Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#1

Post by joevandyk » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 5:00 PM UTC

Say I'm running an e-commerce website.

I want to be able to (data updated once a minute):

- See how many orders we're getting. I want to be able to answer questions like "are we taking more orders this evening than normal?" and "what hour do we make the most profit each day?"

- How many people people did X? (where X could be commenting, playing games, registering, tweeted about us, etc)

There's a lot of analytics software up there, but not many let you break data down into minute or hour chunks of time. Also, we'd want to be able to customize what data is being monitored.

We already use Chartbeat and Google Analytics. Chartbeat doesn't let you customize data (so we couldn't see how much profit we make per hour, for example), and Analytics isn't realtime at all.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#2

Post by gilbax » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 5:43 PM UTC

Is Chartbeat the only real time analytics engine on the market ? ( I'm asking this because I assume you invested more than me, and I'm interested in knowing the current state of this market )

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#3

Post by elliottcarlson » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 5:43 PM UTC

You could look in to customizing Hummingbird Stats (http://hummingbirdstats.com/) - the real time factor is already there; you would just have to add some additional things to track against.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#4

Post by joevandyk » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 7:48 PM UTC

elliottcarlson wrote: post #3

You could look in to customizing Hummingbird Stats ( http://hummingbirdstats.com/ ) - the real time factor is already there; you would just have to add some additional things to track against.

Hummingbird doesn't look it supports going back in time well?

i.e. we'd want to ask "how many t-shirts did we sell yesterday".

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#5

Post by joevandyk » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 7:49 PM UTC

joevandyk wrote: post #4

elliottcarlson wrote: post #3

You could look in to customizing Hummingbird Stats ( http://hummingbirdstats.com/ ) - the real time factor is already there; you would just have to add some additional things to track against.

Hummingbird doesn't look it supports going back in time well? i.e. we'd want to ask "how many t-shirts did we sell yesterday".

Plus I think we want something that doesn't require javascript.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#6

Post by elliottcarlson » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 8:38 PM UTC

joevandyk wrote: post #4

elliottcarlson wrote: post #3

You could look in to customizing Hummingbird Stats ( http://hummingbirdstats.com/ ) - the real time factor is already there; you would just have to add some additional things to track against.

Hummingbird doesn't look it supports going back in time well? i.e. we'd want to ask "how many t-shirts did we sell yesterday".

That's where the customizing comes in. The actual data is stored and can be referenced using other tools/extensions/customizations.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#7

Post by elliottcarlson » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 8:39 PM UTC

joevandyk wrote: post #5

joevandyk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hummingbird doesn't look it supports going back in time well? i.e. we'd want to ask "how many t-shirts did we sell yesterday".

Plus I think we want something that doesn't require javascript.

I guess I misunderstood your requirement of real time - I am guessing you meant that you want to see up to date information when visiting a page?

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#8

Post by pmjoyce » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 8:54 PM UTC

Excuse the blatant plug, but my startup http://geckoboard.com might be a reasonable fit for the visualise side of your requirement. We pull data from a bunch of different sources (e.g. Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Zendesk, Freshbooks etc out of the box, but we also allow custom data uploads) and display them on a status board.

You can use a script on your own server or a YQL query to create the file for custom data and we pull it at regular intervals into your status board. Earlier this week we added support for custom chart widgets.

We're in an invite freeze period for our private beta right now, but if you mail me (details in my profile) I'll send yours out.

Just to re-iterate; we don't help you gather stats; we display stats you've already got and want to visualise in near real time.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#9

Post by joevandyk » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 9:00 PM UTC

elliottcarlson wrote: post #7

joevandyk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus I think we want something that doesn't require javascript.

I guess I misunderstood your requirement of real time - I am guessing you meant that you want to see up to date information when visiting a page?

Yes, pretty much. It's fine to hit refresh and see the data as of a couple minutes ago.

Needing to wait a day (as in Google Analytics) would be too much.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to visualize / analyze website stats in realtime?

#10

Post by joevandyk » Fri, Oct 01, 2010, 9:17 PM UTC

pmjoyce wrote: post #8

Excuse the blatant plug, but my startup http://geckoboard.com might be a reasonable fit for the visualise side of your requirement. We pull data from a bunch of different sources (e.g. Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Zendesk, Freshbooks etc out of the box, but we also allow custom data uploads) and display them on a status board. You can use a script on your own server or a YQL query to create the file for custom data a…

Is it possible to view stats in the past?