Parse.ly

Score7.8 out of 10

130 Reviews and Ratings

What is Parse.ly?

Parse.ly is a content optimization platform for online publishers. It provides in-depth analytics and helps maximize the performance of the digital content. It features a dashboard geared for editorial and business staff and an API that can be used by a product team to create personalized or contextual experiences on a website.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of Overview in full-screen mode: Many Parse.ly pages, like the Overview, are TV-ready. Keep your entire team up-to-date with live, full-screen dashboards on TVs in your office.

Screenshot of Overview screen: See a snapshot of what your audience is paying attention to today so you can make fast decisions about what content to produce or distribute. Customize it to show only what your team cares about by filtering it to a particular author, section, or tag. You can pick what stats and listings are displayed.

Screenshot of Real-time posts page: See what’s gathering steam so you can capitalize on attention to every post, campaign, or section.
Real-time data includes the last 24 hours and updates every five seconds. It can be seen, filtered, and sorted on most screens.

Screenshot of Historical posts page: Explore historical trends by post, author, section, topic, referrer, or campaign. Compare today’s performance to last week, month, or year.

Screenshot of Campaign tracking: Easily tie in your off-site promotion to engagement with your on-site content using UTM parameters.

Screenshot of Multi-channel tracking: Track all your content in one place, no matter where it lives.
Compare how your content performances on various distributed channels including your website, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News.

Screenshot of Referrers: Understand where your readers are coming from and what’s trending where in real-time or historically.

Screenshot of Reporting suite: Set up recurring reports and schedule them to be emailed to you or your team on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence.

Screenshot of Tags: Tag content by format, topic, style—whatever structure makes sense for your company. Track sponsored content campaigns for better, more efficient, sales reporting.

Screenshot of Conversions report: In the report, quickly see which content converts the most readers, which content assists the most conversions, and which types of conversions content drives best. The report runs weekly, showing conversion data for the last week.

Screenshot of Video analytics: Demonstrate ROI of video efforts with a real-time and historical view of video performance. Parse.ly shows how videos and posts interact: which posts contain videos and which videos are played on each page.

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Screenshot of Overview in full-screen mode: Many Parse.ly pages, like the Overview, are TV-ready. Keep your entire team up-to-date with live, full-screen dashboards on TVs in your office.

Reporting in real-time
This feature provides immediate data and analysis about web traffic and user behavior, facilitating real-time decision making.
Category average: 7.8
Device and Browser Reporting
This enables an overview of the type of devices or browsers users are using to access your website, helping in improving website design, usability, and visibility.
Category average: 8.4
Pageview Tracking
A feature that records and provides data on a specific page's popularity and the number of times it has been viewed by users.
Category average: 8.9

Customizable Dashboards
This feature allows users to personalize their view of data and reports to focus on specific metrics that best fit their business needs.
Category average: 8.5
Bounce Rate Measurement
This feature measures the number of users who visit only one page on your website before leaving, helping to identify issues with content quality or website design.
Category average: 7.9
Lead Conversion Tracking
This tool allows you to follow a user's path through your website until they complete a certain action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, enabling you to understand what leads to conversions.
Category average: 7.8

Fahad Zafar

Director Software Engneering in Engineering at WBD (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Yes, we use it for page analytics tracking. It helps us get real-time data on page/article performance.

Pros

Analytics tracking.
Real time data gathering.
Section page specific data before aggregated view creation.

Cons

Component level metrics for page elements.
The dashboard is cool but it needs to support custom queries on the fly.

Return on Investment

Gives clarity on the user engagement metrics.
Better business decisions.

Usability

Alice Marshall View profile

eCommerce Staff Writer in Marketing at Future Plc (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Pare.ly across editorial and content development departments in order to monitor the performance of online articles and respond accordingly to traffic surges and drops. It's one of many tools we use to garner this kind of data and allows us to easily navigate the hundreds and thousands of articles published across the companies numerous websites. From offering top performing stories and those getting the most traffic in a more granular and of the moment tab 'in the last 10 minutes'. With its intuitive and friendly interface, Parse.ly allows us to dive into articles categorised by tags, as well as authors, and see not only traffic but where that traffic is being referred from e.g. Google, AMP, social networks. All of this gives a better indication of how to respond both to the performance of singular articles and on a wider scale. From updating articles that plummet, to reusing successful strategies in the future.

