Clicky: A Worthy Google Analytics Contender?

Google Analytics is a huge contender in website analytics today.  It’s free, it offers your data up in easy-to-understand charts, and it’s very customizable so you can create reports that accurately reflect your data and your needs (Google.com, 2014).  However, many professionals also supplement this program with other software to get the most out of their data, and to supply what GA can’t (fieg, 2011).

One program that claims to do a lot that Google Analytics can’t is Clicky.  According to Clicky.com, it offers “real time web analytics,” and touts many features that it believes trump Google Analytics (Clicky.com, 2014).  Going by its own comparison to GA, it looks like there are some major differences.

Real Time

“Real time web analytics” is one area in which Google sort of falters.  During our class’s initial review of our blog analytics, it was pretty clear that a lot of us were hoping we’d be able to see more of the recent statistics, so this would have been one area where Clicky would have prevailed (Blackboard, 2014).

Clicky also offers a bit of code that you can place in the body of your website in order for (only) you to be able to view how many people are on each page of your website at just a glance.  This is in the form of a tiny counter at the bottom of your page.

Individual Visitor Data/Heatmaps

Clicky says that it is able to track ridiculous amounts of individual visitor data, whether or not they have javascript enabled.  Google tracks by having the user put a bit of JavaScript code into their header that puts a cookie in the visitor’s browser (Google Developers, 2014).  If JS is disabled, then Google may not pick up the visitor.  Some browsers like Firefox have extensions that block ads and Javascript, so it looks like the JavaScript hurdle that Clicky has overcome can provide more accurate insight into the website’s activity.

Google does provide a good bit of individual user data, like Demographics, Behavior, Engagement, etc (Fig. 1).  GA does put your data into charts and graphs, but you can also download the raw data to make sense of it yourself (good luck).  Clicky also makes your data available for download, but its reporting system for individual visitors DOES appear to offer more plain-speech insight [Fig. 2].  Plus, it even tracks if something on my blog is shared, where exactly they are, the user’s browser and OS – you can really get into the mind of the visitor. (That’s me, by the way – I’m not violating a random visitor’s privacy. J)

[Fig. 1] (Google Analytics, 2014).

[Fig. 2] (Clicky Stats, 2014).

One feature that makes me want to sign up for Clicky immediately is Heatmapping.  Clicky claims that this lets you view “heatmaps” for individual visitor sessions, showing you where their mouse went, offering an idea of what they might have been thinking.  I can’t say I have found any evidence that Google Analytics can do this – according to Clicky, it can’t, anyway (Clicky vs Google Analytics, 2014).

[Fig. 3] (Clicky, 2014)

Uptime Monitoring/Alerts

A week or two back, in our IMC 642 Discussion Boards, I cited an article where a blogger didn’t realize her site was down until she was checking in on her Google Analytics reports (Herman, 2013.)  Clicky claims to remedy this problem by alerting you right away if you site is offline by using Uptime Monitoring, and verifying your site’s problem by checking from several locations before telling you.

Clicky also has customizable alerts that you can set when you reach goals, hit rock bottom in visitors, or have a high bounce rate – all customizable.

Price

Google Analytics is free.  Anyone with a website to monitor can use it without worrying about how they are going to be able to access their data on a regular basis, even if the income or revenues aren’t there to pay for it.  Clicky costs $9.99 a month, but only if your website gets more than a million monthly page views (Clicky vs. Google Analytics, 2014).

Mobile App

Google doesn’t offer a mobile app for Analytics.  Clicky does.  Pretty plain and simple, there.  For those who have other things to do than sit on GA all day, this is a great way to access data while Networking, at a meeting, or just because you’re randomly curious and aren’t near your computer.

Overall, Clicky appears to be quite the competitor with Google Analytics.  With more recent data, more detailed information on visitors, and the ability to view reports with a mobile app, this free program could be a great supplement to my current GA reports.  I plan to keep my account open and also add my regular personal brand page to Clicky and set up some custom alerts.  I don’t get a lot of visitors, but being able to get confirmation when I do get a visitor would be gratifying, to say the least!

What Google Analytics competitors have you researched?  Why did you decide to supplement your GA reports with additional tracking software?

Susan

References

Blackboard. (2014). IMC 642 Week 5 Discussion Forum. Reed College of Media. Learn.WVU.edu. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FdisplayLearningUnit%3Fcourse_id%3D_20666_1%26content_id%3D_1178123_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue.

