Stats Feedback
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The reason so few people were using the old stats page is because WP made it so difficult to find. Which of course was the cunning plan…
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Thanks @mikeosbornphoto, that hadn’t been mentioned, but even if it had I’d still count your suggestion. So thank you for bringing it up.
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@diaryofdennis we’ve been evaluating the requests for a “yesterday” link. Can you take a look at yesterday’s data by clicking the bar for yesterday, and let me know what main advantages the previous yesterday link had over this?
Also, re: the summary tables, if you’ll link us to specifically the ones you’re referring to most (these are in wp-admin) that will help us out. Thanks.
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Yesterday link:
To be honest, I have no idea where I can find a yersterday link with the new stats, I don’t even find it after your explanation where to find it. This alone should be prove enough how flawed the design is. You could say I am web poweruser since pre-AOL times… if I can’t find it in a minute what you are talking about, then it’s for sure a usability issue.
Now let’s talk about the old yesterday link… this link was actually accessable, up-close… directly in front of me, resulting in a nice usability.
Not sure who designed the old stats page, but that person or team should get the medal of usability design.Now I see your screenshot, and I believe we both talk about two different things. You are talking about one entry, the yesterday bar in the graph. I am talking about a link that should be attached to all stats widgets below the graph… should allow me to see all referres yesterday, all traffic yesterday, all search terms of yesterday, all clicks from yesterday and so on.
In other words, the old system had a “Today” and “Yesterday” tab. There shouldn’t be a question why this is beneficial for the user. It allowed the user to get a picture how things were going for the blog yesterday, for a full 24 hours time frame. As I mentioned, this was very interesting when you logged in after midnight…. because then the “Today” data is worthless since almost no data is recorded at 0:30am (for example) anyway.
I can’t stress this enough, these details are the reason why the majority of your loyal users prefer the old stats page up to this day and go to great lengths to install Greasemonkey and scripts to get it back. The reason why it’s superior, is that it simply allowed us to view data in different ways, something that is extremely important for webmasters. Removing these posibilities is like removing important parts of a car (tires, steering wheel).
I can see why the instagram community doesn’t need that detailed reports, this is a completely different target group… but your clients are webmasters, not only bloggers… they try to understand how their websites develop over time.
As said, the new stats page doesn’t meet the requirements, until now it’s still a dumped down version compared to the previous stats page.
As critical as I may sound like, I suggested your service in the past because wordpress.com was a very good option. But seing how certain things get degraded, I have difficulties to mention any benefits other than super fast and free cloud hosting. You demolished the editor, the stats screen, the 48 hour graph and so on…. your team did basically take out features that made wp.com be a by far superior platform over any other blogging platform in the web, until now.
The yesterday tab needs a comeback, as many other features mentioned in this blog. I am glad you are working to improve the stats page, but imo there are still some things missing.
Summary tables:
Sadly you killed the well formated version of the summary tables, however I can show you the summary tables from the oldest stats page: wp-admin/index.php?page=stats&view=table&blog=20637906
This table has records from 2011 (where I created the blog) until 2017. It’s highly detailes, does even list every single month. It has Months and Years table, Average per Day table with overall and total numbers. Recent Weeks with average calculated and percentage changes. I have no idea why someone had the idea to drop this completely…. your users are not afraid of data, except those instagram dayflies that end up with an abandoned blog before one year is even over.
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And sorry if I might sound a bit annoyed… I know you are just doing your job, but some queries of your team look surreal at times… it sometimes sounds similiar to “Can you tell me the main advantages of a filled refrigerator?”… it’s hard to answer these questions as someone who used certain features daily….
Again, blogging, apart from the writing or publishing, is also about data… different ways to see the data are welcomed, this includes a yesterday tab and detailed summaries since the birth of the blog, ways to download CSV no matter which stats tab is opened and so on.
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Well stated diaryofdennis. I agree with all the points you mentioned.
Often you can’t check your stats every day and when this was the case, I always used the yesterday tabs to check on the previous day’s activity whether it was for referrers, search engine terms or whatever. This allows you to see relatively quickly whether a change or addition you have made to the blog has taken effect.
The same thing goes for the views by country world map with the today and yesterday feature. This was so useful to me to determine what was of interest to different users from different countries.
Make sure these features are restored to whatever new stats page WP is working on.
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Exactly, there are cases where the yesterday data was more interesting, you mentioned one example.
