New features, improvements
and state-of-the-art technology

If we were still writing press releases, we’d be putting them out a few times a week.

Q: Why is Opentracker moving so fast and releasing new features every two weeks at the moment?
A: Highlights: we rebuilt our core technologies, implemented an API and changed our development methodology. We moved from MySQL to Cassandra, improved search features, and implemented Agile throughout our organization.

Q: What does this actually mean?
A: This makes feature development much easier for us and our customers. Opentracker is better at change than ever; fast, state-of-the-art, flexible, responsive, and industry-standard (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc).

Q: What does this mean in practice?
A: We have a greatly increased flexibility, through the means of a web analytics api;
which we use ourselves, for example to provide:

1. An OT Dashboard
   Click for illustration and description of traffic engagement dashboard.
2. Universal search: a real-time “google search” through all your traffic/ visitor data, a search bar located on the top of the Recent & Online visits report page.
   Read about and see visuals of “google search” through all your visitor traffic data.
3. The ability to search for any activity on any page, in the form of a search bar at the top of Most Popular Pages report.
   Read about universal search through top pages feature.
4. The ability to add any event to your reports (a payment, a download, a scroll down, sign-up, etc) and easily search for any of these events.
   Read about searching for any visit activity.
   Read a feature description about how to search for any visit event.
5. User-tagging: you can add names, email addresses, login IDs, etc, to the visitor profiles, using manual or automated functions.
   Read about user-tagging: a how-to and see a video demonstration.
   Read a description of our user-tagging feature.
   Read technical documentation about user-tagging.
6. CRM advantage: user-tagging can be used to create CRM records in your data (client name, company name, size, client login, user-name, visit history, etc).
   Read about using Opentracker as a CRM system here.
   Read a feature description about user-tagging for CRM.
7. Add Facebook user-data to visitor profiles using the api.

Conclusion: there is a lot of positive change happening at the moment.

The API is also available for you to use, you have complete access to all its extensive functionality.

Extensive (technical) documentation is located in our Docs overview
If you can tell us anything about your needs, we will provide feedback.

Opentracker: don’t get left behind.

The Rockstart Accelerator

In Amsterdam is one of several world-class technology accelerators in The Netherlands. We entered ourselves into the competition earlier a few months ago, and came in the top percentile out of more than 500 companies, securing a place in the 100-day program.

LeadBoxer is a spin off from the Rockstart program, which utilizes the Lean framework methodology.
LeadBoxer is utilizing big data technology in order to make anonymous website traffic less anonymous, and function as an essential pre-sales tool. Currently being designed, tested & validated for the B2B market, the product works to create value from under-utilised traffic engagement.

If you are interested in being an early adopter for LeadBoxer, click here & sign-up for advance notification.

We jumped at the opportunity to participate because we’re eager to learn from the vast experience of the mentor community. As an additional bonus we are very energized by the cohort of our fellow start-ups from around the world (Portugal, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, Netherlands, UK). We will list those startups in a blog post to follow.

The program is divided into three parts;

1. orientation and exposure to methodologies, mentors, and validation interviews
2. construction and deployment (launch) of MVP – minimum viable product
3. scripting and rehearsal, build up to pitch to entrepreneurial and investor community

We’ve finished the first part and are now entering Phase 2.

So far, we can report that the opportunity to participate in the program has been extremely rewarding. We’ve been exposed to numerous entrepreneurial, technical, business, and sales gurus.

The fifteen hour days can be tiring 😉 but they remind us of launching Opentracker, back in 2003, and how rewarding that felt.

Stay tuned for more.

Star Wars and the Art of Life; Lessons from The Force Awakens. Devise good strategies. Measure. Improve and repeat what works.

I went to see Star Wars 7 last week. Afterwards, I had the same “Yeah, that was a pretty good movie,” reaction as I had read on the front page of the nytimes.com

In my post-game analysis, I realised the what, why, & how J.J. Abrams accomplished this.

In one sentence; they did this by drawing on successful elements of the original films, which they improved and repeated, while throwing out the rest.  In the same way, all of us who work on the internet can draw on basic knowledge and things-that-work from previous success. Identify a winning formula, refine on its success, discard strategies that don’t work. Repeat.

What does this mean in terms of Website Management?
Identify potential traffic sources, make an effort to contact them, refine your message, measure audience response, keep what works, throw out the rest. Bring back your best characters (Best Practices).

***SPOILER ALERT***

As far as I can tell, what the latest Star Wars movie does is; take 5 or more of the original elements (Luke, Leia, Han Solo, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, the Death Star) and replace them (the replacements are: Finn, Rey, Kylo Ren, BB-8, Starkiller Base). First, the new elements are inserted into the identical plot from the original movie. The new elements are then joined by the original elements (Han Solo, Chewbacca, Millenium Falcon, R2-D2, C-3PO) and together they proceed through the new story.

A few examples of successful elements from previous Star Wars films found in The Force Awakens;
– an undercurrent of slightly goofy humor – the perfect balance of laughing at oneself
– an irreverent, likeable, Han Solo-type character with the same mannerisms and gags, who also leaves the heroine behind at one point
– a hero toiling alone with robot salvage on a small desert planet, destined for greatness
– an important data file hidden from the bad guys on a cute and likeable droid in the opening sequence while being shot at by stormtroopers
– an insurmountable obstacle defiantly overcome under identical conditions as in previous films
– an even bigger death star
– an identical cantina scene, complete with live band
– light-sabre duels in cavernous high-tech space stations
– C-3PO and R2-D2 making fun of each other
– the Rebels have an ability overcome obstacles of ludicrous (technical) complexity after a 5 minute morning stand-up
– and one incremental improvement – the hero is a pretty girl (at the moment there is a lot of call in the media for female action figure heroes)

Following up, we will publish a list of the comparisons which can be drawn between Star Wars The Force Awakens and Websites and Business Management. In other words, we will publish a list of successful Tips and best Practices which you should repeat.

In Conclusion, the new film is a fun, easy-to-watch shoot-‘em-up flick in which no one really gets hurt, with an important message: things (life) doesn’t have to be complicated to be fun.  Of course, this is also the art of making things which are hard look easy. I may have missed some of the details as I had my young son sitting my my lap squeezing my hands out of sheer unadulterated joy most of the time, but I think I caught most of the movie.