Clicky. (2014). Home. Clicky.com. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://www.clicky.com.

Clicky. (2014). Clicky vs. Google Analytics. Clicky.com. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://clicky.com/compare/google

Clicky Stats. (2014). Clicky Stats for SSullivan642 Blog. Clicky.com/Stats. Retrieved November, 2014, from https://clicky.com/stats/.

 

fieg. (16 Feb 2011) Forum Discussion Response. Google Analytics and real-time analytics comparison: Chartbeat vs Clicky vs Mixpanel. Stackoverflow.com. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4599207/google-analytics-and-real-time-analytics-comparison-chartbeat-vs-clicky-vs-mixp.

Google. (2014). Why Google Analytics. Google.com. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://www.google.com/analytics/why/.

Google Analytics. (2014). SSullivan642 Blog: New vs. Returning. Google.com/Analytics. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en#report/visitors-type/a56698205w90209007p93801607/.

Google Developers. (15 Jul 2014). Tracking Site Activity. Developers.Google.com. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/asyncTracking.

Herman, J. (13 Dec 2013). How often do you check your analytics? JennsTrends.com. Retrieved November 13, 2014, from http://jennstrends.com/check-your-analytics/.

Choosing the Social Media that leads to Engagement & Interaction

Today's Web-2.0 way of communicating (though the rich multiverse of social media) is a two-way exchange of communication, versus the previous one-way transfer of data and facts for a viewer or listener to consume and decide for themselves. The advent of social media has allowed consumers to give feedback to companies, corporations, businesses and government in a way that is real-time and allows for instant gratification: the lightning-fast satisfaction that builds business/consumer relationships and allows for brand love to grow.

But in today's world of emerging media and the ever-changing landscape of social media, how does one decide where their efforts are best invested for a strong, fruitful, and measurable interaction with customers and constituents?

In our readings this week for class, an article by Chris Lake suggests that social media avenue selections should be made in order to get people to

• make a noise.
• store and share things.
• love your Web site.
• visit more frequently.
• refer your company to their friends.
• buy into your brand.
• buy your products.

Before choosing, a company should research its ideal audience and determine where they can be found (Custom Creative, 2014). A company can't succeed without optimizing its resources, and knowing exactly who your target audience is will ensure that budgeted monies are spent as wisely and as lucratively as possible.  For example, within the last year, Kraft has taken control of its place in social media and is now working in the digital realm to reach more millennials, Hispanic shoppers, and those on limited budgets (Wohl, 2014).  It recreated its entire company workspace, and now has a social media monitoring center it calls The Looking Glass.  It watches online trends and has found that mentions of Kraft in social media are up 25,000 from a year ago - due to amusing posts like the A-1 and Steak breakup on Facebook.

How did Kraft decide to use Facebook?  It looked at its new target audiences and then at research that showed which social media its audiences are using.

Facebook matches a good deal of its audience: at 71% usage, it's the most popular social media online.  It's also more popular with women, who do the majority of the shopping in two-thirds of American households (RetailLeader.com, 2014).  It's more popular with ages 18-29, and not with people of higher income, someone they're not targeting as much.

Where else is Kraft focusing its social media efforts? 

On KraftRecipes.com, there are prominent links to its Facebook page, as well as to YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr.  According to the Pew Research study, Instagram is a great medium they're skipping, where they could reach millennials and Hispanics.  However, they don't want to spread themselves too thin.

Pinterest is a great choice because it's popular with Women - but according to the Pew Research data, it's not really a winner with millennials, low income audiences, or Hispanics.  

Kraft also appears to be using Tumblr like Pinterest, but it's not sharing any posts from anyone but themselves.  Perhaps time spent with Tumblr could better be applied to Instagram.  Also, using repost apps, it would be very easy to share consumer-created content.  I wonder if the difficulty of managing an Instagram account from a desktop platform hinders its appeal to Kraft digital marketers.

Kraft's goal appears to be, based upon its social media choice, aimed at women and those who share and save recipes for later.  However, if we revisit Lake's goals for our social media from earlier, then we see where Kraft's selections for social media do mirror those points.  Pinterest, Tumblr, and YouTube get people to

• make a noise.
• store and share things.
• love Kraft's Web site.
• visit more frequently.
• refer Kraft to their friends.
• buy into the Kraft brand.
• buy Kraft products.

