Woopra was one of the tools I mentioned (and it’s one I use on this blog), for the way it offers a host of great and incredibly useful information. Yesterday the company released the beta version of Woopra 1.3.1 and man does it rock (I even used the phrase “Holy monkeys!” at the time).

There are two versions of Woopra – a desktop client version and a WordPress plugin that allows you to see your reports through your WordPress dashboard. Both share similar features, although obviously the desktop version has a few more (a little like the differences between Seesmic Desktop and Seesmic Web for Twitter).

So, what are the funky new features?

Woopra 1.3.1 Desktop Client

The immediate difference when you open the updated version is the graphical overhaul. This may not sound like much, but now the information is dissected into easy-to-use blocks that offers a clear visual stream. When you start looking at this information, that’s where the fun begins.

One of the biggest improvements is in the Woopra Segmentation feature. This breaks your analytics down into the most minute details. You can track traffic on a certain page, keyword, what site it came from, how a social media campaign using the likes of Twitter and Facebook is doing, and much more.

Knowing where your traffic is coming from lets you tailor your blog or website for the most important people – the visitors. One of the first things I noticed, for example, is that a lot of people go from a post to my About page – so it may be that I need to boost that with some more info.

For businesses, this function obviously allows you to see if a sales landing page is doing its job. Did you guide them to “the sweet spot”? Did they click past your pop-up message or get annoyed by it and close their browsing? Using this information helps you improve the functionality of your site.

Some of the other new or improved features include:

• Log-in control that lets you open just the information you need.
• Woopra Live Map that supports multiple monitor use.
• Unique Mac OS X feature to track visitors via Dock Badge.
• Custom visitor data to set up custom tags, events, visitors and more.
• Live chat to have a conversation with anyone currently on your blog or site (instant feedback possibilities).

These features and others (webmaster tools for Alexa info and Google page rank, and open API for third-party add-ons for example) make the desktop client version of Woopra 1.3.1 an incredibly robust and intensive package. So how does the WordPress plugin compare?

Woopra 1.3.1 WordPress Plugin

While it doesn’t share some of the more in-depth features of its desktop brother, the Woopra WordPress plugin is still an impressive piece of kit. After you upload the plugin and activate it, a new option appears in your dashboard section. Once you’ve configured the settings, you have access to the likes of:

• Live visitor tracking and web stats.
• Real-time analytics as they happen.
• Multi-blog or website cross functionality.
• Real-time notifications of tagged visitor or event.
• Chat function.

While it’s not as deep as the desktop client, for any blogger that just wants to know a bit more about where their audience is coming from the WordPress plugin offers a better overview than the standard WordPress analytics.

Woopra also has a web-based analytics option, so if you’re not at your desktop you can log-in to Woopra and access your information from your members area.

If there’s any downside to Woopra, it’s that it doesn’t offer historical data – so you can only monitor information from after you install the Woopra code or plugin on your site. It’d be nice to hook up with Google Analytics or similar to gauge your complete info – maybe next update?

While Woopra is in beta, using the service is free to any blogs or sites with less than 10,000 daily page views. There will be a premium version available when Woopra officially launches, though they’ll continue to offer a free version as well.

photo credit: adria.richards

Woopra 1.3.1 Beta Launches originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.