It also allowed us to compare how things developed today, in comparison to yesterday. Sometimes you get these traffic spikes for a certain time frame, and you want to check out how this started. With the yesterday tab you could for example find out that it was caused yesterday because a couple of hundred strangers shared it on Facebook, resulting in traffic from different channels today. There are so many reasons why a quick look into the data of yesterday is sometimes needed.
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@diaryofdennis here’s a screenshot:
https://snag.gy/sdC3pN.jpgIf you click on that bar you’ll see yesterday’s stats. (And if you click on the one before that, you’ll see stats for the day before yesterday, and so on.) Can you give that a shot?
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@diaryofdennis and @sekondtime
I too am a huge fan of the old stats, it was simple, efficient and gave all the info needed at a glance.
But I think that what you are searching for is provided in the new stats page. If you click on a bar (a previous day) you will see all that info: referrers, search engine terms, countries, maps, clicks etc.
https://pellymade.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/stats_info.jpg
The only thing that is missing, is views and clicks for specific photos (when there is a gallery).
I hope this is what you mean… -
That is actually awesome! Didn’t know that the bars are clickable. I do also like that this makes it possible to see even later days too.
But my request for the summary tables still stands. This absolutely needs a come back.
Also, but I am sure this has been mentioned a tons of times here. I need exactly two clicks to open the stats page (from my site). I need to open the menu by clicking on “My Sites” and then clicking on the stats graph.
The 48h graph should be put back into the top bar. It was just one click from there to open the stats. Generally, the small graph should be visible at all times, as it was back then. It was a nice indicator that showed if there were any traffic spikes or not, until you moved it into the menu, and even without an average number attached to it., which makes it useless now (as it is now, it’s no more than burried link but not a useful graph anymore).
But I hope even more that we get the summary tables back that I mentioned. Anyway, I see progress here already… not bad!
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@pellymade – I’m quoting my earlier post here about the very useful and elegant “yesterday” toggle we used to have. BTW, @diaryofdennis: The bars for the days were ALWAYS clickable to go to a whole separate page of that (old) day’s stats, that is not a new feature here in the new stats!
The “yesterday” toggle was just an easier and more efficient way to quickly check on one element of the previous day’s stats (say just referrers) WITHOUT leaving today’s stats page.
Adding a vote to others’ for the elegant and convenient “yesterday” toggle within each of the modules/boxes (for posts, referrers, clicks, etc) that we used to have in the “old” stats page.
I realize you CAN still go to the whole display of yesterday’s stats by clicking on yesterday’s bar in the ‘days’ graph up top (this functionality was also available in the old stats page btw).
But if I just want to quickly compare a sudden spike in today’s referrers, or in visits from a particular country, etc. to see if that spike had actually started the day before, that little toggle was a very handy and quick way to check without having to totally leave today’s stats page.
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@ingridcc – yes, I know and agree that the old stats’ yesterday page gave us a quick check on our stats. That’s why we all prefer it. My reply was @diaryofdennis, just to let him know.
@supernovia & all
Still, I can’t see how many views a specific photo gets when I use a gallery. Thankfully this info is still available in the old old stats page, but who knows for how long… Since the old stats page was removed I keep both pages (old & new) open and check them both to get all the info I want! -
Testing the oldest stats page right now, having the yesterday tab feels much more accessible. That’s probably because it’s directly located on top of the individual stats widgets. I do probably repeat myself, but this is very user friendly since the yesterday tab was probably used a lot, and there is no scrolling to the top involved to see data from yesterday. I think both combined, the ability to click on every bar + the yesterday tab, is what would be perfect. Having both, that would be awesome.
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@ingridcc so to clarify, on the old stats page if I clicked on, say “Yesterday” on countries, only that one section would change.
The rest of the data on the page would stay the same, right?
So even if we somehow made it easier switch the whole view to yesterday, that would not help you because you need to compare yesterday’s countries (for example) to todays links? I’m just trying to wrap my head around how you use that information, so if you can walk me through your old work flow and what you did with the information, I’d appreciate that.
I’ll be honest, the old way of having to toggle individual sections felt pretty odd to me, but I suspect you’re looking for different information.
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@supernovia
I for one found toggling individual sections slightly better than having all sections change, and perhaps I can explain from a UX perspective.When I look at the stats page, my focus is usually only on one section at a time. When I want to compare today’s stats with yesterday’s stats, I do that by section and not by day as it is easier to digest a single section than it is to digest and compare all sections of one day to all sections of the other.
