I just recently got back into the magic of Pandora, an awesome way to find new music and share music mixes with friends.

However, after a few hours of use I remembered what kept from making it my main jukebox player in the beginning. The answer is simple, it’s hard to use while working in other applications. For someone like me who spends hours at a time locked in a text editor, switching to my browser and tracking down a play/pause button 20+ times a day can be frustrating. My first idea was to move Pandora to a standalone browser instance using Fluid. However, after a quick search and a bit of help from a co-worker I found an even better solution — PandoraBoy. It’s a small free Google code application that works similar to a standalone browser instance but also adds global hotkey controls.

You can set global shortcuts for actions such as: play/pause, next song, next station, previous station, vote up, vote down, player volume, and mute.

Once mapped you can use Pandora as your primary media player without ever having to view it in browser. Props to the makers of this app, it’s exactly what I was looking for. If you’re keen to try it you can download it now.

If you find, like me, that you can’t stand the dock icon you can use the quick one I whipped up. Download my PandoraBoy alternative icon.

First off, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more said about the comparisons between Google Analytics and WebTrends. When Google acquired Urchin back in 2005 and suggested they would be giving the tool away for free, I thought WebTrends would last no more then another 2 years. But I’ve been totally wrong. They’ve still been able to ask for thousands of dollars for the privilege of using their software. I thought it was about time that we really compare these two popular tools and the data they report.

Ok, so Google loses on the matrix of features but let’s go into this a bit deeper.

Bot Traffic: Advantage WebTrends. If you absolutely need to know what bots are hitting your site then go with WebTrends because Google just can’t report that data.

Real-Time Analytics: Big Advantage to WebTrends. Real-time reporting requires investing an a substantial amount of server power. Sure Google has that power but they haven’t put it behind Analytics yet. My guess is you’ll see this in the future but right now the win goes to WebTrends. In my opinion, it’s the sales team that needs to know about real-time visitor activity and there are plenty of tools out there that can do a better job then WebTrends at reporting real-time activity.

Hits: For real? Who still uses this as a metrics and why? Slight Advantage to WebTrends.

Tracking Advertising: This can be accomplished in Google but it’s a bit of a hack to get it working. WebTrends is more eligant in it’s approach towards tracking advertising.

Animated Graphs: Advantage Google. I’m a data visualization junkie and I can easily lose hours working in the visualization tool; however for the majority of marketers this is overkill.

So, how does that data compare?

Total New & Returning Visitors

This data is comparing a 1 year time frame by monthly totals.

Referral Traffic Counts

Six months of data from Jan 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2009

Page Views

Six months of data from Jan 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2009

Verdict

To each their own. I personally can’t justify WebTrends to our clients. Google’s feature set is 95% of what is available in WebTrends and the few features that stand out don’t justify the hefty price tag. I’d love to chat with someone who feels WebTrends is superior to Google, I just haven’t found that person yet.

Work on Spec has long been a very dirty word in the design industry. The AIGA’s stance on this issue is very established. But recently a number of big agencies such as Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and a new agency created by two former CP+B executives, Victors & Spoils, have embraced the concept under it’s new politically correct name of crowdsourcing.

Under this new model the company works with the client to define the project and then posts the project on sites such as crowdSPRING. Designers, or anyone for that matter, can then read the project requirements and submit a design. The agency and the client then choose the design they like best and pay that person the specified fee. So potentially thousands of designers spend their time on the project and one gets paid for their work. In the case of a CP+B project that was $1000.

Sounds like a great model for the agency and the client. Get thousands of hours of work for $1000. In the case of Victors & Spoils they come right out and say that the new model will lower their overhead and lower costs for clients. Heck it’s a win for everyone right? The clients pay a lot less for creative, the agency lowers it’s costs by hiring less full-time employees and not having to pay benefits, and creatives all over the world get a shot at doing work for big name clients.

A perfect model for the death of an industry. For the industry to survive it requires a continual infusion of new talent from a strong system of schools that educate the next generation. If the future career path for a design school graduate involves spending hour upon hour working away on projects that I have little to no chance of getting paid for, how long can a designer sustain this? If I am choosing a major and a career path I would find this a very scary choice. What career counselor would advise anyone to pursue this career?

Let’s do the math. Say I’m a hotshot designer and I can knock out a great logo or homepage design in 20 hours. I can work on two of these spec projects a week, 8 in a month. Say the prize is $1000 and I manage to actually win 25% of the projects I do. I just cleared a cool $2000 for the month. I’m guessing most people could probably work less hours and make more money waiting tables. And this assumes I get paid for 25% of the projects I do. WIth thousands of people competing for these projects the reality for even the best designers is probably much worse. And does this really even reward the best solutions? Every designer knows that the client doesn’t always pick the most innovative design you show them, so even being the best designer competing for a fee doesn’t guarantee you will get paid.

There will always be those who think only of themselves and how they can make the most money with little regard for the future. What legacy will they leave? Will there be any creatives left to care? Maybe they should go read the Lorax.

These are not valid metrics of the health of a website. These are numbers that executives like to hang their hats on, and they are shortcuts to thinking and in-depth analysis. I love metrics, no doubt, but it’s time to start telling stories of user-interaction. Hard numbers lack context; and therefore often send poorly informed decision makers down the wrong path. Let’s go over a few of my favorites.

Absolute Unique Visitors
This number is by far the most used metric of site success but it needs to be framed in the context of goals & objectives. Look at the weekly trend below. It’s a capture of our traffic pattern on supportdetails.com. Support Details is a one-page site that captures browser specs and sends them to a targeted contact via email.

Simply showing this graphic and looking at an absolute number doesn’t tell the story of what the users are doing on this site. When this graphic is supported by referral sites, repeat visitor trends and normalized for spikes then the numbers begin to talk.

The numbers are telling me the spikes in traffic have helped to create product awareness, overtime this increased awareness has led to increase usage of Support Details on a regular basis. By utilizing the visualization tools that Google Analytics has to offer the trend becomes pretty apparent.

Pageviews
More pages clicked is counter-intuitive to the rational of a good site
information architecture. So why is it valued as a positive metric? If someone is clicking on more pages it can either mean they aren’t able to find content, or it could mean they are deeply interested in the content. I usually suspect it’s the former.

Bounce Rate
Measured by a visitor coming to one-page of the site, then leaving. This isn’t necessarily an indicator of a problem. It could be a measure of excellent content. If a visitor is searching for information and they find it without clicking around, then wouldn’t this be considered success? When this metric is used in the context of goals, then it becomes important. As a standalone number, it’s a useless metric.

Time on Site
What does this really mean? Does increase time mean the site is difficult to navigate. Is it hard for me to find what I’m looking for, or am I engaged in reading the content. In-depth analysis would compare the objectives of the site, with the type of content, then the average stay on a particular page.

I could continue offering alternative views for just about any of the major metrics, but my point is it’s time to look at the bigger picture. We need to be asking questions rather then looking for shortcuts that make for pretty charts and reports. Dig deep, give real analysis into what’s perceived in reading the numbers; that is were the art & skill of analytics pays off.

I’d like to hear more stories of useless analytics that you’ve encountered. Please share the info.