Over the past couple months we have been working on a lot of changes. First and foremost making the stats load faster, which you’ve probably noticed. We have also been working behind the scenes with some of our friends and heavy users to make BLVD even better, unique, useful and innovative. Today we have a couple updates that are going to start a chain of all kinds of new features and updates coming in the next couple of weeks.

1.) Multiple domains under one login. We have now made it possible to manage multiple domains under one login. If you look on your main page after logging in there is an “Add New Domain to Track” link. Add in the URL info and make sure that new domain has the right custom BLVD script running on it.

2.) Login with your email address now. No more usernames. We feel most people are used to logging in with their personal or business email to websites. In order to make it easier on our users, rather than adding one more username they have to remember, we took away usernames altogether. If you had multiple accounts with the same email address, the site just chooses the oldest account and assigns any domains that were attached to the duplicate accounts to that oldest one.

So, if a you signed up as bob@bob.com three times (different usernames), the 2nd and 3rd accounts you created will be merged into the first . That means that you will use the password from the first account you created along with your email address, to access the dashboard.

For quite a few users, this shouldn’t be a problem at all. But, for anyone who doesn’t have their original password, they can use the password reset tool to change it.

*If you created multiple accounts under different emails contact us with your accounts and the emails you used, and the email you want to be the master account, and we will merge it manually for you.

*If you forgot which email you used to sign up and you can’t login please contact us for that as well.

3.) Add additional users to view your stats on a per-domain basis. You can now allow read-only access to another user for any domain you track, by clicking on the “Manage User Access” link on the “Account Info” page. If the user you grant access to ALREADY has a BLVD Status account, the password(s) you provide will have no effect on their login information. If they don’t have an account, one will be created for them and an email will be sent to them with their login information.

4.) New Tracking script. As part of making the stats load and run faster and to also enable new features we have a new bit of java script to paste into your site. Please update your script before July 1st 2009, as it will enable your account to be a part of the new features and better running stats. It is now available in the main login page. We will stop supporting the current tracking script on July 1st, 2009. We will send a couple reminders if we see that you still haven’t made the switch, to help you avoid any downtime.

5.) Updated Wordpress plugin. We have updated the wordpress plugin with the new script and we made it better as well. Again this is sweet if your site is solely or mostly built with Wordpress as running stats is as easy as uploading and activating our plugin. You can download it here.

Upcoming: We will be releasing a paid version of BLVD Status soon, rest assured we will not take away any features that are currently free, and all the above mentioned items will remain free. However we are very excited about the new paid features. We think they will be worth every penny and we will be posting here in the next few days or so asking for some existing users to beta test the new paid versions.

As always we strive to make BLVD Status a “for us by us” type analytics, we listen closely to our users and we love to hear feedback, suggestions or feature ideas. So please don’t hesitate to contact us on our form or via email (support at blvdstatus dot com), contact form or Twitter.

May 29th 2009 Update: We have upgraded to version 2.0 of our wordpress plugin. Everyone will need to upgrade to this plugin by July 1st, 2009 in order to continue tracking their script. The old BLVD Status code will be deprecated. This updated plugin supports the new tracking code.

Version 2.0 supports the new tracking code within your BLVD Status account. It also supports automatic version upgrades and notices within your WordPress Admin.

Upgrading the Version 2.0 is easy:

• Delete any old the blvd-status.php file within your “wp-content/plugins” directory.
• Simply download the plugin here, and upload the “blvd-status” folder into your wp-plugins directory
• Activate the plugin
• Click on “BLVD Status” in the “Settings” menu.
• Copy and paste the new tracking code found within your BLVD Account after you login.*

*Make sure you paste the tracking code of the domain you are trying to track. Now that we support multiple accounts under one login, you need to make sure you select the domain in the drop-down menu, and then copy and paste the code.

If it doesn’t seem to be working:

• Make sure the template you are using has the “wp_footer()” hook.
• Make sure your server is running PHP 5.

We will continually be adding to this plugin, as more features become available!

If you have problems or ideas of how we could make this plugin more robust, please contact us.

