Web analytics doesn’t sound like fun. The minute you see those charts, tables, numbers, and geeky acronyms, it will sound even less fun. But analytics – or the analysis and reporting of Internet data with the objective of understanding web usage – delivers information that is essential to all businesses with some form of presence or another on the Web. It helps you understand what you’re doing right, what you’re not doing right, and what you can do to improve.
Enter Clicky at GetClicky.com. Used on about a quarter of a million websites, Clicky is a web analytics tool that is, at the very least, on par with the biggest and most comprehensive analytics tools out there right now. But it’s not that which makes Clicky unique, for what really sets it apart is that it makes analytics fun. Easy to understand. Easy to manage.
Oh, and unlike the traditional favorite Google Analytics, Clicky measures data in real-time. You won’t have to wait for updates.
Clicky is developed by a company called Roxr Software, and as a paid analytics product it allows users to track all kinds of Internet data, including web traffic, visitor information, backlinks information, keyword searches, IP data, downloads, mobile hardware, Twitter analytics, social media referrals, direct/bookmark data, FeedBurner RSS stats, Ajax and Flash events, and many, many more. If you didn’t understand half of the phrases mentioned above, don’t worry: Clicky presents all these in a way that should make sense to the average Internet user.
Our team here at Lakeshore Branding began recently to incorporate Clicky into our Internet marketing efforts, and one of the things that really stood out was its awesome interface. It’s designed in a way that makes Internet data really easy to understand. Don’t forget – this is all up-to-the-minute data. Once you log in, you’ll see a bunch of cool sections, or categories, like The Basics (number of visitors, time spent, average time per visit, FeedBurner subscribers), Visitors (essential information presented in a simplified line graph), Goals (conversion rates and revenue), and Content (a section that basically lets you see the most popular pages, entrance and exit pages, and downloads).
Just in case you want to view your real-time data in some other way, Clicky does a great job of introducing other useful data-filtering options, one of which is visitor segmentation. Unlike most other analytics tools, Clicky lets you get up close and personal with visitors to your website or blog. The tool provides everything you need to know to boost your Internet marketing campaign: where the visitors are from, how they got there, what their IP address is, what operating system and Internet browser they’re using. Clicky can even show you a Google Maps capture of where these visitors are located. (Fret not: it’s not qualified as stalking!) You can further organize these data segments so that whenever, say, you want to compare the stats of your visitors from the United States versus the stats of visitors from China, Clicky does the job for you.
Data accuracy, while slightly varying from other analytics tools, is very reliable. If you’re a marketer or web consultant, you can then generate an analytics report for presentation to your clients. Because Clicky is a White Label service, you have the option to brand these reports as your own, and make customizations like adding your company name, logo, and CSS files.
Here are several other Clicky features that we’ve grown to love:
– Built-in Twitter analytics: for monitoring and summarizing Twitter conversations about your site or other topics of interest
– Mobile hardware reporting: for tracking web data on various mobile platforms (a feature that most analytics tools completely lack)
– Accurate bounce rate metrics
– Integrated clicky.me and bit.ly URL shorteners
– Dedicated iPhone or smartphone versions
Above all, Clicky makes web analytics a much easier task to perform and manage. Furthermore, because everything makes sense, Clicky actually makes Internet usage information fun. So if you’re unsatisfied with your current analytics tool, it’s definitely worth signing up for Clicky. Plans start at $49 a month, with a 7-day money-back guarantee.