Clicky is a great web analytics tool with many cool features. I use it here alongside Google Analytics – mostly for its real-time “Spy” feature which enables me to see what’s happening on the site there and then. Late last week Clicky opened up a beta version of their new “Mega Spy” feature, which pushes their existing “Spy” feature to the next level. I’ve been lucky enough to get on the beta – here’s how I’ve found it…

From One to Many

The first thing you’ll notice with the new “Mega Spy” feature is the new tabbed interface. Gone is the single stream of data purely based on user actions like link clicks and entrance pages, whilst you still have this content under “Actions”, you can now separate all of that data based on a number of new options: “Content”, “Links”, Searches”, “Countries”, “Cities”, “Browsers” and “OS”.

Actions

The actions tab is probably the most familiar when comparing to the old “Spy” feature. With this view you get to see pretty much all user actions, from the user initially hitting your site (the entry page), where they came from (the referrer), what actions they take on the site (links clicked) as well as information on IP, Country, OS and browser versions. For a quick high level snapshot this fits the bill perfectly. You also have the ability to click through to specific links or pages within your site to get further overall data on that page.

Content & Links

Content and Links sections give you a number of active users against the relevant content or links. What this does is slice the current active users into sections, so you can see X number of people are looking at Y article right this second.

Searches

Again, cutting the active user data into a new slice, this real time view shows all the active users that got to your site via a search term. Whilst this is interesting, it doesn’t really have much value to me as searches usually are sporadic events and aren’t normally drivers for spikes in traffic, so I can really review this data more relevantly on a day-to-day basis rather than in real time.

Countries & Cities

This data slice is interesting in the sense that it can give you some important data about where your traffic is coming from at that point of the day. Whilst you can assume as the day progresses different parts of the world appear, and some disappear, with “Mega Spy” you can actually see this happening there and then. Some surprising results!

Browsers and OS

Lastly, the Browser and OS tabs accumulate data on active users for these data points. As with all the previous tab data, this is great because compared to the original “Spy” feature, you could never get a real number around any of these data points, like “How many of my active users are using Safari 4.0?”. You could see them coming in with the browser, but no rolled up numbers. Very useful during certain events you may want to track in real time.

The Dashboard

Overall the dashboard interface has had a significant update too. You can now see a total number of active users online in the top left hand corner, as well as a sidebar list on the left of all current users, their details and what they are doing within your site. What the image above alludes to also which isn’t currently in the beta is the user of filters. This should enable you to filter the current Actions and other tabs against a filter term – another great way to custom slice the data in realtime.

Conclusion

“Mega Spy” is nothing but a massive improvement to the existing “Spy” feature in Clicky. As I mentioned, I use Clicky mainly for this functionality, so to see it improved is a huge win for me. Something really cool would be to enhance it further by integrating Google Maps for example for a more visual representation of active users on a map, and maybe some interactive graphs such as a line graph showing active users over time for say, the last hour. All in all though, a massive feature boost to the already great feature list of Clicky… The future looks pretty darn good!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.