After identifying your audience and exploring the social media that correlates with your audience's tastes and favorite "hangouts," Custom Creative implores businesses to set up a social media strategy that aligns with the businesses mission and goals. Another source, Inc.com, stresses the importance of maintaining the two-way conversation that social media breeds.

Measuring comes both before implementing these new social media as well as regularly afterwards in order to gain insight into progress and accountability.  We're learning these next as we install and use Google Analytics in Week 4.

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Custom Creative. (2014). Choosing the right social media channel for your business. CustomCreative.com. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.customcreative.com/custom-blog/97-choosing-the-right-social-media-channel-for-your-business.html.

Manafy, M. (9 July 2014). How to choose the best social media sites for your business. Inc.com. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.inc.com/michelle-manafy/how-to-choose-the-best-social-media-sites-to-market-your-business.html.

Pew Research. (2014). Social Networking Fact Sheet. PewInternet.org. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/.

Retail Leader. (2014).  Women still dominate grocery shopping. RetailLeader.com. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.retailleader.com/top-story-consumer_insights-study__women_still_dominate_grocery_shopping-2053.html.

Wohl, Jessica. (16 Jun 2014). Kraft marketing sees payoff in digital space. ChicagoTribune.com. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-kraft-marketing-0617-biz-20140617-story.html#page=1.

Wood, S. P. (15 May 2014). Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/a-1-steak-sauce-breaks-up-with-its-brand-and-gets-a-prwin_b91985.

Visit Duration: How to break down the Average of Averages to apply better web marketing efforts

This week I'm applying basic web metrics to my page, susansullivancincinnati.weebly.com (formerly susansullivanmorgantown.com), to see what they mean for my website and how I can improve it.  I've already touched on bounce rate, and now I'm going to look at visit duration how I can improve it for my personal brand.

Visit duration is a characterization of a visit to my website, or "the length of time in a session" (Reed College of Media, 2014).  WebAnalyticsWorld tells me that a lot of metrics, including average visit duration, is the average of other metric averages.  Yeah - it's the average of the average amount of time that people visit my page from different sources (Sharma, 2013).  It seems best to divide these traffic referrals down and look at the average visit duration from each source.

As I discovered in my past post on bounce rate, the majority of my referrals are complete bunko that provide me with no real data on visits to my page:

If I flip the average session duration the other way, though, it looks like I have a lot of useful information here.

When I share my website on Twitter, more people seem to spend more time on my website.  Organic searches from Yahoo are about half that length, and seem to fall around the same length of time as Google and Bing searches.

This infographic helped me to understand the connection between visit duration and how my pages are shared.

Maldre, M. (22 April 2014). Social media: referral traffic vs. engagement. MattMaldre.com. Retrieved November 3, 2014, from http://mattmaldre.com/tag/infographic/.

Yeah, I can definitely see this reflected in my analytics!  Social Media like Twitter gets me the most referral traffic and those that stay the longest, but the bounce rate (or level of engagement with my page) is much lower for search engines and social media with "thicker content," like Google and LinkedIn.  

John Deitrich of WeDoWebContent.com explains that taking a look at the overall average visit duration is shortchanging your reports.  "Taking note of which social sources give you the highest average visit duration can help you how to best focus your marketing efforts," he wrote late last year (2013). If I'm not seeing very high numbers from my blog in these high-return social media like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and StumbleUpon, then I need to spend more time sharing and adapting my content for these websites.  For example. I'm only seeing referrals from Twitter in the last month (October 3 - November 3).  It would behoove me and my website traffic numbers to spend time in these and the other arenas that lend me to the highest average visit duration in order to make this average number higher overall.

I'll do more of this as I share my class blog posts on my website.  You can also see how I looked into bounce rate to see how it affected my page and my personal brand marketing efforts.

Deitrich, J. (13 Dec 2013). Google Analytics: analyzing visit duration to improve web marketing. WeDoWebContent.com. Retrieved November 3, 2014, from http://www.wedowebcontent.com/blog/google-analytics-analyzing-visit-duration-improve-web-marketing/#sthash.ZmFuxn3r.dpuf.

