The world of statistics is not a popular one. I hated statistics in college and did poorly at it – it’s just abstract numbers. But when statistics actually help you, it’s entirely different. As a “web guy” for many years now, the number of visitors (traffic) has been of interest for a long time. Traffic tells me who comes, when they come, where they come from, and what content on my site is popular. For the longest time such analytics were basically just trends that give you long term stats. But a new analytic kid on the block is looking to change how analytics are viewed…that kid is Woopra.

I was tossed Woopra from a co-worker and went through the pitch on their site. What Woopra offers that others don’t is real-time statistics. They give you a client that lets you watch visitors come and go as it happens. While that’s a neat promise, I wondered how well it would work. Often adding third-party scripts to a web site will just slow the web site down and yield less-than-optimal results. So I gave Woopra a try…eventually. As it turns out, every site that requests a Woopra tag needs to get approved. So I submitted the Toast for approval and waited…and waited. It was actually so long since I made the request that I had forgotten I even request approval. But I remembered once I got my approval!

After a quick code addition (just like with Google) The Morning Toast was Woopra-ized. I then installed the client and gave it a whirl – and wow!

When they said “real-time,” they mean real-time. The client sat open and I watched as people came and went. I saw all the typical stats stuff, like where they came from, where they went, how long they spent…all that stuff — for some reason it’s much cooler when I know that person is on the site right then at that moment. It’s like watching the stock market. And as a matter of fact the client has a stock market-ish ticker at the bottom of the window that scrolls ups/downs of traffic stats…cute, but unnecessary.

Now, real-time are cool by themselves, but there’s one more thing Woopra does that no other stats package does…chat. This is bizzare and kind of scary. In the Woopra client, you see visitors as a number (Visitors #8) and you can click a link in the client for each visitor that is labeled as “Start a conversation.” Click this and a status bar notice slides up on the visitor’s browser and asks if they want to talk. Yes, you as the admin can talk with your visitors as they visit your site. I believe it’s purpose is for customer service, so it should be used sparingly, but that is so cool…but scary. Imagine being on a site like the Toast, an innocent little blog, and a little notice pops up and says, “hi there, whatcha doing?” So if that happens to you, don’t be afraid – it’s just me wanting to make sure you have the best Toast experience possible. Ha.

Let’s just say analytics and statistics have never been more addicting. But lets be honest with ourselves, there’s nothing really new here. Stats are stats. They’re just hard numbers and tell you the same thing that Google does. But the packaging makes all the difference. Not only is Woopra flashier than Google, it presents some of the number and stats better than Google does. One thing about stats is that it’s all about how you communicate those numbers to viewers. Google does it very well, but in some cases, Woopra does it better.

UPDATE: I’ve posted more thoughts on Woopra vs. Google stats in the forum. Please jump over there for more discussion.

Our digital camera went kablooey a few weeks ago, so we needed a new one. With a young puppy running around we definitely need a camera. Our first camera had done the job well for many years. It was a Canon and I got it for about $90 – it was a floor model…I’m kind of surprised it lasted as long as it did. Anyway, in search of a new camera we figured we’d stop by the new HH Gregg near our house.

I’m not a fan of HH Gregg at all. I wasn’t a fan of Sun TV either, which HHG took over some years back. Both stores have this air of used-flea market style goods and services. A place where you’d go to buy “Fujatsu” instead of “Fujitsu” – although, I know they sell popular brands too. Anyway, we finally found out how to get there – it was hidden amongst what will be suburbia at a cal du sac — yes, HHG was at the end of a cal du sac, go figure. The parking lot was empty and from outside you could see a swarm of anxious staff inside waiting to pounce. And pounce they did.

A lady approached us and asked if we were there to buy a mattress. A mattress? Um, no. No mattresses, thank you. We kindly said we were looking for cameras and she quickly sent away for “the camera guy.” Up waddles this young lad in what was an attempt to be a salesman. I was no impressed nor did I want to be bothered by a salesperson. There’s almost nothing worse on this planet than a pushy salesperson. Especially in a place like HHG, such tactics are not needed.

So I’m walking around the display of cameras (which isn’t very big) and he asks what I presume is his smartest question, “so what are you going to use your camera for?”

I stopped for a second then looked back at him and answered, “taking pictures.”

And that pretty much set the tone for us as customers and him as a salesperson. He did his best to repair the damage but we quickly moved on, leaving the store after a quick browse of the massive selection of ridiculously large TVs.

We then went across the street to Best Buy to make our purchase. The cameras were of course behind glass, so I asked a salesperson for help. A portly fellow came up and asked how he could help. I pointed at the camera I wanted and he said, “well, that was easy.” He made a few more friendly remarks asking if we needed a memory card and case, politely and smartly. After that, he happily took our camera and put it on hold up front while we continued to shop. He was pleasant, not pushy, and knew when to stop speaking. He was a good salesperson.

In most cases, salespeople should be on-demand. As a customer, you only need to know they’re there and know how to reach them. If I need help, I’ll ask, otherwise, I know why I’m there. But all that aside, the whole situation got me thinking about sales people. That scenario told me that sales is a job you need to want to do. It’s not like fast food, cashier, or other “starter” job that doesn’t require you to care. To make it as a sales person, you need to care – or at least appear to care. If that HHG kid has any hope to have a future as a salesperson, he needs to go someplace else and work, or seriously consider how he approaches people.

