With all the recent talk about Google Analytics, I want to make sure that people don’t forget the lovely program Mint. About two weeks ago I purchased it for my blog, and so far I do not regret my decision, even with the now free Google Analytics’ Urchin.

Mint is almost in a completely different class of web analysis. Mint is based upon getting a fresh look at your website, hence the name Mint. By default Mint will only give you the past five weeks of data, which is its intended functionality. The short time span allows you to accurately track current trends on your site, something which can be difficult in most stat software. Also, Mint displays stats instantly; the second someone visits your site, you can see the visit in your logs.

Mint also has some display advantages. Instead of giving you every stat under sun, Mint only displays the most relevant stats, such as web searches. It also filters out all the bad spam crawlers from your logs, so you’re only looking at real legitimate users. On top of that, it does it all in beautify AJAX goodness, so the stats look great also.

One of my favorite features of Mint is its Peppers. Peppers are plugins which allow addition stat tracking functionality, or display existing stats in a new way. The image above is from one of my favorite Peppers, Fresh View. For example, the Fresh View Pepper takes the existing visits that Mint tracks and displays it in a nice SVG graph, which is browseable by time frames. In this image you can see how my recent plugin development has aided my website visits. The Fresh View Pepper and other Peppers really add to the Mint experience. If Mint is missing a feature you would like, it can easily be added as a Pepper.

If you’re a stat junkie like myself, or are just fed up with the cheap stat programs your web host gives you (I’m looking at you Webalizer!), you’ll love Mint. It really brings a new understanding of how users get to your site, and what they do when they get there.