Can Clicky Compare?

With Google’s reputation, it’s no surprise that the 2013 Econsultancy/Lynchpin Online Measurement and Strategy Report found that 56% of businesses were using Google Analytics (GA) exclusively for web analytics (Moth, 2013). It’s free, user-friendly by providing data in easy to understand charts, and it’s customizable so users can create reports that accurately portray their data to meet their specific needs (Google, 2014). However, with the vast amount of web analytic tools available, it’s important to make an informed decision on which tool will successfully contribute to improving a brand’s marketing strategy. Just because GA is well-known, doesn’t mean that it is the only tool you should use to get the most out of your data. There could be other programs that help supplement what GA cannot offer, such as Clicky.  

Clicky is a full-featured web analytic tool with 817,932 web sites depending on it to monitor, analyze, and react to their traffic in real time. This tool provides its users with a simple, easy-to-use dashboard interface, which contains all web traffic data so they do not have to do much researching to find the information they are looking for. Like Google Analytics, Clicky offers a free plan for those looking for all of the basics, such as content, search, and referral reports, but also offers a variety of premium plans that provide additional in-depth information. When signing up, all new accounts automatically receive a free 21 day trial of its premium plan for up to three sites and 1,000,000 daily page views (total, across all sites). After the trail, Clicky will downgrade to the free plan, unless otherwise noted, which provides analytics without charge for one site with under 3000 daily page views. (Clicky, 2015).

Prominent features of Clicky:

Real-time Data

During class discussion and while researching, many touched on the delay, typically 24-hours, Google Analytic reports have and their frustration related to not being able to see more recent data. GA has worked to address this issue by creating Real Time Reports, which include six reports - Overview, Locations, Traffic Sources, Content (or Screens, for Mobile App properties), Events, and Conversions. Each report displays (Google, n.d.):

• the number of active users,
• the number of hits during each of the most recent 30 minutes
• the number of hits during each of the most recent 60 seconds

While this is a great improvement from the 24-hour day delay for GA, Clicky can still consider its real-time data feature unique because all of its data is up-to-the-minute real time, not just a few reports. Users can almost immediately begin to see data flow in the dashboard after pasting their specific tracking code into the website template. Furthermore, users have the opportunity to add another piece of code to the website to have quick access

to the Onsite Analytics Widget. This widget will show up as a button at the bottom of the page and allows the users to view how many total people are on the website and how many are on the page they are currently viewing. The button is only visible to users when they are logged in to Clicky, no one else can see it but the user. (Clicky, 2015).

 

Clicky’s dashboard is far more insightful compared to Google Analytics because most of the important data used is presented in a detailed summary upfront and can be modified for a more deeper analysis of the data, rather than having to navigate the site for visitor information, keywords, links, etc. Additionally, the dashboard provides a comparison with data of the previous period, shown via red or green percentage numbers to the right of each widget. The dashboard summary and comparison help to give the users a complete picture of what’s happening on the site and how the metrics are changing. With this information, users can make strategic business decisions to further enhance campaigns, popular content, etc. (Hall, 2014).

 

Visitor Information and Actions

From the dashboard, Clicky lets users see every visitor and every action they take on the website, including where they come from, searches they made to arrive there, their referral sites and their search path through their site’s content. This may not seem like a unique feature because Google Analytics also has access to individual user data, such as its Acquisition and Behavior reports, but Clicky takes visitor information a step further. “Unlike Google Analytics, Clicky lets you view detailed information on each individual user, such as IP addresses, Internet service provider (ISP), location, operating system, Web browser, referrer, visit length, sessions and actions during a specific visit, and more,” (Angeles, 2014). Additionally, users have the option to attach custom data to visitors, such as their usernames or e-mail addresses, and can view each visitor individually to see and analyze their full history. When it comes to viewing and exporting this data, both tools offer easy-to-read graphs and charts, in addition to being able to download the raw data. (Angeles, 2014).

Heatmaps

One of Clicky’s most distinguishable features is its heatmapping capabilities, which “give users a holistic view of what visitors are doing” and shows data such as where visitors are clicking on pages. Plus, it can be segmented by goal or visitor sessions. Users can visit any web page and view the heatmaps in real time, right on the page being viewed – which is quite convenient. (Angeles, 2014). In addition to standard per-page heatmaps, Clicky also lets users view heatmaps for individual visitor sessions. For example, users can see where a visitor’s mouse went, which can provide insight into what they might have been thinking. According to Clicky, Google Analytics does not offer heatmapping. However, GA does offer In-page Analytics, which provides users with a visual assessment of how visitors interact with their web pages (Google, 2015).

