VisiStat Analytics Grows 202%


Web Analytics Provider VisiStat.com, announced a year-over-year growth of 202% for 2007. “We attribute a large percentage of our growth to the full-service nature of our product, merging online marketing accountability with Web Analytics and dedicated customer support,” said Stephen Oachs, CEO for VisiStat, Inc.


VisiStat’s CEO is optimistic about 2008, and projects a similar increase this year. He believes their growth reflects growing consumer awareness of next-generation Website analytics and online marketing strategies. “We found end-users are increasingly more aware of the importance of Website tracking, especially the value of bundled real-time reporting solutions,” said Oachs.

“The Internet is the most measurable media available today, yet it’s been the most overlooked and misunderstood – but that’s changing. There’s a greatly increased public awareness of analytics and the business intelligence it has to offer. Site owners are graduating from free ‘one size fits all’ services. They recognize they can’t manage what they don’t measure, and once they’ve reached this epiphany, their businesses are changed for the better.”

2007 Global Website Stats – VisiStat

VisiStat AnalyticsAnalytics vendor, VisiStat, has released a new report containing a summary of Global web analytics statistics they collected over 2007. The report covers global website usage, search engine usage, keyword analysis, top browsers, top operating systems. See the full report here: http://www.visistat.com/web-use-trends-2007.php

Usage Stats:

Average Bounce Rate: 72.8%
Repeat Visitors: 30.4%
Average Visitor Click Path: 3.2 pages
Duration of Average Visit: 2.14 minutes

Search Engine Usage Stats

Yahoo  MSN  Google

VisiStat Analytics – My Chat with Co-Founder Tina Bean

During SES San Jose this past August I was able to sit down and chat with one of the founders of VisiStat Analytics, Tina Bean. During our conversation Tina and I spoke about various aspects of Visistat as well as web analytics in general. Here’s how it went:

[Manoj]: How did VisiStat originate?

[Tina Bean]: VisiStat originated from the need for an intuitive analytics platform within the small to medium size business marketplace. It was created by Stephen Oachs, who at the time was running a hosting and collocation company called Pixelmation Internet Technologies, http://www.pixelmation.com/. Frustrated by the “off the shelf” analytic packages, he set out to create a web analytics package that “answered more questions then it raised.” Customers loved VisiStat so much that Oachs decided to spin it off into its own company in the summer of 2005. That’s the point at which we joined forces and he and I founded VisiStat.

[Manoj]: What differentiates VisiStat from other web analytics products?

[Tina Bean]: VisiStat is a hosted, on-demand (SaaS) suite of tools created for sales and marketing mindsets. Not meant to be IT centric, our real-time technology and intuitive interface really speaks to those mindsets. You’d be surprised, multiple people within organizations log in to check their VisiStat account multiple times per day—You see it’s because they can monitor the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns in real-time. With VisiStat, you don’t have to be reactive with your marketing approaches. Real-time stats allow you to be proactive. If something is not working, you know immediately and can turn on a dime.

Here’s a peek into one client’s daily log ins… Like I said… multiple people in the organization, multiple times a day.

[Manoj]: Why would someone use VisiStat over something free like Google Analytics?

[Tina Bean]: First and foremost, VisiStat prides itself on its phenomenal customer support. Pick up the phone and call us 408-725-9376. We answer it. Submit a support ticket, you’ll get a response within hours, if not minutes.

Aside from that, you can track all your PPC under one umbrella with VisiStat. We not only chart conversions, but can get as granular as to relate conversions back search terms, IP addresses, ISP look ups, Geo look ups, and entire click paths. Although we are not a cookie based technology, we can tell you if that visitor has been there in the last 90 days.

VisiStat has an “Alerts” feature that will send you an email or text message when a predetermined instance happens on your website (as easy as setting up a rule in Outlook). Did your competitor come? Did your potential customer surf your site? Was that special landing page visited? Did someone “Google” you? Here’s a blog post I wrote on how I win customers with Alerts http://www.visistat.com/fromthedesk/tina-website-alerts.php.

