Cownter counts

Cownter allows site visitors to see how many people are simultaneously viewing the page they are on.

Techniques that engage users with Web content are always worth exploring as are simple methods for capturing site metrics that help profile how your site.

My topic today, Cownter, is a service (in beta - of course) that allows the visitors to your Web site to see how many people are simultaneously viewing the page they are on. It also tells site owners who have implemented Cownter how many users visited specific pages.

Implementing Cownter simply requires signing up (for free) on the Cownter Web site, specifying the Web site to be instrumented, and then embedding a JavaScript fragment in each page that is to be monitored.

Setting a variable in the JavaScript enables or disables whether users will see a popup bubble showing the number of visitors on their current page. You can also include a control on each page to allow users to enable or disable display of the Cownter bubbles.

Site owners can log in to the Cownter site to view their statistics and Cownter also provides an API that allows account holders to retrieve their site stats using a simple REST interface. They also plan to make an RSS feed available.

By Mark Gibbs
Learn more: networkworld.com