One of our goals when creating the Beta features for BLVD Status was to make tracking out going clicks easy so you could track unconventional conversions like RSS subscribers and so on. I wanted to mention how to set up a specific micro conversion in about 45 seconds that will track which domains are sending the most people to your Twitter account. If you have a link similar to, “follow me on twitter” or anything like that on your blog that is an out going link. It is pointing to your Twitter URL and within a couple easy steps you can see which referrers send the most people to your Twitter page, whether they follow or not…well that’s up to you.

Step 1: Set Up New Conversion

You can do this from two different areas, either from the Main area right after you log in.

Or from the Dashboard by clicking on the Config Tab at the top of the Conversions Box.

Then Click on the “Add a New Campaign Button”

Step 2: Set the Specifics

Name the Campaign and select an icon to identify the conversion.

Then put in your Twitter URL exactly like you have it on your site. If you have it with the www. in front make sure you add that, if it is without make sure you do that too. EX: http://twitter.com/chrisbennett.

Then set the “Situation” to “Vistor Leaves a Page to Visit Specified URL”

Hit Create Campaign and you are done. Now you can see which referring domains and what content drives the most people to your Twitter account.

When you are done you should be able to track those clicking on your Twitter Account and what referrers are bringing those people like the screen shot below. You can do it live as the conversion happens or “All Time to see the total amount for the conversion.

Follow Chris Bennett and Patrick Bennett on Twitter to get the latest on BLVD Status

Sign Up For BLVD Status Here

Tags: conversions, twitter

For the most part we have received nothing but positive feedback on BLVD Status. But if there was one thing we get along the lines of constructive criticism is how slow the Stats can be at times. So we have been working hard over the last couple of months developing better ways to process data to speed things up. We feel confident that we have a solution and we want to roll that solution out as soon as possible.

So starting tonight at 8pm PST, we will be shutting down for maintenance and since part of this new roll out will be implementing a new database structure as well as new servers we are expecting to be down all of Tuesday and maybe even a little into Wed. All of your stats form the beginning of 2009 will be saved. However, NO stats will be tracked during this maintenance window.

So essentially, you won’t have stats from Monday night to Wed Morn. We know that sucks. But, we love stats as much as you do and this is the quickest way for us to get over to the new and hopefully lightening speed process. Once this change is live, we will have more stable and scalable stats where we shouldn’t have to do this sort of thing again.

*Also, starting April 1st, you will need to update the BLVD javascript snippet you have on your websites. The current tracking code will work for a while on the new system but, we will be providing a different code that will become your new permanent code that will make your stats even faster. So while your old Java Script will work it is encouraged that you move to the new code given you as soon as possible to benefit from the new processing. The old tracking script will no longer work starting April 1st.

This and some upcoming features are moving us one step closer to coming out of beta! We have a lot of really cool features in the mix, really cool integration stuff, and a public API on the way. We are very excited for the future.

As always please contact us about suggestions, wish lists or anything else, we do listen. You can also follow both Chris and Patrick on Twitter to get the latest updates on BLVD.

I just found out MC Hammer is quite the web entrepreneur, and he has a startup called Dance Jam. He is living and speaking in Silicon Valley at events and after I saw this video of him professing his love for analytics analytics, I couldn’t help but get stoked for the man.

Maybe we should send him an invite to try BLVD Status?

We have been having problems with not receiving emails through our contact form. The issue should now be resolved. If you sent an email and haven’t heard a reply, please send your email again. Also, feel free to send an email directly to support[at]blvdstatus[dot]com.

We are trying to keep BLVD Status FREE as long as possible. In order to accomplish this, we need our users to share the love, and tell people about it. A great way is to put this badge on your website:

To do so, simply copy this code, and put it on your website.

<a href=”http://www.blvdstatus.com”><img src=”http://www.blvdstatus.com/badge.png” width=”130″ height=”98″ /></a>

Tags: badge, share

This is a basic guide of setting up conversions in BLVD Status. Basically, we define a “conversion” when a visitor on your website moves from being just a normal visitor, into a customer. So basically, if the goal of your website is to drive people to fill out a contact form, buy a product, or subscribe to your RSS feed, when a user makes that commitment, they convert.

Within conversions, we talk about “campaigns”. A campaign can be thought of as one conversion. So if you did have a contact form, a sales form, and an RSS feed on your website, and your goal was to track which users do each one, then you would want to create a seperate campaign for each one.

