Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

http://www.visitorville.com/index.html
VisitorVille literally brings your site’s traffic to life, casting your visitors as animated characters in a virtual village. See visitors moving around the village in real time, visiting houses that correspond to the actual pages they are viewing on your website. See search engines (represented as busses) delivering new visitors with door-to-door service.

The problem?  Who’s the audience for the statistics for your business web site?  The video-game playing programmers? 

Nope. The button-down, “show me the ROI” business managers.  Search engine traffic as animated busses?  Sorry.  Charts and graphs will do just fine, thanks.

This is an idea that never should have made it off the napkin. Microsoft BOB, anyone?

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. csilivili on December 05, 2003

   I suggest you first check what that application is doing. I did it and I subscribed for a 30 days trial subscription.
   Anyway if you didn’t checked their website, because probably you stopped at reading the first banner, then I have to tell you that this application is a good web traffic meter with several charts and graphs. I don’t know why it is disturbing you that it has a nice interface. In my opinion the idea is very original.
   Another thing, when you buy a car then your are not interested only by its engine but also by the design of the car. Or I am wrong? Or you like only the old shape Royce Royce?

2. Michael Boyink (Author) on December 05, 2003

   I read the site, looked at the screenshots, and actually downloaded the demo intending to give it a shot, until I saw that I had to add code to every page I wanted it to track.

   Sorry, I still find the idea silly for business use.  It might be original.  Microsoft Bob was original.  But it was still an example of over-use of a metaphor for what it did, and I think VisitorVille is too.

   On cars, I’m not sure what a “Royce Royce” is, but if you spent any time here on my site you know that, indeed, I do prefer “old shapes”....;)  Simpler is better.  New cars are not “simple”. 

   What I find curious is why this post has gotten a couple of responses from people I’ve never heard from before so interested in changing my mind about this application…would it be too cynical to think that the posts are coming from employees of VisitorVille?

3. Frank Johnson on December 05, 2003

   I agree Mike.  It’s cute, it’s innovative, it’s new, it’s cutting-edge.  But I’m not sure what it gives me in terms of solid business analysis tools that I can’t already get elsewhere from most stats analysis packages.

   When I looked at the demo, I imagined myself bypassing all the video almost immediately to get to the tables of hard data.  So why pay to look at the video?  <grin>

   Frank

4. csilivili on December 05, 2003

   Dear Boyink. I think you missed again something very important. All the live web monitoring services require code insertion into the monitored pages. Why it is in this way? I don’t know, maybe you should ask the “parent” of the HTML. But as a free trial user I realized that a “FTP Wizard” screen helps the code insertion.

5. Michael Boyink (Author) on December 05, 2003

   Not so.  I’ve evaulated some that connect to the log files to provide the “live” view.

   I guess I’m not vain enough to require a “live” look - evauluating summaries and aggregated information once a week or so is enough for my site, and the clients I’m dealing with.

   I’m not letting anyone’s “Wizard” touch my code, thank you.

   But anyway, give it up.  I think your product is essentially silly, and there are others out there that are better for the money.  All this pretending to be a satisfied user is sillier yet.

6. Andy on August 22, 2004

   I am considering using VisitorVille, not for stats analysis, but to improve usability and conversions. It is very hard to research this with traditional stats tools - the best way is to observe real users but that’s very expensive. I think VV is a good idea, and not silly, if it can give a fresh insight into how your site is really being used. For the record, I have no connection with VV.

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