Pros

Intuitive, easy-to-use interface.
Home screen displays day's top performances as well as top performing articles in the last 10 minutes.
The ability to focus in on an article-by-article basis, as well as by tag/section/author etc.

Cons

Referral data could be more detailed and specific.
Better labeling in graph form/ability to zoom in to traffic spikes/drops.
Saving last searches.

Return on Investment

Driving more traffic.
Boost in moral to see real time successes.

Alternatives Considered

Google Analytics

Usability

Other Software Used

Data Studio

Mike Scialom View profile

Business correspondent in Social Media at Cambridge Independent (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Parse.ly means data about the entire group's online traffic is available pretty much instantly. I use the platform to analyse my own traffic, for instance I can see which stories are trending, for how long, and this helps me analyse my output, so for instance maybe some types of stories don't tend to do well, and others do. This doesn't necessarily influence my output - for instance in Cambridge, a business story may be relatively low in traffic terms, but it is a select audience I want to reach, so the volume doesn't matter in that situation. It helps that I can assess where the traffic is coming from, how it compares against my colleagues' output for that hour/day/week/month, and it has become a vital tool to finetune my output.

Pros

Traffic data
Comparison with other writers on the same paper
Up-to-the-minute analysis
Visual way of sharing data
Easy to use

Return on Investment

Feedback on traffic is very useful

Usability

EJ Ward, MCIJ View profile

Senior Editor in Social Media at Global Radio - LBC (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Parse.ly across our digital platforms for assessing how our news stories are performing and how many visitors we are getting to our website. This means we are able to see when stories and articles are becoming popular and then we can make sure they feature higher on our website. We're also able to track where our traffic is coming from to enable us to inform how we put out content in the future and also work out what times are best. My favorite feature is being able to track comments made quoting and linking to pages on our website and finding out what people are saying on Twitter.

Pros

Parse.ly helps us monitor which stories on our website are doing well and helps us track where our traffic comes from.
Using Parse.ly means we can immediately see when a news story on our website is generating interest and react to that.
Parse.ly means we can track which website authors are achieving a high number of page clicks and then assess why that may be.
Parse.ly Makes it easy to show our staff, visitors and external stakeholders just how well we are doing
Parse.ly Had very good customer support for those times thing go wrong

Cons

I wish you were able to see the level of detail when it comes to FaceBook that you can see when it comes to Twitter.
I wish I could see multiple websites on one screen, maybe divide my screen into quarters or the like.
I wish the mobile app was easier to use.
I wish it was easier to search for authors

Return on Investment

Parse.ly helps me be more efficient and have a better picture of what I should be doing and where I should be advertising my content.

Alternatives Considered

Google Analytics

Usability

Other Software Used

Google Drive, TweetDeck, Grabyo, LinkedChat

Ross Perkins View profile

Sport social media manager - The Sun in Social Media at News UK (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used entirely across the social aspects of Wireless to see in real time the page views of stories as well as historical data to plan ahead. It allows us to see what is doing well organically and identifies stories that are great to be shared to our partner sites to increase traffic. We also use Parse.ly to record data to provide feedback to editorial about what stories and features we should be writing about.

Its immediate recording of data is hugely beneficial to allow us to react as quickly as we can.

Pros

Real-time analysis
Identifying where traffic for tweets has come from
Able to break down referrers for each social platform
Ability to record UTM tracking codes

Cons

To see from which Facebook page a certain story has seen the most traffic
Breaking down where traffic has come from on Facebook by specific post.
Integrating images and recording its engagement

Return on Investment

Sets page targets
Identifies what pages drive most traffic
Allows us to see what types of stories perform well to follow and continue trends
Planning on evergreen content for repeated use

Usability

Other Software Used

Echobox Social, Meta Business Manager

Parse.ly

What is Parse.ly?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Reporting in real-time

Device and Browser Reporting

Pageview Tracking

Areas for Improvement

Customizable Dashboards

Bounce Rate Measurement

Lead Conversion Tracking

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Usability

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Return on Investment

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Usability

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Other Software Used

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