Measure Map Feeds - and a new Widget

Measure Map is offering data "feeds" of the analytics data they collect and analyze. This is a terrific concept, stretching the options for how analysts/bloggers can review their stats. They offer several feeds of the analytics data, including:

• Daily Overview (simple overview stats)
• Popular Posts (daily review of top posts)
• New Links (list of new incoming and outgoing links to your site)
  

The feeds require authentication to view, which is a necessary ingredient. They use basic authorization, which will keep most folks honest, but I'd like to see them offer SSL as well to encrypt the data.

The overview data pulls down the last 5 days worth of stats, so you get a little history. This is a smart approach for a quick glance of the high-level trends. I do wish they'd offer an option to view the data for the current day - the most recent day is yesterday at this time.

Since the feed data is presented in XML, Measure Map loses a little control of how it actually looks to the end user. But the other side of that coin is, since the data is in XML, you might as well create a widget for it!

Now, let's be clear about my artistic "talents" (in case that's already not very clear ;-). The folks at AdaptivePath have come up with a very nice way to visualize analytics data with their great use of flash objects in Measure Map. And so I hate to lower that bar by offering a separate view into the data.

So, with all apologies to Jeffrey Veen and the rest of the team, I've created a second widget for folks using Measure Map (and optionally Feedburner). As with the first widget (information and download information here), this one is very simple, showing overview stats. In the overview feed, Measure Map offers a few data points...I've chosen Visitors and Links In for this widget. I'm always most curious about how many visitors are coming in, and where they are coming from (referrers). Clicking on the stats opens a browser to the Measure Map report (or to the Feedburner site for the Subscribers data). Here's a screenshot:

Here are the steps to get this working:

1. If you aren't already using Yahoo! widgets, download and install the engine.
2. Download my WebAnalyticsQuickView-MM widget.
3. Configure the WebAnalyticsQuickView widget for your Measure Map account and if applicable, your Feedburner data. Right-click on the widget to see the menu.
   

If someone is interested in seeing other data from Measure Map, let me know and I'll see what I can do. As always, please let me know if you have any feedback or questions at elbpdx at gmail.

Filed in:

• analytics
• widget
• feedburner
• measuremap
• visualization