This weekend I attended Blissdom, a blogging conference that takes place in Nashville each year. While there I had a chance to get together with some of my favorite blogging buddies and swap tips and tricks. During one of the conversations we turned to web analytics.  While many of my blogging cohorts use Google Analytics, StatCounter or Sitemeter, most of the people I spoke with hadn’t heard of my FAVORITE analytics tool, Clicky.

This of course made me think, “I should write about this,” and voila, here I am!

1) What are you talking about?: Web analytics tools allow you to see things like how many people have visited your blog, what posts your readers like the most, where your visitors are coming from and much much more.

2) Do I have to pay for these tools?: You could, but I haven’t seen the need to yet. Most of these tools provide basic services for free.

3)I’m interested. Tell me about these tools: There are several sites that offer web analytics programs for bloggers.  Like I mentioned above, the most popular (IMHO) are Google Analytics, StatCounter, SiteMeter and the fourth should be Clicky. While they all have their strengths (and I use several of them), Clicky is my personal favorite.

About Clicky: Clicky provides you with easy to understand, real time web analytics information, allowing you to view your stats, as they are happening.

Why do I like Clicky:  Easy. There are several reasons:

1) Real time info. I don’t have to wait 24 hours to see what’s happening on my site. I can see it as it’s happening.

2) User friendly. Clicky is very easy to use. No need to try and decode any tech language.

3) Visitor details. I can click on a visitor and view their activity on  my site. As a matter of fact, this part is pretty impressive. You can see how much time they spent, all the links they clicked, how they left, their IP address and more.

4) Twitter Analytics. You can set up searches for terms you want to monitor on Twitter and see detailed info like sender, links, hashtags, etc.

5) Pricing: It’s affordable. Clicky will monitor up to 3,000 page views to your blog for free and up to 10,000 page views for just $4.99 a month. For most bloggers, that’s perfect.

6) Clicky iTool. You can install a Clicky widget that allows you to have a top line view of your analytics on your Google iTools page.

7) Clicky for your phone. You can download an app for your phone that let’s you view your analytics when you can’t get to a computer. Clicky for iPhone; Clicky App for other phones

How does Clicky compare to the other programs?: Great question.  Clicky has a chart on their site that compares several of the programs by offering. Click here to see it: Compare Analytics Sites.

Will Clicky work with your blog? More than likely yes, and it’s super easy to install too. Click here to check: Clicky Integration Details.

Screen shot of the tracking on Clicky: As you can see, Clicky also allows you to label visitors to your site if you know their IP address. This is a screen capture is of my Blog Troll’s activity from last month. Was pretty sad to see it was someone local.

So there you have it. Just a few of the reasons why I like Clicky for analytics.  Have a analytics tool you like best? Would love to know about it as these things are changing all the time.  Please feel free to share it in the comments!

Related posts:

1. Technology Tip: Adding a Print Button to Blog Posts
2. Tutorial: Creating Your Own Blog Button w/ Code Box
3. Blog Readability (silly)