Setting up conversions is really easy. We didn’t want our users to have to modify their code, or learn HTML like some other analytics companies make you do. So, you can have complete control over your campaigns within your BLVD Status account login. If you don’t have an account yet, you will need one. Sign up for free.

I am going to use our stats, and one of our campaigns as an example of how to set campaigns up, and to show you how you can understand the data. We wanted to track how many people signed up for a BETA account, and where they came from. This would allow us to see how users are finding us, which pages they view befor signing up, and how long it takes.

So first off, when you login to your dash board, click on the “Conversions” icon.

Next, click the “Add a new campaign” text link.

You will then come to a page that looks like this:

The next step is to fill out the form. First fill in the “Campaign Name”. This is completely up to you, and is for your reference. In my example, I wanted to set up a campaign to identify people signing up for BETA accounts. So, for the name I put “BETA Signup”.

Now, you can select an icon as an identifier. Basically, there are a few places within the analytics reporting that show conversions (I will show this in a bit). So, it’s good to choose an icon that is identifiable with your campaign. For this one, I chose the icon of the person, since this campaign has to do with users or people. So whenever I see that icon in my reporting, I know it was part of a BETA sign up. And don’t worry, yes, there are more icons to come.

The next part is telling BLVD the url you would like the campaign to relate to. This is where it gets a little tricky, but not by much. For most users, you can leave it on the tab “Simple URL Trigger”. You then want to identify the URL you would like to track. For my example, I wanted to track how many people land on the BETA signup confirmation page. I know that people wouldn’t get to that page unless they filled out the form to create an account. So, for the URL I put that page in.

The next part is to decide how it should be tracked. So, you need to select an option from the “Situation” drop down menu. Let me explain each option:

The visitor was referred by the specified URL:
Let’s assume you are running a banner ad on another website that links your website, and you would like to track how many people click it. Better yet, you would like to see how many people click it, and then how long they visit your website, which pages they view etc… Let’s assume I had a banner going on a website like mashable. I could put “http://www.mashable.com” as the URL, and then select this option in the situation menu. Then, whenever someone clicks on my banner on their website, it would show up as a conversion in BLVD Status.

The visitor arrives at the specified URL:
This was the option I needed to use for BETA signups. I knew that since no one would come to the confirmation URL UNLESS they signed up, it would track pretty accurately how many signups we received. This is the option you would most likely select if you are tracking contact forms, ecommerce checkout confirmations etc…

The visitor leaves a page to visit the specified URL:
This is one of my personal favorites, as it allows you to track RSS feeds. We have our feed through feedburner. For the URL I would put our feed url from feedburner, and then select this option. That way, whenever someone from my site clicks on our RSS feed link, it will show up as a conversion. If you are starting to think creatively, you are probably thinking of other options as well for this. Maybe like setting up a campaign for the banner ads you run, so that you can send a report to the banner owner? Or, tracking clicks to an affiliate site to make sure your stats match up with their payout? Anyways, this is very useful.

So here is what my page looked like after filling in the correct options:

After you are done filling it out, click “Create Campaign” to save the campaign. It will then take you to a page that lists all of your campaigns. To start tracking the one you just created, make sure to click on the “Activate” icon next to the campaign name. You can activate/deactivate campaigns for tracking at any time on this page. Currently, we only allow you to delete a campaign if there hasn’t been any data supplied.

Quick note about the “Parameterized URL Trigger” tab (Advanced Users):
Most users won’t need to use this, but this option is for URL you want to track that aren’t constant. For example, if you are sending form data through your server using “GET”, the url will changed based on the persons data. So, we recommend having one variable that stays constant. For example, “send=true”. So, for the URL you could just put the base (thedomain.com/theurl.php), and then for Parameter name you would put “send”, and for Parameter Value, you would put “true”. That way, whenever that page is hit with that parameter, no matter what other information is in the URL, it will count as a conversion.

We are constantly going to be re-working and improving the ways conversions are created and tracked. Obviously with our BETA launch, we couldn’t think about everyone’s needs nad create a method for each. We came up with 2 methods that should cover most tracking for now.

