Online marketing company KISSMetrics, has published a series of posts entitled “The Science of Social Timing“. The first part was about “Social Networks“, the second was about “Timing & Email Marketing” and for the third and final part of the series – “Timing and Blogging” they talk about the effect of timing on blog readership.

The infographic provides a lot of useful information. However, data and statistics vary between blogs and time zones. The main idea here is learning how to use your blog’s stats and analytics and correlating them to get the best results. The best thing you can do as a blogger is to experiment and use whatever works best for you.

NOTE: All of the data presented in the infographic are presented in Eastern Time (EST) unless otherwise noted.

What do you think of the data and information presented in this infographic? In your own experience or observation, what is the best time to blog or publish a blog post? Please share your thoughts.

I’ve tried alot of third-party web analytic tools in the past – Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics, Clicky, Site Meter, 103Bees including WordPress plugins like FireStats and Cystats. Each of these tools and services do a good job in providing information regarding web traffic, statistics and analytics and they are FREE. However, in my experience the ones that work best and the most reliable are Google Analytics and Reinvigorate.

If you’re looking for a new free web analytics tool use on your blog/website or aren’t satisfied with the one you have now and want to replace it, here’s one alternative that you might want to checkout – Open Web Analytics.

What is Open Web Analytics?

Open Web Analytics (OWA) is open source web analytics software that you can use to track and analyze how people use your web sites and applications. OWA is licensed under GPL and provides web site owners and developers with easy ways to add web analytics to their sites using simple Javascript, PHP, or REST based APIs. OWA also comes with built-in support for tracking web sites made with popular content management frameworks such as WordPress and MediaWiki.

Screenshots:
Dashboard

Heatmap

Details

Geolocation

Clickstream

Actions

Feeds

SEO

Requirements:

• Server Operating System: OWA only runs under UNIX operating systems at this time. Windows operating systems are not currently supported.
• PHP: OWA requires PHP 5.2.x or later.
• Database: OWA requires MySQL 4.1 or later.
• Required php.ini Directives: Certain PHP configuration settings create problems for OWA installations. The following is a list of INI settings that should be avoided: * safe mode directive must be set to “off’.
• Required PHP Extensions: * The PCNTL extension is required only if you plan to utilize OWA’s background processing daemon (optional). Since PCNTL comes with the PHP distribution you just have to compile your PHP with the –enable-pcntl directive. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/pcntl.installation.php for more info on how to install the PCNTL extension.
• Web Browsers: OWA supports all major versions of most web browsers including Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. Certain OWA visualizations require Firefox 3.5 or later.

I haven’t tried Open Web Analytics yet but will do soon as I’m considering of replacing Reinvigorate because it’s no longer free. Open Web Analytics or OWA in short, has all the necessary features and options that I need/look for in a web analytics tool and much more. It’s a first-party tool so I can install it on my server and be able to have full control over it. It also has a built-in and extensive instrumentation for self-hosted WordPress blogs.

NOTE: OWA is only applicable to self-hosted blogs/websites that run on UNIX servers. Make sure that your server matches the OWA requirements. If you’re not sure, you can ask your hosting provider. Also make sure to read the Installation guide first before installing OWA. Click here to view the required permissions for Open Web Analytics files and directories.

Installing Open Web Analytics on WordPress

To install OWA on a self-hosted WordPress blog, all you need to do is:

1. Download the latest OWA distribution or check it out of SVN.
2. Extract/unzip the downloaded file and move the entire “owa” folder into your wp-content/plugins folder. The folder must be named “owa” (Without the quotes) to work.
3. Activate the OWA via the Plugins section.

That’s it. Once activated, OWA will create all the required database tables (OWA tables have the owa_ prefix by default) and will immediately start tracking all WordPress generated posts, pages and feeds. Additional settings can be configured via the OWA options page found under the main Options tab in the dashboard.

To download or learn more about Open Web Analytics and how it works, visit the official website. You can also try out the demo, if you want to take it for a spin first.

What free or premium web analytics tool do you use on your blog or website? What do you think of Open Web Analytics? Anyone here tried or plan to try it? Please share your thoughts.

Wibiya has recently launched a new dashboard design and layout for all Wibiya Toolbar users. The new design and layout enables users to easily see the activity and user engagement on their toolbar – who’s using it and how they’re using it.

The new dashboard is divided into four sections – Overview, Analytics, Social analytics and Applications.

Overview – this section displays news and updates from Wibiya and an overview of user activity on the toolbar and a breakdown of different applications in the form of a pie chart, showing which apps are becoming more popular. There’s also a graph that shows a summary of the benefits of using the Wibiya toolbar.

Analytics – this page gives users detailed information and statistics for each application they have on their toolbar and pie charts that show user engagement during the past day, week, month or since the app was installed.

Social Analytics – this section details all the toolbar’s social data. It also enables the user to find out the number of people connecting to different social networks and who these people are.

Applications – this section contains a drop down list of all applications installed on the Wibiya Toolbar that have their own dashboard. This is also the place where users can add/edit new notifications and view blog/website visitors on real-time.

Although I seldomly log in to my Wibiya Dashboard, I do love the new dashboard design and layout. Not only does it look better than the previous one but it also provides more information and is more user-friendly.

Anyone else here using the Wibiya Toolbar on their website or blog? What do you think of the new dashboard design and layout? What are other features or options that you would like to see added to it? Please share your thoughts.

There are a lot of free web analytic tools and services like Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics, Reinvigorate, Clicky, Site Meter, 103Bees, etc. These web tools and services do a very good job and provide a lot of useful information regarding web traffic, statistics and other analytics and the best part is that they’re FREE. Because these are 3rd party software, the downsides to these free web analytics tools are, you don’t have control over them and you can’t customize them. If you want a free and advanced web analytics tool that you can customize and completely control, then you should check out TraceWatch.

