This morning, Getclicky, the popular website analytics alternative to Google Analytics, announced the transition to Clicky.com. This is a huge upgrade in a domain name for them and I’m really happy to see this tool growing in popularity.
I personally use both Google Analytics and GetClicky–derr, Clicky–on my sites. Google Analytics is great for drilling down deep into data, segmenting traffic by locations, source, keyword etc. It’s one of the most valuable tools in my Internet Marketing toolbox (here are some others).
But what Google Analytics lacks, Clicky more than makes up for…
Why I Use Both GetClicky & Google Analytics to Analyze My Website’s Traffic
Everyone here should know the benefits of using Google Analytics. If you don’t, there are endless articles about why you need to get analytics installed and start tracking how users interact with your website. And it’s not enough to just toss it on and ignore it (I’m talking to you, small business owners 
). You need to set up goals, events, and customized dashboards.
But there are some things that Google Analytics doesn’t do. And Clicky more than makes up for it.
Psst — The links to Clicky in this article are affiliate links. I use and love Clicky and think you will, too. If you decide to purchase a Clicky subscription and this article, or any others on my site, have helped you, I’d love it if you could help me and use my links. If not, that’s totally fine, too. 
Clicky Is a Website Heatmap Service
That’s right! GetClicky’s Pro Plus account, which costs $120 per year, provides heat map tracking for your website. This gives you great insight into how users are interacting with your site, allows you to more effectively split-test your layouts, and much, much more.
Here’s a heatmap of the last 7 days from my Bicycle Touring site, a website that I bought back in May:
As you can see, people really love the image slider and navigating through there. I might want to add more featured articles and images and even rotate the featured stories a little more to increase engagement.
Also, one of my highest converting affiliate links is the Novara Strada link on the right hand side. That gets a good amount of clicks from the home page, too.
Clicky Is a Visitor Spying Service
Now this is pretty sweet. Using GetClicky you can actually SPY on your current visitors. Here’s a screenshot of my Binocular site from 9:20AM this morning (MST):
You can see I have 4 live visitors that arrived from a variety of searches. You can also see how someone interacted with the site, clicking on an affiliate link of mine. This is a great way to ensure your affiliate links are live and running correctly.
Every once in a while, I’ll click on some of the links my visitors are using and see if the affiliate link is live, if it’s 301ing to a new page or if it’s directing to a 404 page. I compile a spreadsheet of this all through the month and at the end of the month, I hand it off to my Virtual Assistant, Amit, to have him go through the links and correct them. This undoubtedly helps my users have a better experience with my websites and increases my overall conversion rate.
Finally, by using this tool you can easily narrow down where your affiliate sale came from. This allows you to clearly see the profit of various traffic sources and measure ROI when running a Facebook contest to increase likes, acquiring valuable inbound links that send traffic, and more.
Clicky Is Addictive
Yup. Clicky is damn addictive. You can spend way more time spying on your visitors than actually working. And that’s not good. But it is fun.
Anyway, congrats to the Clicky team! I reached out to them and asked for the price of the sale, but haven’t heard back yet. Considering Click.org sold for $30,000 in February of 2012, I’d imagine the Clicky team paid at least $80,000 or more for this domain name.
UPDATE - Clicky responded to me and said that the acquisition was in the 5 figure range (and don’t regret a penny of it!)
Oh, and yeah, they could have bought Clicky.com to start with, if they had the funds. But instead, the built a great business on a second tier domain name and dedicated all their money to building a great product or website. Sorta like I described the other day.
Have you used GetClicky–der, Clicky, yet? If not, I’d suggest giving them a whirl. I doubt you’ll regret it.
How much do you think the Clicky team paid for Clicky.com?
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Yup! That's me. Perry Rosenbloom. And I'm smiling because I know you're going to succeed online, too... especially if you sign up for my newsletter right below...
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get clicky rocks, its also a must for any advertisers who are in high dollar adword programs, so you can find the IP addresses and use they to prevent your competitors from killing your budgets…nice write up
Great point, Don!! Never thought of that. Thanks for adding!