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Ask HN: check out our upcoming web stats dashboard app - MightyReach.com

24 points by ryanwaggoner ↗ HN
Ok, this hasn't launched yet, but we'd love to get some feedback on the idea and the direction we're going.

Backstory: We've been working on a new set of features for MightyBrand.com, our social media monitoring and engagement platform, and we decided to take this particular set of features and also release as a standalone application. MightyReach lets you quickly and easily create a customized dashboard that pulls in just the stats you care about from Google Analytics, Feedburner, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, etc. You can subscribe to email and RSS reports, and export the data in XML, CSV, and PDF formats. The goal is to help people really easily get a top-level view of the results of their web and social media marketing efforts and save time in the metrics & reporting phase of the process.

http://MightyReach.com

Questions for you guys:

  1. Would you use something like this?
  2. What features are most important to you?
  3. Would you pay?  If so, how much?
  4. What services or features are we missing?
Thanks as always for the awesome feedback...there's nothing like this community :)

21 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 62.2 ms ] thread
CalmQuiet
Well, I'm a noob around here (and in web dev), but I do like the look & sound of what you're assembling there.

This is a rather self-serving suggestion, but would you consider any kind of sliding scale pricing: based on some ranges of traffic... so that a tiny little site just starting could test-drive it and see how our traffic was developing (and not have much expense during early stages), and start paying more significantly when we had a business going to such a degree that we really needed to keep up with even small % changes.

[or (less work for you?) at least a trial test-drive period?] — A noob's 2cents.

ryanwaggoner
We're still playing around with the pricing model...we'd definitely like to come up with a few different plans that would work for sites of different size. Thanks for the suggestion!

Also, what's your idea of "not much expense"?

jfarmer
It looks nice, but I see a big panel of metrics I'd never use.

http://20bits.com/articles/8-tips-for-crafting-metrics-that-...

Taking the Twitter followers graph, will your system let me track the referral traffic from Twitter and break down what they do on with my product? Can I A/B test to see how it impacts their behavior and have it reflected in the reports?

Tracking my Twitter followers and Facebook fans is fun, but it doesn't help me make decisions about my product.

ryanwaggoner
There's a lot of more complicated things that we'd like to do down the road, but a lot of people aren't even using the simple top-line stats to the degree that they should be, partly because things are so spread out and fragmented. That's the theory, anyway :)
jfarmer
I think people shouldn't use "topline stats" like # Twitter followers. You should be tracking the value that Twitter drives to your product (preferably dollars-in-hand) and optimize that -- whether that means getting more followers, getting more followers of a certain type, getting more people to retweet your stuff, or whatever.

The same goes for the other "top line" metrics like that: pageviews, uniques, # friends, # fans, whatever.

"# friends"-type metrics are particularly bad because they're virtually monotonic.

Just my thoughts -- your product might not be designed for my needs.

Frocer
100% agreed. These metrics don't really matter to me. I think the reason why most start-ups have customized metrics tracking system is because we are all different. For a social product, engagement metrics would be much more important. If you are an utility product, metrics that are more important are probably usability, time spent, effectiveness, or whatever that's relevant to the developers.

The metrics I see in that dashboard are just a bunch of numbers that are fun to see, but doesn't give me insights into how I should push my product direction. Google Analytics + CrazyEgg on the other hand, they do.

On the other hand though, that tool may be very handy to track marketing campaigns. So that may be the angle on how you can position the tool. But be warned, web analytic tool is not a good market to be in because it's very hard to scale... you need a direct sales force for instance.

ryanwaggoner
Just to be clear...we're not doing any web analytics directly, just pulling from 3rd party services like GA, Clicky, Mint, etc. This is just a dashboard / reporting tool.
jgilliam
There's definitely a huge need for this.

You should include delicious links too.

run4yourlives
I would never use this however if I've learned anything in this life it is that there is no upper bound on appeasing the ego.

You should be a runaway success... add some website karma monitoring and it'll really take off. Even better, give the user an overall average rating and let them compete with their friends to establish who the most popular person is.

One issue would be monetization, as this is usually something for the facebook/teen crowd, but I'm sure you can figure something out.

Nice work!

kyro
I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you and say that this doesn't cater at all to the facebook/tween crowd. It's not even to appease egos. No one puts up facebook fan pages or youtube videos to promote themselves. This would be perfect for a company trying to establish a web presence or a band utilizing social media to gain a following. And because of that, monetization will be rather easy. Companies/musicians/etc would definitely pay for a service like this, imo.
mtw
1. yes 2. feedback from twitter (search) 3. not really, there's already more elaborate apps like scout labs
ryanwaggoner
You may want to take a look at http://MightyBrand.com, our social media monitoring and engagement platform which is more akin to Scout Labs. MightyReach is more geared towards getting a high-level view of all your existing web analytics and social media stats, rather than monitoring social media mentions of your brand. Make sense?
anigbrowl
1. yes. 2/4. multiple YT stats, time per page. 3. $19.95/mo., I'd want a 1-3 month trial (give me time to sell it to my boss).
thorax
I love your front page. One of the common criticisms on HN is that it's hard for us to tell what startups do. You make it quite clear (to me) from first glance what you offer.

We use/pay Clicky for stats, and I have to say they do a good job in displaying the metrics I care about.

It's hard to say whether I would pay more or less for something that integrated with all my analytics accounts. I think there's some appeal there, but I see more of these services now tracking some of the social aspects so your value will get eroded unless you keep working hard.

Looks good at first glance, though.

udfalkso
- I'd use this if it were free. - Show me a list of my newest non-search referrers
mr_cheese
It looks nice, and dashboards are cool, but I'd be hesitant to give you any passwords. So hopefully all these services have some sort of API key/oauth/other authentication mechanism.

I'd pay $3/mo.

avibryant
I'll be watching this with interest. We're working on something with similar goals, although a very different approach - more info at http://dshbrd.com/about .
Mdrips
Payment should be centered on how engaged one is across the spectrum of metrics that you offer. I'd offer a "light" first one for free and then require payment beyond that first metric.
mstefff
doesn't seem like something people would spend money on...all of this info seems readily and easily accessible already.

the name seems a bit childish.