Web Analytics Widget

I had a little extra time over the holiday break to finish up a first pass at a web analytics widget based on the Yahoo! Widget Engine. WebTrends (and other vendors) have had low-footprint analytics apps for years now, but Yahoo! widgets are relatively easy for a hack like me to work with, so I just had to give it a try.

This first iteration is very simple and straight-forward. It is geared toward those who have a Feedburner feed and WebTrends (although it can be easily extended to any other web analytics provider who has an XML export or API). The widget pulls data from the Feedburner API to give you your feed circulation, and also pulls from the WebTrends XML export feature to give you Visits and Pageviews for the day. If you aren't using Feedburner, you can still use it to track your WebTrends data.

Here's a sample screenshot:



Here are a few steps to get this working:

1. If you aren't already using Yahoo! widgets, download and install the engine.
2. Download my WebAnalyticsQuickView widget.
3. Configure the WebAnalyticsQuickView widget for your WebTrends and if applicable, your Feedburner data. Right-click on the widget to see the menu. There are a few tricks for accessing your WebTrends data, so contact me (elbpdx at gmail) if you have any questions.
   

I'll be working on a few other iterations of this widget for those who are interested in it. Some ideas: adding a graphing visualization, adding support for WebTrends software, extracting specific KPI's, etc. If anyone would like to change it to support some other tools other than Feedburner or WebTrends, contact me (elbpdx at gmail) and I'll take a crack at it (or feel free to modify the code yourself!).

Oh, and when Measure Map comes out with their API, I'll add that in. Google Analytics doesn't have an API yet, but that seems inevitable, and should be easy to use in this widget as well as I use both of those tools too.

Any feedback is appreciated on this. Enjoy!

BTW, this widget is not a WebTrends product, and is not supported in any way by WebTrends. It is merely a side-project of mine, giving me a chance to dig into a new technology and new visualization ideas.

Filed in:

• analytics
• widget
• visualization
• feedburner
• webtrends