One of the reasons this site has fallen into a bit of disrepair is that - honestly - I lost a bit of interest. One of the reasons for this is the troubling lack of statistics Squidoo had to offer during it’s first year and a half of existence. Last month, all of that changes and dashboards now feature referral, affiliate and traffic stats that rival some of the best web analytics programs out there. Well done to Seth, Heath and the crew, and there’s no better way to describe the update than straight from the sea creature’s mouth. Reprinted with permission:

“Change can be hard, but once you get used to it, you often wonder what you did without the new updates. Our new lens stats reporting system is the same way. It looks a little intimidating, but in the end it offers more flexibility and options than ever. First things first - how does this thing work anyway?

Login to your account to visit your Dashboard and view the new stats system. You’ll see that everything is still there, just in a slightly different spot. On the left you see the titles of your lenses, followed by four links for viewing, editing, deleting, and getting the statistics on your lenses. Next are the columns for your LensRank, Star Rank, visit count, pending commissions, and the date your lens was last edited. For each of these columns, plus your lens titles, if you click on the header at the top you can toggle back and forth between A to Z and Z to A ordered lists. Read more on how to use this below!

Some links that used to run across the bottom of your screen are now on the right side. In the section labeled Tools, you can still access the “transfer a lens” and “bugs & feedback” links.

The “stats” tab at the top of your dashboard zips you over to the new and improved stats page where you can see which lensmasters and members are new to Squidoo because of your influence! If you’re seeing new members who haven’t yet created lenses, why not send them a personal note? It’s the quickest way to get five bucks and they’ll appreciate the extra help. You can also see the statistics for any of your lenses by selecting it from the drop-down menu at the top of this page.

On the individual stats page for each lens, you can now get a lot more goodness about how busy (or slow) your lens has been. The Summary tab gives you vital info about traffic and Lens Rank. The Traffic tab shows you where people are coming from, and where they’re going after leaving your page. Here you can also view traffic for just one day (today or yesterday), for a seven-day window, or for the last month. BIG TIP: See how the keywords have a little + sign behind them? We’ll come back to that later! The Royalties tab is the best new part. Here you can view a chart of how much money your lens has made, when each royalty has paid how, what people have purchased from Amazon.com after leaving your lens, and (coming soon!) eBay sales!

Whew! Spend some time getting to know your stats. They can do a lot more than just tell you what happened in the past. They can help you learn how to do better in the future.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 1:23 am and is filed under Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.