There's been a lot of talk of Google lately and how their Web Analytics is (IMHO) going to take over the world one day. However, I know many people who don't find it very intuitive or user friendly.
Here's an alternative that's deemed great for bloggers and small sites: Clicky
Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.With many of the same reports as Google, what Clicky offers is a good user experience - especially for those not all that savvy with web analytics. The reports are easy to navigate and use language and terms that are recognizable to all, no matter the level of web analytics knowledge you have.
A gutsy move is that they seem to use a lot of Google tools - such as Google Maps to overlay and show their visitor data, making it apparent that they know where their limits are.
One Clicky feature lets you "track custom data on a per session basis for your visitors. The most common example of this is to automatically name each visitor to your site so that they are identified in your stats by more than just an IP address."
You can then begin to understand what certain visitors are doing on your site. This is something that could be useful to bloggers and small sites, but definitely not plausible for large companies who have a lot of visitors coming to their site.
To be honest, I find it a little Big Brother-esque and I'm not entirely sure what our privacy commissioner up here in Canada would think of this. It seems a little intrusive to me when it's done on an ip address level. I guess it's no different than cookie tracking, though.
They say you can also use it to track ad campaigns, which could be very powerful, but again would only be manageable if you had a small campaign and lots of manpower time.
The downside before you rush out there, Wordpress bloggers, is that Clicky currently isn't recognized as a trusted provider to Wordpress, so the customized tracking is not available as an option if your site is hosted there.
While Clicky has a free service, most of these options are not available with that package, and in fact require you to sign up for the pro level, which is the third level up. It's only $11.99 per month though, so when you compare it to something like Omniture, that's a drop in the bucket.
Personally, I'm a Google gal; that's just my preference when it comes to free tracking tools, although there are other really good ones out there too like Quantcast, and PMetrics to name a couple.
If you find Google Analytics is not for you and you're willing to pay a small monthly fee, Clicky just might be for you.
See a short tutorial posted by a Clicky user on youtube below, or just GetClicky.com for yourself.
To be honest, I find it a little Big Brother-esque and I'm not entirely sure what our privacy commissioner up here in Canada would think of this. It seems a little intrusive to me when it's done on an ip address level. I guess it's no different than cookie tracking, though.
They say you can also use it to track ad campaigns, which could be very powerful, but again would only be manageable if you had a small campaign and lots of manpower time.
The downside before you rush out there, Wordpress bloggers, is that Clicky currently isn't recognized as a trusted provider to Wordpress, so the customized tracking is not available as an option if your site is hosted there.
While Clicky has a free service, most of these options are not available with that package, and in fact require you to sign up for the pro level, which is the third level up. It's only $11.99 per month though, so when you compare it to something like Omniture, that's a drop in the bucket.
Personally, I'm a Google gal; that's just my preference when it comes to free tracking tools, although there are other really good ones out there too like Quantcast, and PMetrics to name a couple.
If you find Google Analytics is not for you and you're willing to pay a small monthly fee, Clicky just might be for you.
See a short tutorial posted by a Clicky user on youtube below, or just GetClicky.com for yourself.
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