I Got Clicky!

I thought I’d give a quick plug to an amazing web service I found recently, GetClicky.com.  Since the launch of KitchenPC, I’ve been using Google Analytics to monitor site usage and generate statistics on what my users are up to.  An entrepreneur friend of mine recommended I check out Clicky, and I absolutely love this thing!

My visitors over the last 7 days

Like Google Analytics, Clicky is easily installed just by including a JavaScript file on each page on your site.  However, one of the main differences is the information you get is in real time.  With Google, it would take about 24 hours for new data to show up on their servers, but with Clicky you’re able to “spy” on your users in real time.  The Clicky website shows you how many users are currently online and allows you to get a timeline to see what each one is up to.

Another huge benefit of Clicky is rather than just showing a bunch of IP addresses, Clicky will show the actual KitchenPC usernames of my users on the activity feed (provided they’re logged in of course.)  I can see my top users, how many times they’ve logged on, and drill in to each session to see what they did on my site.  All I need to do is emit a JavaScript variable on the page that provides the user’s name and email, and Clicky will log this value automatically.

Various goals on KitchenPC

In addition to that, Clicky provides a feature called “Goals”.  A goal is something you want users to do, such as using a site feature or purchasing an item online.  You can log a goal with a simple JavaScript call to “clicky.goal()” and pass in a goal name.  These goals will appear at the top of each session, and you can get stats on each goal such as what percentage of your users reached that goal, and the average time it takes a user to do so.  I’ve set goals for various KitchenPC features such as dragging a recipe to the shopping list, adding a recipe to the calendar, subscribing to another user, adding a recipe to their cookbook, adjusting the serving size on a recipe, and more.  Though I can mine some of this data from my own database, I now have a graphical overview that’s much easier to work with.  Plus, now I can really show how users are using my features (eg, do they use drag and drop or click the “Add” button?)

Clicky provides a basic free service with the standard logging features, as well as some premium level packages starting at around $30 per year.  New users also get a 30 day free trial of the Pro account so they can really play around with all the advanced features before signing up.  It didn’t take me very long to figure out this was definitely a service I didn’t mind paying for, and the price was quite reasonable.

Anyway, that’s my plug for today.  If you run a website, go check it out!