Say what you will about Google but they are the kings of free online services.
Google Drive, Maps, Webmaster Tools, Gmail and Analytics are just a handful of what the search behemoth offers to public at no charge. What’s not to like?
Well, I tend to subscribe to the old saying that nothing in life is truly free. Although Google Analytics is an enormously powerful analytics package, I find it slow and cumbersome to use at times. And in my opinion, there is a superior option out there: Clicky Analytics.
In this post I want to demonstrate why. If you are an analytics addict like me, read on!
There are affiliate links in this post. If you purchase a product through one of them I will receive a commission. It will cost you nothing extra. I only ever endorse products that I have personally used and tested extensively. Thank you!
One Simple Reason to Use Clicky Analytics
If you’re a sucker for aesthetics then you will not need to be sold on Clicky — it looks awesome:
If you’re intimidated by the sheer amount of data to hand in Google Analytics, Clicky will be seriously refreshing. The interface is clean and uncluttered and contains only the information you are most likely to want to see at a glance.
Clicky has got a lot more going for it than just a pretty exterior though. If you’re anything like me then you tend to check your analytics more than once per day. Quite frankly, doing so in Google is a pain in the ass.
It goes a little something like this — once you’ve logged in you get a list of your sites:
Two clicks later and you get presented with the last 30 days’ analytics for your site of choice:
A few clicks later and you will finally be able to get a look at your stats for the day. If you want to look at another site, you’ll have to go back to the main screen and start the process all over again.
Now compare that with Clicky. This is the screen you get when you log in:
You’re presented with a list of your sites by order of the number of visitors that day with the vital information right in front of you. It’s everything I want, at a glance, presented immediately. If I want to see more I just need to click through.
What I Use Clicky Analytics For
While Google Analytics still has its uses (mainly for split testing), I use Clicky for just about everything relating to my site’s traffic.
Day-to-Day Monitoring
Although it can generally be considered a bad habit to check your analytics more than once per day, I’ve found over time that I just can’t help myself. So rather than fight the habit, I limit the time it takes me by using Clicky. A glance at my analytics will literally take just one click and a few seconds.
Checking Referring Webpages
I always like to keep an eye on what pages across the web are referring traffic to my site so that I can act accordingly.
The main screen for any of your websites on Clicky has a “Links” box that shows you all of the web pages that have referred visitors to any page on your website for the selected period:
From this screen I can see that I’ve been getting some Twitter love as well as some traffic from a recent post I wrote on Bidsketch.
Depending on who is sending me traffic, I might check out the page and leave a comment or email a thank you note to the person responsible for linking to me.
Checking Popular Content
I also like to keep tabs on what content on my site is particularly popular — usually over the period of a few weeks rather than just a day. This is easily done via the “Content” box:
I can typically find out some pretty interesting stuff from this information. For instance, I used the above data recently to discover that one of my older posts was attracting a relatively huge amount of traffic. I did some more digging and found that it was ranking for a high traffic keyword in Google. With that information in hand I optimized the post and was able to increase referrals even further.
By regularly checking on your most popular content you can identify clear trends. For instance, from the above I can also see that:
- Freelance writing posts are amongst the most popular on the site
- Posts that I spend a little time optimizing for SEO attract more visitors
You can use this kind of information to great effect.
What Else Can Clicky Analytics Do?
In short, a lot. Here are some other things I check with Clicky:
- Search terms
- Traffic sources
- Nationality of visitors
Are these things you can’t do with Google Analytics? Nope — but I much prefer using Clicky. It’s quick, clean, uncluttered and intuitive. I’ve been using it for around two years and love it.
To be honest, I’m not hugely technical when it comes to analytics — I tend to stick to the basics. I know that Google has a lot to offer, but to be honest I’ve never looked deeply into its capabilities, nor do I feel compelled to. Clicky offers everything I need
How Much Does It Cost?
Clicky is completely free for one site (up to 3,000 daily page views), so if you only have one site you’re good to go. If you have more then I urge you to give it a go with your main site — I’m confident you won’t regret it! Click here to try out Clicky now.
I’m on the Pro plan which is $79.99 per year (or $9.99 per month) and covers me for ten sites and 30,000 daily page views. That’ll keep me going for quite some time I think! To be honest, for the cost I think it’s a complete no-brainer. I much prefer it to Google Analytics and for the price of a cup of coffee a month, it’s not going to break the bank.
What do you think about Clicky? Have you used it before or are you tempted to give it a test drive having read this post? Let me know in the comments section below!
