There are two types of people that this web analytics package is especially useful for, newbies and geeks (and yes, this does apply to me as I am a self-confessed geek).

Clicky is ideal for the newbie who has discovered the importance of visitor tracking and is finding Google Analytics too complicated.

The more experienced stat geek (I love my stats) will also love Clicky because they track more elements than Google Analytics. They even provide the stats in such a user-friendly way that you can get a stat fix with just a quick glance (this can seriously increase your general productivity, I have lost too much time reading through my website data!).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming down on the big G, their Analytics program is amazing, is packed full of features, is better than 99% of website analytic packages on the market, and ultimately, is free.

But, and this really is a big ‘but’, the learning curve is very steep for someone who can be considered a ‘newbie’. Additionally, quite a few people who are running a small business and have an accompanying website do not always have the time to work through the given ‘how to’ pages that Google has kindly put together.

So, why is Clicky a more powerful alternative?

Clicky Web Analytics has the traditional features you’d expect but let me share with you a few of the additional features that have me excited!

• Juicy Visitor Details
• Twitter Analytics
• Dedicated iPhone Clicky Analytics
• URL Shortener Integration

If that still hasn’t whetted your appetite, how does this sound:

• Dedicated Wordpress plugin (yes, you can track you stats directly from your Wordpress dashboard)
• Spy on your visitors

The Wordpress plugin is for self-hosted Wordpress blog users and has recently been updated by Joost De Valk, over at Yoast.com. You can download the plugin directly from the Clicky website.

A great additional feature of the plugin is it can also be configured to update your Twitter account each time you upload a new blog post; this also includes a URL  shortener. as stated above, and tracks your links.

The ‘real time visitor tracking’ [*] is what gets me really excited! This feature allows you to literally spy on what your visitors are doing on your website as they are actually doing it. This is a bit like watching a Twitter stream but instead of tweets, you are watching the pages of your website update as your visitors navigate from page-to-page.

All you need to do now is head on over to the Clicky website and sign-up for an account. You’ll gain instant access to a trial period of a pro account (no credit card required to gain access) and will be downgraded to a free account when the trial comes to an end.

To get the complete access to the full range of services I recommend you take them up on their pro account offer, it only costs $59.99 for a whole year giving you a whole 6 months for free.

The do have other packages so I recommend you visit their site now to see what is the best fit for your website.

Here’s the link again: www.GetClicky.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley

[*] For real time visitor tracking that is recording using screencast technology visit Clixpy.com.

The title of this post may suggest that I am going to be talking about myself but in actual fact I want to discuss visitor tracking and monitoring.

I use a few tools to track visitor statistics, such as Google Analytics and StatPress (a Wordpress Plugin).

What I have noticed is that I get visitors coming to this website by typing the following search term ‘Karl Foxley Marketing‘ into Google.

It makes sense to create a page specifically for this search query and give the visitors exactly what they are looking for, so before we continue:

If you are looking for an SEO service for your business website then you have come to the right place. Foxley Marketing Solutions, founded by Karl Foxley, is happy to discuss your SEO and other Internet marketing requirements with you. You can request further information by using our contact us page.

Returning to the focus of this post, are you tracking the search queries that are bring visitors to your website? If you are not, maybe it is time that you started.

Google Analytics is free, setting-up an account and registering your website can be done in a short space of time, allowing you to have a whole host of statistics at your finger tips.

Inside Google Analytics you can click on the ‘Traffic Sources‘ tab and then ‘Keywords‘ to see how people are finding your website.

Recommendations: You may see keywords and phrases that are very similar that can be grouped, why not create a content page that targets them so that your visitors now have a page that closely matches their search query.

You may see a lot of single search queries that bring visitors to your website, I wouldn’t waste too much time creating content pages for each instance of a search query as it may never be typed in again.

The reason you will want to create content pages to match search queries is simple: if you have too many search queries being met with loosely related content, searchers visiting your site will scan your content and probably leave again as your content will not meet their expectations.

By monitoring what brings searchers to your website you will be able to give them exactly what they want instead of relying on loosely related content pages, this makes the searcher happy and in return makes the search engines happy.

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are using Wordpress you can grab the StatPress plugin here.

photo credit: Ivan Walsh

I’m still surprised by the number of people that believe there is no choice in the Internet Browser market and that Internet Explorer is the only offering. This really isn’t the case and one of the best alternatives out there has to be Mozilla’s Firefox.

You can download Firefox and have it up and running in a just a minute or so. When you first unpack it you will be asked whether you want to set Firefox as your default browser or not, this is entirely up to you. If you are just testing the browser then it may be better not to select this option just yet and instead wait until you have had a thorough test drive.

Once you have downloaded and installed your new shiny browser I recommend you to visit the Alexa site and download the free Sparky browser toolbar. Why?

With the Alexa Sparky Toolbar you will have access to the following tools and info right there within your Firefox browser:

• Related Links: Find sites that are similar to the one you are currently visiting.
• Traffic Trend: A sparkline showing the traffic trend from the last four months.
• Reach Meter: A neat little indicator that shows the site’s Reach.
• Enhanced Search: Shows Alexa Rank Indicator next to search results on Google, Ask, and Yahoo.
• Traffic Rank: Shows the current site’s Alexa Traffic Rank.

This is what the browser toolbar looks like:

Not only is the toolbar handy for research purposes you will be able to visit your website and monitor your very own traffic rank (how popular you website is as determined by the amount of visitors you receive).

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Google has a great free tracking system that is packed full of easy to understand statistics. The tool is Google Analytics and you can register for it over at www.google.com/anlytics. Being a Google product you can access it by logging into Analytics with your Gmail account credentials, that is if you have a Gmail account.

Google provide all the necessary information to get you up and running. You’ll need to register your site, confirm ownership by uploading a html file to your server and then copying and pasting a small piece of code into your sites html file. If this sounds difficult to you then ask your website designer or hosting account if they can help you out, I assure you it is really straight forward and if I can do it you will be able to.

After you set up your Analytics account and waited the necessary time for tracking to start (about 48 hours) then you may want to download a free desktop tool that will allow you to keep up to date with how your website is performing without having to log into your Anlytics account.

The tool is called Polaris and you can download it directly from www.polaris.com. The tool uses the popular Adobe Air platform so you will need to download this also (it comes bundled with Polaris). Word of warning, do not spend too much time watching your stats, it can be seriously addictive.

To your online business success,

Karl Foxley