READING THE DATA:
Once you have a conversion set up, you can immediately start tracking conversions for that campaign. Remember, BLVD Status is LIVE data, so if people ARE converting, you should see it in your stats right away. On the main Dashboard with 6 boxes, you can see conversions in a couple different places. I have circled them below:

For this screen shot, I changed the order of the top row boxes (yeah, you can do that… drag them around — they will even stay in that order when you login again). Anyways, the obvious place to see conversions is in the “Conversions” box. This shows you the latest 50 conversions on your site. Showing the time of the conversion, the name of the conversion, the refferal or keyword search that brought them there, and then the total time it took them to make that conversion from the time they arrived at your site.

The “Referrers Box” also shows conversions. So in this screenshot, you can see a couple times where certain referrals brought conversions to my domain. The icon is shown in that row to the right if a conversion occurred. This is an easy way to see which referrers are bringing conversions.

The “Foot Traffic Box” gives you a glimpse of how many conversions you have received in a given period of time. Just an easy way to see how effective your site is during the day. I circled the area where you can see it. Basically, anytime you see the letters “CONV” in the backend, it stands for “Conversions”.

Conversions IN DEPTH:
If you click on the “In Depth” link on the conversions box, you will be able to see a more detailed view of your campaigns and which keywords/referrers brought them. You can even take each conversion down to an individual user to see which pages they visited, in which order, and how long they spent on each page… along with their browser info, region etc…

We are going to follow up over the next couple days with how to use these In Depth pages. But, most importantly you need to setup conversions to really use BLVD Status to it’s full potential. What i the point in tracking visitors, if you don’t know who or why people are doing what you want them to? Well, we solved that problem and more…

If you are having trouble using conversions or you want to tell us how well they are working for you, please feel free to post a comment below.

Thanks for the sweet response to our little brain child. My brother Patrick and I have been spending a lot of time on this. Our wives were sick of it before it ever launched as it became the topic of conversation when we all hung out.

Couple quick house keeping items -

First we are on Digg please go give us a vote to help spread the word if you haven’t already, there is a digg button on the homepage.

Second  it is in the TOS and Policies when you sign up but we are not selling any data to anyone, nor will we. We care about out privacy just as much as you do.

Third some quick faq’s based off of emails and comments we are getting. We will be releasing a full faq section very soon along with some videos on how to do stuff.

How Long Does it Take to Show Me Data? It should literally take under 20 minutes to start showing all your data, some are quicker than others. If it is taken longer pleas email me at chris @ blvdstatus.com and send me your URL and we will take a look.

How Do I Delete a Conversion Campaign? We are working on this it should be working by the days end or so. For the time being set up a new one so that you don’t miss out on the data and you can delete the messed up campaign later.

How Do I Set Up a Campaign? From your login screen just after logging in you can click set up new campaign or from the Dashboard you can click on Configure in the Coversions Box. There you need to Identify the URL you want to track, if it is your contact form you want to put in your ThankYou Page url, if it is your RSS you want to track put in your Feed URL, the easiest way to get this right is go to your site or blog and click on the RSS button and copy and paste that URL. Make sure you choose an Icon that helps you identify quickly what type of conversion it is. Patrick is putting together a post with screen shots just for this as we speak. It is definitley one of our coolest features.

Is There Detailed Reporting Beyond the Dashboard? Every Box in the Dashboard except “Out Going Links” has an indepth button at the bottom of their box click on that (reccomended into a new tab) and it will open up a screen with just data on that bopxes focus. If it is the Keyword Box then it will show you all the data you could ever dream of regarding keyword referrals.  We will ahve videos on this soon.

Anything else you want an answer on post it in the comments of this post and If it is a common question I will edit this post and make it a ruff FAQ for now.

Also real quick now that we have a blog up click on our RSS button and subscribe so you can keep updated also after you subscribe go here - http://blvdstatus.com/users/boxGrid.php5 to see our demo of our stats and you will see your RSS subscription as a conversion and see how this all works.

Thanks again for the sweet response, we want to make this your analytics we want to be the analytics that was created by the people on the front lines that have day to day needs and wants when it comes to tracking their site so any and all suggestions please leave them in the comments or email them chris @ blvdstatus.com soon we will have a suggestion box type thing set up.

Also bare with us on the Wordpress template:)