is the real time statistics. You can watch visitors come in, in real time, see where they came from, what they are doing. On The Survival Podcast I was watching visitors come in and some were commenting, others were downloading episodes, etc. When I installed it here at JackSpirko.com there were no visitors at all, I published the most recent episode and watched my currently meager traffic trickle in. Some from Twitter, some from FaceBook, some via email referrals. The view this gives you is fantastic.
Woopra Even Has an iPhone App
Why? Why is this so awesome other than just being cool? Well when you tweet something at 10 AM how effective is it? How much more effective is the same tweet at 2 PM or perhaps less effective at 2 PM? With woopra you don’t’ think, you know. So you can schedule your tweets, Facebook updates, emails and other activities at the time when each is most effective. Launch a new initiative how effective is it? You can wait a day and check analytics or watch and adjust in real time based on trends.
Taking it mobile Woopra has an iPhone app that kicks ass. Use your iPhone to tweet on the road or update facebook during that meeting and switch to your Woopra app and on your iPhone watch the effects of your efforts drive traffic to your site. So what does bad ass technology like this cost? Well if your site gets 30,000 or less page views a month it is free as is the iPhone app. You can upgrade from there and moving up to 100,000 page views a month is only 4.95. For most small time bloggers the 30,000 page view free version will be more than enough.
Get this, there is even a feature that lets you chat with users who are currently on your website by choosing one and sending them a chat request that will pop up on their screen. Though I think a way users could initiate the chat on demand would be a lot more useful. Still for a person with a small site just starting up, pinging a dozen or so visitors each day early on can really help you get them to subscribe and help you collect helpful feedback on making your site better for your audience. As for me I won’t use that chat feature unless they add a way to put a “chat now” button on your site.
Speaking of my Chat Now idea, Woopra is actively asking users what we want right now on their blog, I posted in the comments about this chat now idea, you may want to suggest that too at this thread on the Woopra Blog.
Some time in the next two weeks I will do a screen cast of Woopra in action. I will show the activity on my Survival Podcast site, then publish a new episode and record the response, show you what happens when a notification email hits and the response to the facebook fan page update as well. But do not wait for me, Woopra is powerful, easy to install, fast to get running and for many people 100% free.
Let me put it this way if you read this and 1 hour later you still don’t have Woopra on your site, you are wrong! Well unless you are reading this at work or something and can’t do it from there. In that case make this a top priority as a next step for your website. Sites need to be designed for visitors, Woopra will help you do just that. You can sign up for woopra at you guessed it, www.woopra.com
If you need any more incentive to get this installed on your site check out this video of the launch of a website called “Foolish Adventure” as the real time states roll in.
PDF 
