Funnel Web Profiler
http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/profiler/
= breakthrough tool

It is rare that I come across such great tools as the one I am here introducing today. Such gems can only come from companies that have a long track record for quality products and for listening to what customers really want. Quest Software, has hit one more time with a great software application, which has no competitors (I know of) in its range of features and cost-effectiveness.

The tool is called Funnel Web Profiler, and it is the newest application within a web management suite that includes a traffic monitoring and a fantastic server testing tool (Web Spotlight priced at USD $ 1495 try it out at:
http://www.quest.com/requests/?RequestDefID=251 ).

Funnel Web Suite is the name of this group of applications, and you can test and try out each individual one for your own use.

Profiler must be an information architect's and a webmaster's dream come true.

What does Profiler do?

* Creates full information maps of any web site (live on the Internet or on your hard disk), providing several views of it.

* Maps can be zoomed, enlarged and reduced to any size and can also be fully printed.

* In addition profiler creates "topographic" maps of content within web sites, by creating a visual map that reflects in its mountains and peaks the most used keywords and the pages that contain them. This allows to easily identify content areas that are diluted to gain relevance on search engines, and overall content trends and gaps within the site. A marketer's dream.

* Funnel Web Profiler does not stop here. After it has fully scanned each page of the web site you have selected, it will dutifully report size statistics of all pages, as well as other content information including the page size in terms of content and download time for your visitors.

* Profiler has also an uncanny HTML validating engine which can be tailored and customized to rank and spot problems according to your own specific needs. It scientifically reports errors for all pages which can be sorted in a number of ways, and provides very detailed info on error gravity, location, number of instances, and specific pages where this is happening. Through it, I have been able myself to identify problems which had gone unnoticed through our standard checking routines.

* While Funnel Web Profiler requires no configuration, it is possible to specify unique objectives and constraints for your Web site. Profiler will then use these custom criteria to produce a report scorecard on how well your site meets your stated objectives.

By the way it has been built, Funnel Web Profiler can truly be considered an electronic advisor, as it is capable of meticulously reporting on design, technical and implementation issues. The reports are absolutely stunning and offer a very high level of detail. Imagine that for each page you can see its download time at 6 different modem speeds!

The advice provided by Funnel Web Profiler is quite useful and it does follow the official web standards. The advice rules were determined in consultation with leading HTML experts and authors, as well as using various guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

I think Funnel Web Profiler is a uniquely great tool that I wish to endorse fully. It is particularly good at testing web sites before they go live on the web, or for analyzing large and complex web sites which need a deep cosmetic and organizational upgrade.

Highly recommended!

System Requirements:
Windows WIN 98/2000/NT
20MB of free disk space
128MB of system RAM minimum
A display monitor capable of 800x600 resolution and 16-bit color

*PROS*:
Great interface. Well designed, easy to use, readable and consistent.

Funnel Web integrates fully with its brother Funnel Web Analyzer, a log analysis tool which allows you to study the traffic of visitors coming through your site. Through this perfect match, you can actually visualize visitors paths plotted onto the actual information map of the web site.

This feature also allows you to correlate essential Web site traffic data with your Web page design structure and content.

*CONS*:
Java-based application may not run properly or give you errors unless the proper Java virtual machine is installed on your computer.

Maybe a bit unstable, especially if you do not give it the proper amount of RAM memory.

It is a version 1.0. As such, it has not gone through the hardship of many thousands users, and may therefore hide some little nasty surprise.

The initial scan may take a long time in case the site is large and very complex. One solution to this issue is to: Turn caching on (Edit Site Properties / General tab / Check box marked "Cache files locally during scan"). The initial scan will cache your web site to disk, and the second pass, which analyzes the site, will read from the cached data, and will therefore run faster than re-scanning the live site from the Internet. You will, however, need sufficient disk space to store the site's details.)

Try Funnel Web Profiler by downloading a fully working 30-day trial at: http://www.quest.com/requests/?RequestDefID=251

The full version is priced at USD $ 595. I think Profiler is worth many times its price.