I´ve used it before, but now I prefer Piwik, which is totally free (Open Source) and has practically the same (or even more) functionality than Clicky.
That, and I usually mix it with Crazy Egg.
Interesting, not something I’ve heard of…how easy is it to install and set up?
Really easy. Takes 2-5 minutes maximum. Basically, if you know how to use the cpanel you’re good to go.
Piwik is great and a good option if you are in a data privacy country like Germany. Even if not it’s a nice piece of software with not much overhead.
There is also a SAAS-Option: http://piwik.org/hosting/
For the rest I’m using crazyegg which helps tremendously for optimizing landing pages, button colors/sizes, wording, etc.
Hey Nader, Interesting… you’re using the same combination I use for analytics and landing pages and click conversions. 🙂
🙂 Yeah, I think that combination is pretty common and gets you loads of information you can play with.
Yeah. Crazy Egg has been very useful for conversions lately. I use it a lot to play with Adsense clicks in a website that received 60,000 page views per day.
With that kind of traffic, any small change leads into big boosts on my earnings.
I use Piwik as well and I absolutely love it. In fact I set it up on a domain specifically for Piwik use alone.
I’m sold! Thanks for sharing this insight Tom. I’m definitely a sucker for aesthetics yes, plus I see what you’re saying here regarding ease of access to the important info right there on the first screen when you log in. I’m going to give Clicky a go!
Cool! You’ve got nothing to lose 🙂
Wow, where do you buy your coffee!? 😉
I use Clicky too and totally agree with you. It’s simple, clean and shows everything I need to know. I’ve tried digging a bit deeper in Google analytics a few times, but never really come up with anything of value. I end up just wasting time looking at stats I’m not going to do much with.
I don’t drink coffee — probably why I got the price completely wrong 😉
This isn’t quite accurate: “you’ll have to go back to the main screen and start the process all over again”. In Google Analytics, there is a dropdown where you can quickly switch sites and stay on the same page without having to go back to the main menu.
This looks awesome, Tom! I’ve always loved charts and graphs, and this seems like a clean and easy way to keep tabs on everything. I’m gonna try it and see how I like it.
I think you’ll love it James 🙂
Hi Tom, I just followed your blog for a month, and also already bought your ebook, Thanks for another awesome review. Cheers!
My pleasure JJ!
I use Woopra. It’s free and shows you your visitors stats in real time. Gives you where visitors came from, if it was a search engine what terms they used, what pages they clicked on your site, how long they stayed, and tons of other stuff. Another really cool thing is if you really wanted to you can chat with visitors, there’s an Instant message feature! How cool is that!
Sounds cool 🙂
I use Clicky and Google Analytics. They both say different things though!
Yeah…there’s always going to be fluctuations due to what the services consider a “visit” etc.
That’s actually what I wanted to ask after reading this article: how much the stats differ.
They do differ, but not by enough to make it an issue.
This review on Clicky Analytics is awesome! Better user experience is good to be explored in such product. I will like to try it to actually see the difference between it and Google Analytics!
This comment was left in kingged.com where this review was shared and “kingged”.
Sunday – kingged.com contributor
http://www.kingged.com/why-i-use-clicky-analytics-instead-of-google/
I also love Clicky but find it hard sometimes to get detailed data, such as the average time per Google keyword for example (which I easily find in Analytics)…
How do you do this??
I love clicky! Its one my favorite analytics tools1
What’s your favorite?
I am using clicky for a while and have to say it is really a good tool if you want a fast overview of what is going on on your Websites.
However, for the daily use or if you want some more detailed Information about your traffic in order to optimize your site, it is not my first choice. For example the Information about a single page is quite useless. How many times a certain page was called or the average time users spent on this page and compared this to yesterday or the average day is missing. Without this key Information it is hard to improve your Website.
Clicky uses hourly graphs and each graph looks at the end like a stock market crash, because it also considers the visitors of the current hour.
If you have several pages, then you get an overview on the start page. However, only the number of visitors is shown and a comparision in percentage to previous day at same hour is missing. This means: The global overview is useless for a quick sight, you have to click on each single website.
I want to use Clicky and Google Analytics at the same time. Anyone have tried this before?
The reason is because I want to integrate Google Adsense into Google Analytics which Clicky can’t do this.
Yeah, it’s not a problem 🙂
Actually, I really like the same clicky! It was one of my favorite analysis ..
definition is very clear, and it has helped me, thanks
Thanks Aenun!
I really like with the name clicky, this is one of my favorite analytics tools, thanks
Clicky web analytics looks useful, but I still use google for my website.
Nice post. Thanks for share