Sure, he might have been new to the whole gig and I’m hard on him – but it takes a certain person to be a salesperson, and you can tell those people right away. This guy was not one of those people. I could tell this was a first go for him because he probably heard you can make good money as a salesperson…and you can, if you’re good. But it’s hard to be good as selling. I believe the best sales people are non-sales people, but people that just have a lot of passion for one thing or another. The best path to being a sucessfull salesperson is to sell what you are passionate about. If you love cars, sell cars. If you love technology, sell gadgets. But I don’t believe there can be a “utility” salesperson. Unless they are really good at talking and performing, customers can see through the wannabe salesperson very easily.

So when you start that sales job hoping for that 20% commission, please don’t ask the customer, “so, what are you going to use your car for?”

Thanks to success stories like Google, the idea of “just do it” web development is how web developers now think. This method requires nothing more than an idea and someone willing to do some quick, up-front work. Web ventures typically have a very low entry barrier, so people (big and small) can create things virtually overnight and can become popular in a few weeks…or not at all. The thought is that you waste too much time and resources if you do too much up-front and then it fails. All true. But then what happens if the venture starts taking off?

When it comes to development, I’m a person that does too much up-front thinking and planning, and in most cases whatever idea I had never gets done. Ever. Taking too much time lets me over-think the effort, the outcome, the risks, the payoff, and other factors. I’ve tried to get better and just “do” things when they pop into my head. One of these ideas was the Guitar Hero tournaments I started with the Angry Edison web site.

It started as a simple article here at the Toast but over the past three months has turned into quite a popular site amongst the gamers. This is great and all, and I love that people are enjoying something I’ve made, but I’m now at the point where I’m looking “inside” the web site and not liking what I see. Because I just threw the site together overnight and people started coming, I’ve been busy making small, weekly updates to the site and services. Instead of planning, I’ve just been plugging more and more cords into the socket.

Sure, the site works and works well, it’s not broken by any means. But it’s a rat’s nest and is now starting to get in the way of me making more major improvements. Much like when you have too many cords in your wall outlet, my cords are tangled in knots and run the risk of getting tripped over, bringing everything crashing down. Right now, everything has power but I can’t pull out any single cord without knowing what the hell is going to turn off.

At this point, I think the only solution is to unplug all the cords and start over, making sure each cord is then run neatly to its destination. My problem is I hate starting over when the thing isn’t broken. It’s exhausting. Major improvements do require thinking and planning. You can’t do “quick” overhauls. But when I sit down to start and plan the big updates, I look at the rat’s nest and go, “geez…maybe it’s not worth all the extra work,” after all, it’s not broken. And then more than likely I don’t start rebuilding anything and just plug more cords into the wall. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I obviously haven’t found the balance between too much planning and not enough. And it sucks.

I’m not a speaker. I don’t manage any people and I don’t lead. I’ve never been paid to speak, nor has my speaking ever been in attempt to get paid. But when I do have to speak to people, I try to act like I am getting paid. While most of us probably do our communicating on-line in e-mail, IMs, or text messages…we need not forget how to communicate in person.

I’m not talking one-on-one conversations, although my thoughts apply there too…no, this is more about speaking to any group of people, big or small. Please, for the love of God, know what you plan on saying ahead of time, and please, please, please do not utter the sounds “ummm” or “uhhh” every two minutes. It’s annoying and it shows that you have zero credibility in what you’re talking about. After the third “ummm” you might as well leave and stop wasting everyone’s time.

If you get asked questions that you can’t answer, direct them away politely. Tell them you’ll find out the answer or direct them to someone that can. Don’t try to fake it. Have your act down pat. People can smell presentation BS like a fart in a car, so try to avoid it. Sure, there’s some etiquette that goes into speaking and presentations, and that’s fine and all, but don’t get desperate. If you’re trying to convince someone to do/buy anything, this won’t do it, “well, ummm, I think it can, ummm, do that…actually, uhhh…yes, it can.”

Smell that?

Another good rule when speaking is to not tell people you’re new. Just last weekend at Applebee’s we asked the waitress about the available beers and food selection. Her eyes opened wide in disgust and she shrugged with an unpleasant air of “why you askin’ me?”

Then later that sitting she told us it was her third day on the job…as if that should excuse her crappy service. It doesn’t. Never tell people that you’re new. You should know your topic like you’ve been there for years. Telling people you’re new or something along the lines of, “when I worked at ACME,” because it tells them that you still don’t know your topic and that you probably don’t care.

And if you’re a manager or some other type of leader of people – learn how to speak. There’s nothing more demoralizing than when the Boss starts in with the “umms” when talking about where the company is heading. The “ummm” sound is usually bad, so it’s hard gain followers at that point. Plus, you’re the leader! You should know what’s going on because you probably make the decisions. The greatest leaders in the world all have one thing in common – they can speak like the dickens. Lenin, Hitler, Castro, JFK, Reagan, Clinton…they all could orate extremely well and was the key to their success. They might have sucked at everything else, but they could talk and convince people of almost anything. Would you want to follow a guy that goes “uhhh” after every sentence?

Now, the great challenge in speaking is not to sound like you know what you’re doing…it’s not even to really know what you’re doing…it’s to not sound like a jerk when you’re talking. It’s easy to sound like an ass when you’re confident and show it. I believe this just takes practice. Put your balls on the table and perform. You probably will sound like a jerk when you start speaking, but live and learn.

At some point, we all probably have to speak in front of people. It’s a huge fear for a lot of people – it’s a fear of mine! But when I have to do it, I prepare by studying my material and knowing it well…of course, even then I’m not a good speaker. But I guarantee you that my “umms” are absent and it sounds like I believe what I’m saying. Because you have to believe your own lies when you speak. Even if you don’t believe in what you’re talking about (or selling), it needs to appear as though you do. Just fake it. So please, stop with the “umms” and tell us what you know. If you don’t know anything and can’t fake it, don’t waste our time.