Performancing Metrics Beta Preview

As Nick announced yesterday, Performancing Metrics (PM) has been in closed beta for some time now (couple of weeks at least, to my knowledge – most likely a month or so). With the news now public, and with the beta going public in a matter of few days, I think it’s time someone spilled the beans on what PM is all about. Editors Note: Ahmed is one of our alpha testers ~Nick

I’ve divided this preview/review into 3 sections: Features, Issues and Predictions. The first two are accurate while the third is just me shooting bull. Bear with me here, because this is definitely better than Performancing for Firefox.

I won’t be telling you guys everything, because some of it (actually all of it) is worth the wait. So no screenshots :)

Features

Performancing Metrics works by inserting a small snippet of code in your blog’s template (for WordPress, stick it in the footer or header file), just like StatCounter and BlogBeat, amongst others. All stats are monitored on Performancing’s servers, which will lead to the inevitable questions of scalability and costs.

PM provides us with three types of statistical data:

• Visitor Tracking
• Visitor Activity
• Marketing (a loose term that covers ad tracking, referrals and exit links)

In my view ad tracking is where Performancing has a lot to offer, especially with their background (Patrick and Andy) and their business model (ad network). At the moment the options are fairly limited (nothing that the AdSense Logger plug-in for WordPress can’t handle), but expect this portion of PM to undergo serious development in the near future.

In addition, the graphical reporting is neat but lacks some oomph. This is where 3rd party tools can really improve things, especially with the full API on its way.

Stats reporting made me flip out when I first saw the details and features they’ve put in. Fair to say that this is one of those things that you guys should wait for, as it’s really, really good.

I wasn’t expecting too much in the beta (considering that this is a free app) but from what I’ve seen so far this beats BlogBeat and StatCounter hands down. The scary bit is that PM will improve even more.

I’m sure that other people that were participating in the closed beta will be able to comment in more detail on the quality of reporting.

Visitor Tracking

Here, you can track the following data:

• Visitor stats
• Geography
• Languages
• Browsers
• Platforms
• Screen resolution

Fairly standard; nothing to write home about, except for the depth and quality of the analytics on offer.

Visitor Activity

• Post views
• Comments posted
• Comments by post
• Categories

BlogBeat also provides comment tracking, but for some reason it is not that good with reporting them (your experience might be different). PM, on the other hand, did a fairly good job of capturing all comments in the last week.

The Categories option merely tells you which category received the most visitors. It’s a good option to have, and I haven’t seen any other stats package offer this as yet (please correct me if I’m wrong here).

Marketing

• AdSense clicks
• Referrers
• Search engines
• Outbound links

Like I said earlier, Performancing’s background and interests in ad networks means that this will be the focus of PM in the future. Right now, the tracking is basic (but accurate). I didn’t really get too many clicks on my ads :) so I can’t say for sure how the system deals with hundreds of daily clicks.

Issues

There are a few issues / questions that I have about PM:

Bugs

Performancing Metrics is still in alpha. This means that it is bound to be a bit wonky, although from what I’ve seen it is still very stable. A couple of the comments were associated with the wrong posts, but overall everything is being tracked properly. Of course, over the next week people will do better testing than me, especially when it comes to comparing reports from PM and other blog stats packages.

Scalability

Performancing’s user base will literally explode once PM goes public. How will these guys manage the extra strain, especially since this is supposed to be a free app? This should be interesting to watch.

Costs

Nick has mentioned before that Performancing Metrics (which is supposed to be the second tool before they start their ad network later this year) will be free. This will put an enormous strain on their servers, especially once Performancing goes public.

The logical thing would be to assume that they will put some restrictions (on traffic or number of blogs tracked or even on the API) for free accounts, but we’ll have to wait and see. More on this in the predictions section.

Design

They’ve worked hard on the graphical aspect of reporting, and it shows. The design is neat and effective (although not too pretty). This can still be improved, although I think that might be left to the “community” for API-driven tools. Then again, stats packages are not built to be pretty – if they are efficient and comprehensive, I’m happy.

API

The API for PM (which Nick says is on the way) will be damned interesting. I think a lot of feature requests that are going to pop up after the beta release are meant for third-party tools – Performancing should focus on providing quality tracking and free stats, not pretty graphics and a gazillion permutations (such as traffic prediction – which is fairly easy to program once you have access to the API).

Will there be an API key, or will we just use our login names and passwords? The later, I imagine; it’s simpler that way.

Predictions

As Nick said, PM should go from alpha to beta and be open for Performancing users next week.

Expect to see ad-tracking support for other ad networks, (such as YPN) to be added soon (although maybe not in the beta). Also, considering that Patrick and Andy are part of Performancing, I think we should also see tracking for paid links in the future.

One thing I’m hoping Performancing adds is feed stats (such as FeedBurner support in BlogBeat). It shouldn’t be too hard to put in.

This is nowhere near complete, but should give you guys a good idea of what to expect once Performancing Metrics goes public.