Mega spy out of beta + new features for free accounts

Mega spy has come out of beta. It is now just "Spy", and the old Spy is now called "Spy basic". This also means the new Spy is now only available to Pro members, as was originally announced.

We didn't have time to make as many improvements as we wanted but don't worry, we will be visiting this again in the near future. We did manage to squeeze in the top 2 most requested features though - linking to external searches, and showing the visitor's location in a tool tip when you hover over their flag in the right hand side.

For consistency we've been trying to make it so ALL external links in your stats are accessed via that little grey arrow you all know so well, and all other links (in your stats) are generally for navigation or to apply visitor filters. Spy's new layout was too cramped we felt to do this all with, so now all external links in the action stream (to your own pages, or to referrers/searches) just link directly to those external pages.

New features for free users

We've been wanting to offer some more features to our free users for a while now. We really wanted to offer the basic version of Spy to all of you - but it just sucks up a ridiculous amount of resources supporting that, so we can't do it. The load averages on our tracking serveres were averaging more than 4x their typical load during the last 2 weeks when all sites had access to both versions of Spy. So we can't give you that, I'm sorry.

But we did give you 2 more features: Bounce rates, and IP tags and filters (but you are limited to 10 max). Also "most active visitors" was for some reason a pay-only feature, which I don't ever remember deciding on, and it's not like it's the most amazing feature in the world that will get everyone to sign up for paid service. So that, along with bounces and ip tags/filters, are now available to free members.

17 comments | Apr 01 2009 6:06pm

Reader Comments

Great job! Unfortunately however, I've got a paid account but I can still only view the basic spy.

Steve Apr 01 2009 8:48pm

Please, add more features for PRO users and add RAMBLER.RU and NIGMA.RU to search engines list.

Artsiom Apr 02 2009 9:25am

Yeah, the MegaSpy is completely crapping out now that it's the default. Spinning cursor hell.

marks Apr 02 2009 11:49pm

Working again now.

marks Apr 03 2009 8:02am

The resource usage doesn't explain why mega spy is not available to "basic" customers

marcomomsen Apr 04 2009 4:31am

This is good. Free users are going to love this effort.
-James
http://containapet.com/Dog_Fence_And_Dog_Training

James Apr 06 2009 2:04am

I love your software

Ajay Apr 06 2009 5:06am

Excuse my ignorance here...but what is the functional purpose of Spy? Sure it's cool, but how does this information help me? I can't believe this feature benefits people more than would true support for multivariate testing.

It seems targeted towards the Facebook crowd...you know...the people that have nothing to do, so they waste time browsing people's Facebook profiles.

private Apr 07 2009 9:41am

Spy helps me to label my customers right away
you may say wasting time but some of us job is following customers so its great for me to see who is shopping on the site,their clicking behaviors when I have sale..etc
very useful for people who knows what to do with it

Burcu Apr 09 2009 12:40pm

Ok...so your job is to watch your analytics and see what pages people are navigating before they make a purchase?

That's a pretty goofy response...wouldn't you rather look at actual statistical information than say "gee, I saw a lot of people going to this page before they bought my gizmo...better go optimize it!"

I'm sorry, I can't see how this feature could possibly be useful to anyone. If it was paired with a live chat service...ok...maybe there would be some usefulness there. To me, it's one of those classic programmer moments where they think of a solution without a problem, then get all excited over the technology and go build out an utterly useless feature.

private Apr 09 2009 12:54pm

I don't think we need to insult each other here when you have no idea what their business model is or what they do! Goodness.

Some of us, like me, have sites who are very high ticket memberships, and while I do not have time to explain to you in detail why spy is valuable -- it is. To get live views of what members are doing -- it is helpful to label individual member's IPs, get immediate tracking results as customers use our site before they call in for support.

It is one tool of many that savvy folks are using.

SW Apr 09 2009 1:41pm

Ya "private", don't be so presumptuous. Many people have websites for many reasons, and there are personal and business reasons for using Spy. Its flippin' fun to watch visitors interact with your site and that is reason enough for me.

JHB Apr 09 2009 2pm

"Its flippin' fun to watch visitors interact with your site and that is reason enough for me."

Exactly my point! No flaming insults intended, this is just honest questioning.

Web analytics is not a museum (where you walk around and admire things). It's a mechanism that is supposed to help you collect directly actionable information. As a feature provides less and less actionable data, it becomes less and less useful.

It's the classic decision between need vs. want. If Clicky had been around for 10 years and already had everything you could possible want...fine...go make a cool but useless feature that's going to get the Facebook crowd all excited. But at this point in the game when there are glaring omissions from the service, choosing that route is a bad business decision.

private Apr 11 2009 10am

Glaring omissions? You yourself said that there is no service under $3000 per month that offers the feature you want. And you want our $10/mo service to have it. I don't consider that a glaring omission.

But enough already. Your comments here are not helping your cause.

Sean (Clicky) Apr 11 2009 12:34pm

For what it's worth, I'm a delighted Clicky Pro user, and I like the enhancement to the Spy feature. I find Clicky more reliable than my blog hosting--which means that, when my blog is down, I can use Clicky to find out how long it's been down. I also love seeing results in real time, particularly when I'm blogging about topics that are breaking news.

An unpaid endorsement from The Noisy Channel: http://thenoisychannel.com/

Daniel Tunkelang Apr 11 2009 1:18pm

Too bad the Spy feature uses too much resources to be available for free accounts.
It was one of the main thing that made Click Web Analytics stand out from the crowd in the free stats landscape! And the one thing that really ads to the "Web Analytics in Real Time" statement.

Greetings,
River Aidan
http://www.river-aidan.nl/

River Aidan Apr 12 2009 10:23am

Great lead generation tool. Easily verify and track emails, staging server visits and usability of sites. Good stuff, as usual.

Marc Rapp Apr 15 2009 12:34pm

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Mega spy out of beta + new features for free accounts

New features for free users

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