One of our customers recently told us that he uses VisiStat to successfully bridge the gap between the Marketing and Sales department with his use of special landing pages and Alerts. He targets the company CEO through email campaigns. Each CEO gets their own landing page. When one is clicked on, he gets an Alert that says it’s been hit. In the situation he was referencing, he watched it get hit multiple times. Here’s a screenshot of a report that he ran on that one page. It showed how the CEO had forwarded this email to 33 people spanning in 14 different geographic locations (spanning 2 countries) and had seen the page a total of 46 times. What an incredibly hot lead. He told me how it was fantastic feeling to be able to deliver such a hot lead to the Sales department. I guess VisiStat helps him answer the “what have you done for me lately” question. I love that story.

Here’s a screenshot of the report he was able to put on the sales manager’s desk:

[Manoj]: What is VisiStat not meant for (What things will we never see in Visistat)?

[Tina Bean]: Because VisiStat only monitors human activity, you will never see information on crawlers, bots, spiders, or email harvesters.

[Manoj]: How important is it for a company in the analytics space to be aware of what their competitors are offering?

[Tina Bean]: We cannot be an expert in everyone’s technology. We are aware of what’s out there, but stay focused on VisiStat and its vision of being an all inclusive, integrated suite of tools for small businesses.

[Manoj]: You recently introduced reporting for Mobiles, were you noticing a major need for this?

[Tina Bean]: For those VisiStat “addicts,” its perfect. Real-time stats on the road. Plus the interface is beautiful:


[Manoj]: What do you enjoy most about working at Visistat?

[Tina Bean]: The customer enthusiasm towards VisiStat is what undeniably keeps me coming to work happily every day. Like the loyal Mac enthusiasts, we have VisiStat enthusiasts. I love watching their “light bulbs go off” when they see their stats inside our reporting area. Some customers never knew technology like this existed, most have never seen it presented in a format they could actually understand. It’s very satisfying knowing I’m out there helping website and business owners be smarter about managing their businesses.

VisiStat is a very unique product which could potentially be the choice as an analytics solution for many companies. It was a pleasure meeting Tina in person and believe that Visistat has strong leadership guiding the company towards success.

Web Analytics Reporting for Mobile by VisiStat

VisiStat, Inc. announced the release of their newest innovation, VisiStat Mobile™ 1.0, the first real-time Web statistic reports accessible by cell phone and mobile handheld devices.

VisiStat Mobile™ is a logical extension of the VisiStat reporting suite, where, for the first time, Website performance management is now available anywhere, anytime, anyplace there is cell service. Built specifically for mobile devices, VisiStat Mobile™ has reports optimized for the smaller screen size, interface and load times. It also allows for hassle-free, at-will switching between devices, and a convenient URL (visistat.mobi) for instant handheld access.

View Web Stats anytime, anywhere on an iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm or any handheld PDA. VisiStat Mobile™ brings Web analytics to portable telecommunications.

A real-time demo is available by visiting http://www.visistat.mobi/ or learn more about VisiStat Mobile™ at http://www.visistat.com/mobile.php
I was so intrigued that I had to see what the quality looked like on my HTC 6800 hand-held. I have to admit the reports looked pretty good:

VisiStat vs. Google Analytics

I first came to know about VisiStat when I read about them automating web analytics implementation on PR Web. Intrigued by that idea, I wrote a quick blog post talking about it and was quickly contacted by a marketing rep wondering if I wanted an extended trial version. Naturally, I took advantage of their generous offer. VisiStat has now been collecting data on my blog for about a month and a half and I thought rather than just talk about features/pros/cons about the product, it would be better to compare it to another reputable product in the industry: Google Analytics. I have been using Google Analytics for about 9 months and therefore have sufficient data in order to start making comparisons.

The comparison is fairly high level but gives you a quick indication of what each vendor has to offer.

