The blogging biz

Posted by Mike Snyder on November 15, 2005  |  Comments (0)

We use the Typepad service to host the Sonoma Partners blog, and overall we've had a good experience with them. I've really only had two complaints about it:

• They don't offer any type of web analytics or analysis program for the blog. They do offer something they have the nerve to call "visitor stats and referrers"...but it is really a lame and totally useless list of referring addresses. It doesn't even aggregate visitors and referrers by day, week, month, etc.

• A few weeks ago Typepad had some horrific performance issues. The website was running very slow for several hours at a time on multiple days.

Today, I'm very glad to share two tidbits that will help alleviate my two Typepad complaints. Number one, Typepad agreed to refund users because of their poor performance. I expected some sort of compensation for the terrible performance...but I was very impressed with their offer. Typepad is letting users choose how much of a refund they think they deserve! The email I received today offered me one of four refund options:

• While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
  Give me 15 free days of TypePad.

• The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
  Give me 30 free days of TypePad.

• The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
  Give me 45 free days of TypePad.

• I really wasn't affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
  Thank you for the offer, but please don't credit my account.

Typepad is taking a risk here because everyone could gouge them for 45 free days, but I hope other users will choose their refund based on the amount they were affected. I think I fell in the 30 free days category so that's what I am requesting. More important than the refund, Typepad won some points with me and this offer. I like the way they respected me as a customer to "do the right thing".

Regarding the lack of website analytics offered by Typepad, today Google launched a new FREE service called Google Analytics. We have used Urchin web log analysis software for years on our www.sonomapartners.com website, and we carefully monitor all of the statistics it outputs. Google purchased the Urchin company and they based this new Google Analytics service off of Urchin's software. Because of my good experience with Urchin and other Google applications such as Google Desktop and Google Toolbar... I have real high hopes for the Google Analytics service!

Needless to say, we signed up immediately. I think lots of other people are excited about this service too because the Google website was very slow responding during signup this afternoon. I assume the slow website was caused by a massive rush of other people signing up online. Adding the Google Analytics tracking code to our blog website took about 5 minutes and they said I could start accessing my reports within 12 hours. I have about 3 more hours left until I hit the 12 hour mark! Can't wait, the reports look great...