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!