On Measure Map

We have been playing with a beta of Measure Map for a couple of weeks, and I thought I would offer some impressions of the software.

First of all, Measure Map is a tool for measuring activity on your blog. It is just basically a stats package with special features for bloggers. For instance, if set up properly, it knows when someone posts a comment. Measure Map is hosted, so you simply put a few codes in your blog templates to get going, it starts tracking your stats right away.

The data that you see on any particular screen is largely determined by the date range set at the top. For instance, it might default to showing today’s info, or you could ask to see the past week or month. Many of the interface elements, such as this one, are written in Flash, so you can drag a slider to set the start and end times that you want to see detail about. A very nice idea.

The information is generally divided up into seven areas within the lefthand navigation: Visitors, Links, Comments, Posts, Browsers, Countries, and Times. There is also a dashboard which summarizes the information, again, for the range that you have chosen to view.

The general feeling I get from the design and presentation of Measure Map is a lot like using Blogger. The graphics and choice of fonts are very similar. The information is presented often in the form of sentences rather than lots of charts or tables. For instance, it tells me presently that “6 visitors came to your blog. That’s 18 fewer than an average day.” Well hey, it’s early! The interface to view the Countries is a testament to its simplicity but also its lack of detail. It lets you zoom and pan, but never offers more detail, which seems strange.

If you just write a blog, and you’re just interested in finding traffic patterns therein, Measure Map might be a good investment (though no price has been named yet, to my knowledge). If you run a complete website, as we do, you will find that you need more information than Measure Map is designed to provide. But it does make a great companion to other software, and we have been using several!

Raymond Brigleb

Creative Director, dreamer, partner, father, musician, photographer. Has been known to ride the rails. Pulls one heck of a shot.