I contacted the guys at reinvigorate the other day, and asked them if they’d like me to take a look at what they’d put together, in the form of a ‘next-gen stats package’. It turned out not to be several guys, but infact just one! I’m not one for hyping things up, but I can see reinvigorate as a MAJOR Google Analystics/Mint competitor.

Putting it through it’s paces showed exactly why. reinvigorate offers tracking far beyond anything free that is currently offered. Live active visitors tracking, popular points of entry & exit, precise visitor information. How precise? Operating systems, browsers, PC specification (Yep! Is it an Intel mac or not?), timezone pinpointing, screen-size, screen-resolution, languages, regions, host names, IPs and even .NET information!

I really was impressed, if not a little shocked and overwhelmed by what reinvigorate had in store! Afterall, the fact that it was wrapped up in a package as well designed, if not better than Mint is something completely new to the world of stat-junkies, webmasters and forum moderators alike! This clearly reflected earlier in the week on the site’s Alexa ranking which briefly soared way into the top 4,000!

So how does it work? Simple. Really simple… One line of javascript. Period. Your done. Awaiting you will be beautifully arranged, detailed, graphically impressive graphs that show exactly what your visitors are doing on your site real-time, with no fuss. No frills. The fact, figures and useful information, direct to you. I caught up with the lone guy behind the project, Sean, from reinvigorate.net - Here’s what he had to say for himself and the tracking project.

Sean, it’s great to see you, and your new service, reinvigorate, finally live. Can you tell everyone in your own words some more about the project, and what it does?
Thank you for having me, I would be happy to. Simply put, reinvigorate is a free analytic tracker for websites, blogs, and anything in-between. Delivering up-to-the-second stats that scale is one of reinvigorates major areas of emphasis. Some of our reports really play off this.

I’ve tested reinvigorate myself and have been astounded at the depth and detail the tracking goes into. Can you explain some of your favourite features?
Presently my favorite feature is the active visitors report. I like seeing whose currently on my site, what they’re viewing, and how much time they spend on each page. This is something any stats-addict, myself included, really gets into. Another of my favorite features is the regression/trend lines that complement the four traffic graphs. These trend lines show where and how a metric changes over time. Lots of information can be extrapolated from examining those squiggly little lines.

I’ve been hearing rumours that you put this together all by yourself. Is that true? Usually something as big, well-designed and impressive as this would take a whole team of people.
This is almost entirely true. My wife always kept the fridge stocked full of sodas and cracked the whip during the harder phases of development. Working on reinvigorate solo definitely lengthened its initial development. I took my time and focused on hitting the high notes.

Sean, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you, and find out more about reinvigorate. Before I get back to my work, can you give us any figures, or a general roundup of stats collected this first week at reinvigorate?
We just had an excellent first week of operation. The site tracked over 25 million pageviews during this period. I would just like to thank the beta testers and reinvigorate’s host, Media Temple for making this possible.

Thanks for that Sean! Keep us posted at Techzi on any new developments with reinvigorate. So far, all you’ve heard is praise for the startup though. How did the sign-up standup to our tests? You may know I’m pretty slow when it comes down to this kind of stuff, so here goes. Below, you can see me registering for the beta reinvigorate once I’d received my specialized sign-up key from the big man himself. All went quickly without a hitch, and I was soon on my way to getting my stats tracking setup.

Again below, I simply choose my username, password, e-mail, inital website to track & timezone. Easy!

Down here is my personalized preferences page… In it, I can choose which timezone I’m set in, and order statistics by doing so. I can also select or create a website group to put the blog selected in. ‘Techzi’ was put in my ‘Zi Media’ group. I also have the option to stop tracking here at anytime. And of course, the tracking welcome page/base. This has links to the site, and has a quick blog, highlighting the latest developments and reinvigorate news.

Finally… The graphs themselves! Thought you’d be interested. Check it out! That’s the timezone map for you, and does a great job of representing the aesthetically features that are packed into reinvigorate.

reinvigorate - What do you think? Well, my overall opinion can be summed up in one or two words. Wicked and spiffy. Brought to you by David Wilkinson from Techzi.