Bounce Rate

One of the reasons I chose Clicky as a competitor to Google Analytics is because its definition of bounce rate is much different and is very blog-friendly. In general, bounce rate tells users how engaged their visitors were with the site, specifically focusing on who only viewed a single page. Instead of considering a bounce someone who only visits one page and then leaves, Clicky uses time to do decide.

The Bounce definition according to the Clicky website:

“A visitor will only count as a bounce on Clicky if they only view a single page and they were on your web site for less than 30 seconds. We figure, if someone is there for at least 30 seconds, they were at least mildly engaged and should not count as a bounce,” (Clicky, n.d.).

In order to track time spent on the page, Clicky uses its tracking code to continuously ping its servers while a visitor sits on a single page. This provides them with a more accurate picture of how long the visitor was actually on the site. Clicky’s definition of bounce rate is great for bloggers because someone may spend five minutes looking at a single article and find what they need, which shouldn’t be considered a bounce. Here’s a better example:

“Say you have a blog post that you have shared on a few social media networks like Facebook and Reddit, and you get 1000 visitors to it. Chances are that 95% of these visitors will only view the article that is being linked to - one pageview. Maybe half will read the whole article, half will read part of it, and a few will click through to your front page to see more. Any other analytics service would report a 95% bounce rate for these visitors. But a bounce is negative, so it makes it sound like only 5% of these visitors were engaged. But that's not true at all - half of them read the entire stinking article!” (Clicky, 2010).

I prefer Clicky’s definition because if a user is really looking to measure interaction, quality, and stickiness, then they need to take dwell time into account. Here’s a great comparison of bounce rate % on Google Analytics and Clicky.com. You can see a major difference.

I also prefer how Clicky measures the time spent on a website with pingback to get a more accurate count of how long a visitor stays. GA measures the time by looking at the next page view. For example, if a visitor were only to view one page, Google Analytics will show that visitor as a 0:00 visit, regardless of how long he/she spent on that specific page. Furthermore, “if a user visits Page A and then Page B and then leaves, the entire duration of his time spent on Page B will be written off as 0 seconds too.  This is why Analytics users see so many visitors reported under the “0-10s” time duration,” (Grunwerg, 2013). Google did address this issue by stating, “When a page is the last page in a session, there is no way to calculate the time spent on it because there is no subsequent pageview. For this reason, when Page A is the last page in the visitor’s session, its time calculation is not counted for that view. In addition, when that page is the only page viewed in the session, no time on page is calculated” (Google, n.d.). Regardless, having a 0:00 second visit isn’t very helpful.

Additional Features

In addition to these prominent features, Clicky offers Uptime monitoring so users can know when their site goes offline and can react immediately, alerts for special events such as new visitors, goals, campaigns and referrals, it’s mobile-friendly, offers analytics for social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, and the list goes on.   

For a complete list of how Clicky compares with Google Analytics, please read a feature-by-feature comparison here: clicky.com/compare/google

Overall, Clickly seems like it would be a great tool to use for a blog because it provides real-time data, a clear overview of the audience, and easy access to additional data that can help make informed strategic business decisions. However, in order to really get the most out of this program, I think users would need to pay for the premium accounts, which range from $9.99 to $19.99 a month (Clicky, n.d.).

References:

Angeles, S. (2014, March 19). 3 Google Analytics Alternatives (and Why You Should Use Them): Retrieved from: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6090-google-analytics-alternatives.html

Clicky. (n.d.). Bounce Rate. Retrieved from: http://clicky.com/help/faq/tips/different/bounce-rate

Clicky. (n.d.). Pricing. Retrieved from: http://clicky.com/help/pricing

Clicky. (2010, April 26). Why Clicky's new bounce rate is the best in the biz. Retrieved from: http://clicky.com/blog/page/24

Grunwerg, A. (2013, May 22). Clicky vs Analytics: Why Google Analytics Reporting is Flawed. Retrieved from: http://www.searchable.co.uk/clicky-vs-analytics-why-google-analytics-reporting-is-flawed/

Google. (n.d.). Real-Time reports. Retrieved from: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1638637

Google. (n.d.). Time on Page. Retrieved from: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1006924?hl=en

Google. (2014). Why Google Analytics. Retrieved from: http://www.google.com/analytics/why/

Google. (2015). About In-Page Analytics. Retrieved from: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2558811?hl=en

Hall, S. (2014, June 3), Analytics Update: Do you Need a Second Analytics Package? Retrieved from: http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/06/03/clicky-web-analytics/

Moth, D. (2013, July 9). 56% of businesses rely exclusively on Google for web analytics: report. Retrieved from: https://econsultancy.com/blog/63026-56-of-businesses-rely-exclusively-on-google-for-web-analytics-report/