TraceWatch Real Time Web Stats and Traffic Analysis Lets you keep track of the visitors to your website in real time with detailed statistics and deep analysis using an innovative user interface for FREE and helps you make your website more effective. Can be easily installed on any website supporting PHP and MySQL. You only need to upload some files to your server.

TraceWatch Demo Screenshot:

Features:

• True Real Time web stats report
• Private and/or public stats report pages
• Invisible, no interference with your pages, no Javascript (You can still use Javascript code for your non-PHP pages)
• Fast Loading Web Based stats report pages accessible from anywhere
• Fast and Easy Installation on any server supporting PHP/MySQL
• Innovative Usable user interface
• Customizable you can easy change almost any functionality and feature based on your needs in the administration page
• Multi-Language Bulgarian, Dutch, German, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
• Fetch web stats to show on your web pages with an easy to use PHP API
• Well optimized database queries, little overhead on the server
• Full control over size of data in database
• Error log
• Adjust time-zone difference
• Adjust first day of week

Web Stats:

• General: Unique Visitors, New Visitors, Sessions, Page Views, Hourly and Weekday Distribution, Robot Page Views, Average Pview/Visitor, Average UVisitor/Day, Average PView/Day, Average UVisitor/Hour, Average PView/Hour
• Referrers: Grouped by domain with full URLS, search engine keywords and more…
• Countries: Determined using direct IP to country conversion instead of inaccurate inverse lookup method
• Pages: Separate hit stats for each page
• Robots: Hits of a certain page by a certain Robot
• Browsers: Most known browsers with full user-agent strings
• Custom Data: Define your own data and counters

Path Analysis:

• Determine quality of your navigation system
• Find out what goes on in your visitor’s mind
• How effective a certain referrer or page is
• Compare paths
• Determine entry pages and exit pages
• and more …

Latest Visitors:

• Full information about latest visitors
• Exact path passed by each visitor
• Time spent on each page
• Client and proxy IP addresses and domains
• Search for specific visitors
• Search for a certain IP address
• and more …

Multiple Websites:

• Track visitors to multiple website with only one installation of TraceWatch.
• Get separate web stats for multiple websites from a single interface.
• Get merged web stats for multiple websites.
• Count pages on a remote website with PHP or Javascript code.
• Count different folders on a single website as different websites.
• and more …

I’ve only tried the demo version of TraceWatch and based on what I’ve seen from the user interface, statistics and other information that it provides, TraceWatch is very promising and it’s a very useful web analytics tool that could help any webmaster or blogger.

I’m currently using Google Analytics and Reinvigorate on JaypeeOnline and am happy with both services but TraceWatch looks very interesting and promising so I might give it a try. I’ve sent a support ticket to my web host and asked if I could install TraceWatch on my web server. As soon as I get word and get the green light, I’ll install TraceWatch on my web server. Once I’ve done that, I’ll come up with a more detailed review of this free advanced web analytics tool.

If you want to try it out for yourself before installing it on your web server, take the TraceWatch Demo out for a spin.

Anyone else heard, tried or currently using TraceWatch? What web analytics tool or service are you using on your blog/website?

Aside from Google Analytics, I use Reinvigorate to keep track of my blog stats and analytics. I started using Reinvigorate back in June 2007 when I received the private beta testing invite. Yesterday, while I was checking my inbox, I found an email from the Reinvigorate Team and when I opened it, I found out that it was an invitation to test a new beta version of Reinvigorate.

Hi there!

We are beta testing a new version of Reinvigorate and would love it if you could give it a go.

Learn about some of the new features on the Reinvigorate blog:

http://blog.reinvigorate.net/2009/10/15/the-new-new-beta/

If you would like to migrate your account over to the new tracking system please use the link below.

http://report.reinvigorate.net/migrate

Feel free to leave any questions/comments/suggestions at:

http://getsatisfaction.com/reinvigorate/

Thanks! We appreciate your help and feedback!
Reinvigorate Team

New Reinvigorate Beta features:

• Enhanced Heatmaps
• Per-page stats summaries
• Enhanced graphing engine
• Live real-time summary page
• Enhanced Referrer tracking
• …and lots more

After reading the email, I clicked on the link provided in order to migrate my account to the new Reinvigorate Beta. I was brought to a page that instructed me to update the tracking code and re-create friend/client accounts, it also asked me if I wanted to create a new password and then at the bottom was the button to migrate the account to the new beta version.

Here are some of the screenshots I took of the new beta version of Reinvigorate. If you’re a Reinvigorate user/beta tester or someone who’s seen the Reinvigorate dashboard before, you’ll notice the changes and improvements made to the dashboard and other sections of the interface.

Monthly Stats

Visitors

Browsers

Timezones

Heatmap

For me and I think most Reinvigorate users/beta testers, the most awaited feature is the heatmap. In the past, I’ve installed and used a WordPress heatmap plugin called WP Clickmap. It was a neat and useful plugin, but unfortunately it was causing problems on my web server so I had to uninstall it. With the heatmap feature on Reinvigorate, I no longer need to install a heatmap plugin.

Although Reinvigorate is still in private beta testing, you can head over to their website, click on Beta Registration and provide your email address. Reinvigorate periodically invites new groups of people into the private beta test system.

Anyone else using Reinvigorate? For other Reinvigorate users/beta testers, which new feature/s do you like the most? What other features or options would you like to be added in the next version or update of Reinvigorate? Please share your thoughts.