WebSnapr 2.0 Review

What is it?  Well, WebSnapr 2.0 is a service which lets you capture screenshots of (almost) any web page. It  allows your visitors to instantly visualize any web page before clicking.   And it claims to “increase site traffic, click-through rate and site stickiness,” though I’m not sure how. 

I first saw it used on DotNetKicks and I thought it was cool so I investigated.  WebSnapr 2.0 is free and it so easy to implement!  And talk about accommodating.  There are already a ton of plugins available which are featured on the site.  Of course, I zoomed in on the WebSnapr Wordpress Plugin which enables a “WebSnapr Preview Bubble” for every link on one’s site with zero code changes!  (You can add the preview for individual links as well, but that requires some effort — the manual additional of a style tag.)

Unfortunately, based on response times I’m seeing early this morning, I think the free and easy implementation is going to be the product’s downfall.  As far as I can tell, every captured screenshot will require a call to http://images.websnapr.com/?url=[url]&size=[size]. Though I am sure there must be some caching going on, my bet is the traffic is going to add up extremely fast now that WebSnapr topped the digg and del.icio.us charts last week.  (Maybe Google will buy the service and help out in this area?)

I activated the plugin on one my other sites and I received less-than-stellar results. 

In the first case, the preview was rendered very quickly.  On the WebSnapr site, it stated that “it might take a few seconds before the thumbnail is captured. If so, you’ll see a Snapshot currently in queue message. This will be gone as soon as your thumbnail is generated.” 

Since this message didn’t appear for the popular WordPress URL, I assumed the snapshot was probably cached which benefited the performance.  

On the same page, a less popular URL screen shot was queued (see right.)  This seemed logical, however, I also noticed a number of broken images on the same page (see below.)  

I wasn’t able to successfully grab a screen shot of the broken image (and they were there for well over a minute) so I browsed around to other sites to see if I could find an example of the “issue.” 

I was able to quickly find the same problem on the site where I downloaded the plugin. I have to admit that I found it very strange that the WebSnapr URL, itself, wasn’t rendering a preview.  It makes me think my caching assumption is bogus.

The WebSnapr service is a great idea and it is really very cool.  It is a nice addition to anyone’s site - especially when it’s performing well.  I look forward to reading more about the technology behind the product.  I guess it’s time I start translating the creator’s blog.