Maldre, M. (22 April 2014). Social media: referral traffic vs. engagement. MattMaldre.com. Retrieved November 3, 2014, from http://mattmaldre.com/tag/infographic/.

Bounce Rate: Is it really so bad, and how can I improve it for my website?

Bounce Rate is probably one of the more easily understandable metrics from this week's Lesson in IMC 642, Web Metrics & CEO: Basic Web Analytics.  It's defined by KissMetrics as "the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without viewing any other pages on your website" (Hines, KissMetrics.com).  I'm familiar with this from my work as the City of Morgantown's website manager, but since I'm currently job searching, I'm going to use my website susansullivancincinnati.weebly.com as my example for the week.

Logging into Google Analytics, I know already that I can find a list of my top performing pages under Behavior>Site Content>Content Drilldown> Pages.

Out of the 190 views over the last month, 84 have been for my home page.  It has a bounce rate higher than the entire site average: 84.5%.  So, I'm gaining from this that people who find my page aren't actually looking specifically for it (Especially since 27 of them are from Brazil...)

Of those 15.5% of people who seem to have found the right page, it looks like the majority actually go to Her Mission next (as seen in the User Flow under Audience), and then onto Her Experience.  Six of those 15% of visitors go onto Her Work next.  So, I know at least 7% of people are there to really dig into my page and discover who I am and what I'm looking to accomplish.  However, the next highest visited page is Her Experience.  The bounce rate on this page is VERY low -about 25% - but even Her Mission has a 0% bounce rate!

The worst bounce rate,  however, exists on my blog page (100%).  What does this mean, is it a bad thing, and what can I do to improve it?

KissMetrics suggests in its article about bounce rate that this aggregate metric, a measure of engagement (Reed College of Media, 2014), that bounce rate itsn't always a bad thing.  If there's a call to action on the page, such as a phone number, a form that redirects to an off-site page, or links to a store on eBay or Etsy, then that's worth taking into consideration. However, the only calls to action I have are to follow me on social media, and those are available on every page.  Could this contribute?

I can check into my traffic and see what referrers are bringing me the best traffic and the lowest bounce rates to my highest performing pages, including the Her Blog page.  

100% of the visits from the first referral page are bounces.  Not certain it's a legitimate referral page.  However, organic searches with a 0% bounce rate are from Bing, duckduckgo (?!?!)., and Yahoo. leading me to believe the people who used those search engines really were looking for me.

I use BrandYourself.com as an SEO tool to help me manage where my websites show up in search engines, so this might have helped contribute to the success I'm having in Bing and Yahoo.

Google Analytics can also show me what people searched for to find me in these search engines.

It looks like I get the smallest bounce rates from fellow IMC students and people interested in my background at WBOY.  Although it's just a session apiece, at least that gives me some insight into what kinds of people are visiting my page!

I hate that I can't tell anything about the biggest referral search keywords. (Not provided) doesn't help a whole lot, especially since this makes up 80% of my keyword visits.

To improve my bounce rate, there are a few things I can do.  KissMetrics says I should integrate lihnks to my pages in other pages I already have - for instance, in my Her Mission page, include links to my content, or in my blog posts, include links to Her Experience that create a bigger chance that visitors will see more than just one page.

Second, I can add links to my highest performing blog posts to the sidebar, like to my final projects, for example.  Four people visited my page looking for an "integrated marketing communications plan for Kmart."  It's worth putting on the Blog Page sidebar to draw people to other pages.

Also, I can improve my content.  Maybe I need to take time to upgrade my page to more of a job search tense than a "this is what I do for the City" standpoint.  Make it more of a resume page with a Her Studies or Her Education page instead of just a page titled Blog.  This makes visitors aware that I'm currently learning.

My bounce rate research shows me that I need more interactivity in my pages, and to highlight my most popular pages.  I'm also going to look at my visit duration this week for class to see what this says about my website and what I can do to improve my visit duration time.

Hines, K. (2014). What you can learn from bounce rate and how to improve it. KissMetrics.com. Retrieved November 3, 2014, from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/what-you-can-learn-from-bounce-rate-how-to-improve-it/.

Reed College of Media. (20 Oct 2014). IMC 642, Lesson 2: Basic Web Analtytics. Learn.WVU.edu. Retrieved November 3, 2014, from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FdisplayLearningUnit%3Fcourse_id%3D_20666_1%26content_id%3D_1178117_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue.