Many websites these days are using google analytics for tracking their web visitors.  While Google is the “king” of analytics, there are some drawbacks I have noticed.  For instance, there is so much data there, clients often have trouble analyzing and digesting it.  Also there are data / privacy issues – you are voluntarily giving your site data to Google, which has a financial stake in using that data (in some cases, to show your competitors’ ads to your visitors).  Also, google doesn’t offer any site monitoring / warnings when your site is down.

Enter clicky.com – this service has a free version, but the real power is in the pay services.  I stumbled upon this service while looking for a way to monitor client sites for “uptime” (make sure they are working), but was also getting requests for SEO / keyword analysis and related services.  This offers help on both counts, for a reasonable price.  I’ve been using this for about a month now, and here are the features I like best:

1. Site monitoring – You can set up various services to monitor, and get emailed if there are any outages.  This can identify a slow hosting provider, or one that is down frequently.  If your site is down, that’s obviously something you need to know.
2. Realtime – these stats update on the fly – so you can see what people are doing right now, and traffic to the site.
3. Keywords / searches – See a quick report on how people are finding your site.  Also see where you rank for those keywords in various search engines.
4. Goals / Events – get notified when someone performs a specific action on your site.  This can be a purchase, or just adding something to their cart.  I haven’t used these very much yet, but it’s easy to set up and get reports.
5. Big Screen – if you have a spare monitor, or mobile device (it’s responsive design), the “Big Screen” view is pretty nice – providing realtime data for the site.  This is a cool way to keep tabs on your site’s health and vibrance – here’s a screenshot:
   

These are a few of the highlights of Clicky, but there are many more.   I plan to keep using this for my sites, and also for client sites.  I hope they keep expanding on the uptime monitoring, maybe adding “response time” and historical reports in that area.  Also, if they added a “chat” feature to engage with specific site visitors, that would be killer.  Overall, this is a great solution that combines many services into one spot.