The current per-day way requires more steps and a larger context switch: I have to scroll up to the graph, losing my point of reference (the section I want to compare), find the bar for yesterday, click on it, then go back down and find the section I was interested in. With such a large context switch, I could easily have forgotten what it was that I was trying to compare, so I’d have to repeat the process to go back to today’s stats. In addition, since humans are subconsciously drawn to movement and changes, I subconsciously notice all the other sections change, taking even more focus away from what it was that I wanted to compare.
The old per-section way required much less of a context switch: I only needed to click on the “Yesterday” tab, and if I forgot what today looked like, I could simply click on the “Today” tab. Because there’s no scrolling or searching required, the context switch is minimal. As well, since only that section changes, there’s no distraction caused by any other sections changing.
It’s not really a matter of comparing one of yesterday’s sections with one of today’s sections (e.g. your example of yesterday’s countries with today’s links); it has more to do with the context switch. While there are pros and cons to both systems, I think the old per-section way offers a better user experience.
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To amend my previous comment, I’m not saying that you should get rid of the per-day way: each way has its place. It’s very useful to see all the stats for a single day. However, when I do that, I’m comparing between different sections of the same day. When I switch between “yesterday” and “today” in a single section, I’m comparing the same section for different days. In other words, per-day shows an overview, but per-section shows the changes.
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@supernovia, of course I wouldn’t be comparing yesterday’s countries to today’s referrers! (apples vs oranges!)
I agree with tpenguin above – the two ways of looking at yesterday’s stats were useful for different purposes.
If I specifically wanted to go to a particular day’s entire stats (say, yesterday, or maybe the day I had made a new post, or another Saturday to compare with this Saturday), then yes, I would hit the bar for that day in the “days” chart (the only option that is now available), and go to a whole page of that day’s stats.
But if my primary goal in coming to the stats page was to quickly check today’s stats, and while I was there I happened to notice that, say, Greece was right under the U.S. in the country section (usually it’s another English-speaking country), I would think “hey, when did I start getting so many hits from Greece?”
In that case, the first thing I would do would be click on the “yesterday” toggle within the country section. If Greece wasn’t high on the country list yesterday, I would just shrug and keep checking the rest of today’s stats, which are all still right in front of me.
I wouldn’t be distracted by a bunch of other info about yesterday…
Or, if there were quite a few hits from Greece yesterday too, I might hit “summary” within that same country section and see where Greece ranked in the last 7 days, then I might check the summary for the last month, last quarter, etc to see when Greece started to get higher in the country rankings – to find out if this was a one or two day glitch or a real trend. (I sure also miss those summaries of “last 7 days up to now” / last 30 days up to now / last quarter etc!)
In either case, all I’m interested in is in quickly looking backward in the countries module (or another time it might be the posts module, or referrers module, etc). Basically my main purpose was to check today’s stats, and this is a short detour after which I’ll go on to look at the rest of today’s stats.
In this case, I don’t want to get lost in whole other days, and lose my focus – as tpenguin explained more eloquently than I can!
There might be other times that I would come to stats specifically to compare two or many different days, in which case, yes, I would click on the bar for each of those specific days to go to the whole page of stats for each of those days. That is a very valuable tool.
But the yesterday link within each category was really handy for a quick way to look back on just that category. I used it frequently, and miss it on the new stats page.
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@supernovia, I just noticed your comment
I’ll be honest, the old way of having to toggle individual sections felt pretty odd to me…
You have this backward! On the old stats page you didn’t HAVE to toggle individual sections! It was an option, which doesn’t exist anymore.
You were also completely free to click on yesterday’s bar in the “days” graph up top, which would send you to a whole page of yesterday’s stats, just as it does now, in the new stats page.
That’s what you HAVE to do now, it’s the only option to get to yesterday’s stats for a particular category.
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@tpenguinltg Very well said
@supernovia And you can basically use @tpenguinltg’s comment for many changes. Same counts for the 48hgraph… you have more clicks to see the graph, it doesn’t even show data (average traffic 48h) anymore, with that you even have more clicks to open the stats page because you will have to open the menu first instead of just clicking on the graph when it was still in the bar.
With all those introduced changes we did not only lose a lot of data (that you thankfully slowly bring back to us now), there are also more clicks involved everywhere. The whole structure now often gets me into “Wait, what exactly did I want to open right now?” because things don’t make sense anymore, or it involves more scrolling leaving context as penguin said. I still don’t get the logic behind all these changes, for the user it introduced a lot of stuff that feels disconnected from each other.
Talking about the “yesterday tab”, as you can see several people used this feature and miss it… I’d just add it back, as same as moving the 48h graph back to the top bar and give it an average number.
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