Woopra Site Analytics – First Impressions

I wrote this little post quite some time ago, around the weekend my first 2 sites were accepted into the Woopra Beta.
If you’re wondering how to pronounce Woopra, i like to think it has an exclamation mark on the end (Woopra!) and that it’s the sound Bruce Lee makes when he karate chops your arse. Because I get the impression thats exactly what Woopra is going to do to online analytics.

So heres the deal, Woopra is Live analytics for web site, just like google analytics all you do is add a javascript code. Then while i sit here with my Woopra desktop client open on my computer (this is the first win), i see you hitting the websites i have registered, i see it all while it’s happening and i see where you came from. Theres something weird about this, it creates a strange sensation for the developer of a website, the power of knowing someone is on your site RIGHT NOW!

I find i lose or disregard alot of the data that is in google analytics, purely because of the fact i go and “check it” and filter through it all. In Woopra i find myself rarely checking and just leaving it open on a screen at times to watch, due to this i find i’m noticing things about the websites i’ve not been paying attention too that REALLY need some attention.

In it’s current incarnation Woopra doesn’t seem to be doing alot more than Google Analytics, but that’s ok because they’re doing some of it better and talking about the future features. Some extras that make it that little bit better:

• Visitor Tagging – obviously in all analytics programs each user is ‘unique’ so that they can see the difference between unique hits and page views. Woopra takes it one step further allowing you to Tag certain users. Of course i’m tagging repeat customers so i can see what they’re doing..why wouldn’t i? It’d be nice if woopra allowed me to add a default link on the tag so say if i wrote the tag as “
• Live Geographical Overview – The kind of thing you push to displays and put around the office to watch
• API’s for data access – Whats that i can build my own shiney live geographical overview using my data from your servers? take that google! (and weeks after i wrote this, google released their data api)

So there you have it, my first impressions of Woopra. I’ll be posting more again on Woopra as they get the current version out of Release Candidate. If you want to check out Woopra head over to their website to check out more.