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Real Time Web Analytics – Clicky Review
When it comes to web analytics, I have a secret weapon called Clicky. This secret weapon allows me to observe individual visitors to my website. Not only can I see where they enter and all of the pages they visit, I can even see what company they’re from!
That all sounds cool, but why would I actually use that level of data? Well, imagine you’re trying to do a deal with a big cloud computing company. It’d be nice to know if they ever visit your site, and if they do, which parts they find most interesting. Clicky makes all of this information really simple to access, and it does it all in real time.
What does this actually look like? Well, let’s use some real data from this very site! I recently did a Sendgrid Review on this site. Who’s read that lately? (Why the squiggle? I’m hiding data that may be sensitive.)
Cool, it’s a lot of people who have come from a tweet! Now let’s say I notice one user who’s from a big Swedish tech company that I want to partner with. Clicky can tell me a lot of neat stuff about this user.
Now what did this one user look at on the site? When did they leave? Did they click any of my links? Clicky can tell me all of that good stuff.
You may not believe me when I say this, but since I’ve been using Clicky, I hardly ever look at Google Analytics. In fact, view source on this very site. All I use is Clicky!
Not only is it cool to see your stats in real time, but I find Clicky far easier to use than Google Analytics. You can slice and dice everything in Google Analytics a million different ways, but I don’t actually need (or want!) to do any of that. I want to simply understand my traffic. I want to know if any particularly interesting visitors hit my site. I also want to know where these visitors come from and go. I want to see all of that in real time, and Clicky is pretty much perfect for that.
Now, you can get started with Clicky on one site for free. I actually pay $60 a year (aka $5 a month) to get this level of analysis on 10 different sites. It’s a bit of money, but it’s so worth it because I can analyze, tweak, and develop my web presence in real time.
My Clicky review in two words: totally awesome. Sign up for Clicky today and unlock real time web analytics!
Sendgrid Review: The Best SMTP Relay Cloud Service
In my not-so-humble opinion, Sendgrid is the single greatest email delivery cloud service. What makes it better than any other SMTP relay? I like it for 3 reasons: simplicity, deliverability, and reporting. I love it for a fourth reason: insanely good customer service.
Simplicity
What’s the point of an SMTP relay, anyway? It’s just a server (or group of servers… come on, we’re cloud folk here) that allows you to send mail. Sure, you could run your own with Microsoft Exchange or Postfix, but you run into a lot of issues quickly: scale, security, and the black art of ensuring your mail always gets delivered without being marked as spam. None of that is easy, and none of that is particularly cloud computing friendly.
Fortunately, Sendgrid’s awesome SMTP relay service addresses all of those concerns for me. I was able to integrate with their SMTPAPI library for Python in about 5 minutes. Not only was I sending mail immediately after that, but I was getting detailed statistics on open rate, click rate, and bounce rates! Note that they also support plain ol’ SMTP and a web API. Did I mention I currently send 40,000 emails a month for only $9.95?
Deliverability
Before Sendgrid, I tried a variety of different email deliverability services, from running my own server to a hacked up solution using different Gmail addresses (sorry Google!) to a host of other SMTP relay services. Ultimately, email deliverability is all about reputation (see Sender Policy Framework, Author Domain Signing Practices, and lots of other scary stuff). Not only did I not know enough to do it right, but I began to see these third party SMTP relay services doing it wrong too!
Fortunately, Sendgrid does a great job of managing this. Do you know how I know that? It’s because every time I log in, I see my email reputation score. It factors in a lot of variables like bounce rates, spam reports, and unsubscribe requests. Sendgrid always lets me know if I’m doing it right, and as a result, my emails always get delivered.
Reporting
I will admit that I am a bit of a nut when it comes to Sendgrid’s reporting. In fact, I’ve figured out some top secret Sendgrid reporting tricks that I’ll share here (hint: it has to do with the SMTPAPI library I referenced earlier). But first, let’s talk about the basic stats and how useful they are. Here’s the default report you can see on all of your mail.
Each line of that corresponds to a key metric, like requests, delivered, unique clicks, unique opens, bounces, spam reports, and unsubscribes. With that kind of information, it becomes so much easier to optimize your email campaigns and truly engage your users through this medium.
Here’s my top secret Sendgrid trick. With SMTPAPI library, you can assign email to a category; if you send out a signup email, you can give it a category of Signup. You can then view all of the stats I listed above for each category. So, I can create a category for “Signup-Funny Subject Line” and “Signup-Serious Subject Line”, vary up the subject lines accordingly, and do some very simple split testing in my email. It’s incredible simple and it’s all built into Sendgrid’s API and platform already.
Insanely Good Customer Service
I have to close with a story here. Right after I signed up with Sendgrid, I went out to send my weekly batch of updates to my customers. This is usually several thousand emails. Just a few emails into it, Amazon blocked all outbound traffic from my EC2 instances coming on port 25. I noticed this really early, like 6:45 AM on a Saturday (yay, parenthood!). I need a solution immediately.
I hopped onto the Sendgrid website and found their live chat. Amazingly, someone really smart was there at that time! He or she gave me a quick workaround that I put in place within a couple of minutes. I was back in business again! Experiences like that are why I’m such a big Sendgrid fan.
Sendgrid Review
In closing, what else can I say about Sendgrid? It’s the single best SMTP service; it’s a fabulous service if your architecture is already in the cloud; it’s cheap; the people are great. Sign up already!
