davemcnally.net

After listening to the recent episode of the Boagworld Podcast and twittering my thoughts, I got a message from Paul saying he had not included Mint in the discussion about web stats as he had not looked at for a while and therefore couldn’t give an up-to-date opinion. I was asked to write a review about the current version and that brings me to this entry. Let’s take a look at Mint.

During the above mentioned episode, Google Analytics was mentioned as being the “default position” when it comes to people using a web stats package. That may very well be the case and it’s not my objective to turn anyone against it, I simply believe Mint is a much better overall choice when it comes to choosing an application to process your statistics and so, this is not going to be a ‘Mint vs Google’ article, but more a review of Mint alone. If you like analytics, that’s fine but as with Paul’s review, I’m just pointing out that there are more options out there to choose from.

The first thing I suppose I should point out is that Mint is not free, but it’s not expensive either and at only $30 for a license, it’s not much at all to pay. Especially if you are going to be using the stats produced to customize marketing campaigns and keywords, Mint would pay for itself in this regard and paying the one-time small fee shouldn’t put you off picking up a copy. Secondly, it’s a self-hosted solution, meaning you download the package and install to your own server where your website is hosted. The process is really simple and straight forward meaning just about anybody could install it in a matter of minutes without any major problems. One of the main benefits of having a self-hosted package like Mint is the availability of your data. Your statistics are recorded and stored to a database on your server, giving you instant access to the data itself and allowing you to easily backup when you need to.

From a users point of view, the first thing you are likely to notice after logging into your Mint dashboard is the attention to detail that’s gone into the design of Mint. This obviously isn’t a major feature, after all, you are looking for web stats, not a pretty picture but the design is also very simple and therefore does help when it comes to usability and moving around the dashboard. Various different streams of data are shown by default and are organized into ‘Panes’ which can be ordered to your preference and filtered to suit your specific needs. Having this information on the first page you see after logging in means you don’t need to dig your way through different menus to get to the data you wanted – you decide what you want to see and where you want to see it.

A lot of functionality is offered ‘out of the box’ but where Mint really comes into its own is with the available plugins called Pepper. Basically, you can download and install these plugins to completely customize the statistics that are reported for you. For example, if you use Feedburner to process RSS subscriptions from your site, you can install a Pepper that will track subscriptions for you and display the results right in the window without the need to sign into the Feedburner and check. There are many Pepper available at no extra cost and range in functionality from showing you which external links on your site are most popular to showing you which browser, operating system and screen resolution your visitors are using. There are also desktop gadgets/widgets available for both Mac and Windows so you can even keep track of stats straight from your desktop.

Having the vast amount of plugins available for download really lets you decide how you want Mint to function and having your stats constantly up-to-date makes the plugins very valuable indeed. Any statistics you have chosen Mint to record are displayed in real time on the dashboard. It’s not a live stream as such like Woopra is but you don’t need to wait for new visits to be recorded, refresh the page and you really do get a fresh, new look at your stats.

So why pay for Mint? Well, if you’re looking for a simple, effective and effortless way to track and record your statistics, it’s the best option out there in my opinion and the ability to filter out the stuff you don’t want and have Mint only display the information that you deem relevant, it avoids overwhelming you with too much information which can sometimes be overkill. It’s not the be all and end all of web stats but nothing in this area is perfect, there’s always room for improvement. It may not be the perfect package and may not be right for you – but it is another option. Before I forget, if you don’t already listen to the Boagworld Podcast, firstly - shame on you. Secondly, go and subscribe right about now, it’s pretty much the number one podcast out at the moment if you’re into web design. So, thanks for reading and if you haven’t already done so, go and take a fresh look at your site!