Usability/Look and Feel

Google provides their traditional simple and clean interface with AJAX integration, so navigating from report to report is seamless. When a user logs in he/she is immediately presented with an Executive overview which displays both colourful and easy to read charts showing visitor and referral data. Google also offers a few other summary dashboards targeting conversions, marketing (referring sources, campaigns, and keywords) and content (top content, exits, entrance points). Google offers left hand navigation where reports are logically grouped into a tree/node menu system. The date range selector is simple to use and makes it very easy for users to select a given day/week/month or apply a custom data range. Something I noticed was the fact that my browser’s “back” button was useless because of their use of AJAX.

VisiStat’s interface relies heavily on icons and graphics to best represent their reports. Their interface is somewhat unconventional, in that it uses both top and left side navigation, where the top navigation consists of 10 different icons representing the various types of reports, and the side is an expandable menu which lists the reports vertically. The side navigation is effective in saving real estate but I wish it would follow me down the page as I scroll through a report. The reports are clear and are easy to read by a user – no matter what their level of expertise is. Another small option that would be nice to have is once a user has selected a date or range, to hold that value for every report thereafter.

[Google Analytics: 8/10]
[VisiStat: 7/10]

Reports and Data

I’ve heard that Google’s numbers (page views/visitors) are slightly lower compared to other analytics vendors and I notice this almost consistently when I compare my Google numbers to that of my StatCounter’s. VisiStat in July was 10% higher in page views and 2.5% lower in Unique Visitors than Google. This being said, no analytics software is 100% accurate – in many cases probably not even 70% accurate so you have to take all data with a grain of salt and measure metrics in terms of percentages (and watching for trends) rather than using them for hard numbers.

I find that Google’s reports appeal to different users in an organization because of the customizable views its reports include (Executive, Marketer and Webmaster). I also like the accessibility of the segment feature which helps further break down metrics such as top pages and referring domains. I think I have been a little spoiled by using SiteCatalyst’s and HBX’s path analysis so Google’s and VisiStat’s pathing reports really don’t stack up. I know I am comparing Google Analytics and VisiStat but SiteCatalyst and HBX make it much simpler to see abandonment rates and determine pathing trends. Having Google AdWords reporting with in the rest of the analytics is a nice bonus when having to compare organic vs. PPC performance.

VisiStat offers many different reports all with easy to read charts and numbers. When viewing summary reports such as their “Visitor Totals” report I am able to segment to see visitors by hour with a single click and then further segment that hour down to Referring URL, ISP information, Geo Location and content viewed with an additional click. A standard piece of functionality that they need to add consistently to all their reports is the ability to see data for a selected data range, rather than just the top X or a summary of all-time data. However, unlike Google, VisiStat’s reports are always real-time, in fact they have a report which shows visitors’ activity as they are browsing through your site.

[Google Analytics: 7/10]
[VisiStat: 7/10]

Bang for the Buck

It’s difficult to compete with something that’s free of cost, such as Google Analytics, but with starting prices of $15-19/month, VisiStat comes pretty close. Google’s product is free and now can be setup within 15 minutes, how’s that for “Bang”. Once you’re all setup you will have access to an excellent analytics solution which includes the ability to track up to 5 different sites, user management and over a dozen quality reports. Version 4 of VisiStat comes with some pretty cool add-ons geared towards measuring user behaviour such as: Click Path, Custom Page Tracking, Link Tracking and Live Page Visits. VisiStat’s ad-ons such as their AdCam (campaign management trackers) and PageAlarm (website monitor) can be added for less than $10/month each.

[Google Analytics: 9/10]
[VisiStat: 7/10]

I would recommend VisiStat to users who need up to the minute tracking, need to know specific detail about every single visitor and want the ability to expand their product with different modules down the road. Users who are more graphics oriented will also prefer VisiStat.

I would recommend Google Analytics to users who need to determine the true performance between PPC and Organic performance. Users who need to provide quick snapshot summaries to different levels within an organization should also take advantage of Google Analytics (pre packaged dashboards).

On the topics covered, Google has an edge regarding ease of report usability and quality of product for the price. I feel that both of these analytics solutions are robust enough to help a company make educated marketing decisions when segmenting and analyzing user behaviour. There are Pros and some Cons of both but if you have an individual who can make sense of all the statistics, can provide insight with the metrics, can segment everything and understands your company’s goals your organization can definitely take advantage of either product.