In what has to be one of the quickest reversals of a product launch ever, Sitemeter is back to the way it was on Friday:
Dear Valued SiteMeter Customers,
As you’re no doubt aware by now, we’ve chosen to roll back our website to the previous “classic” version.
Based on some performance issues we were experiencing along with feedback from the community it appears we have pushed our new site live prematurely.
Our intention is and has always been to offer you, our customer’s better tools and more accurate data. Obviously we fell short of this. The first thing we need to do, moving forward, is to roll out new product releases in parallel to our current platform. This will give everyone a chance to try out, evaluate, and comment on our new concepts.
(…)
We apologize for the botched rollout and will do our best to make sure the next time we do this it has your full support and blessing.
Sincerely,
The SiteMeter Team
Louis Gray catalogs the mistakes:
[W]hat SiteMeter didn’t do with their new version was make the data look useful for humans. Instead of a friendly UI, its newest offering felt very raw, with unpolished typefaces, and gaps that showed not all the data was being tracked. It’s the same type of feeling most Mac users get when entering Linux for the first time.
Meanwhile, old shortcuts that were familiar to existing users, like recent referrals, popular pages, and summary data, no longer worked, and clickable links were instead replaced with a series of pull-down menus. Essentially, form was chosen over function, and the form wasn’t really all that good.
To say the least. Back to the drawing board, guys.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I was so happy my “ol’ sitemeter” went back to normalcy after I had a bout of panic when I tried it for the short period of time it was available in the new version.
I hope it’s going to stay the way it is for a long time, or be an option for users of the free version who are really satisfied with what it provides them for now. It entirely suits my needs.