How big are you on learning new things? I love it and try to learn something new every day.
It doesn’t have to be something epic, but every little piece of info I put in my head can be useful.
Last week I learned how to fix things on my blog on the fly.
I have had many plugins crash on me over time. There is always something going on with WP blogs and a lot of times, it means that many of my visitors will see the mess, click out and probably never come back.
I plan to share a few problems I had in the previous 6 months and fixes that made them go away, all of that during this week.
Fortunately, I had the luck to get messages from my blogging buddies as soon as they see something wrong on my blog. But you never know if it has been broken for a few days or a few hours.
But how about the mistakes we create ourselves!? Cause there are many times when I did stuff the wrong way.
No one is perfect
I had a situation like that a few days ago. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income blog linked to my post about the guy that spammed my blog and that brought new visitors to my blog.
I was online when the post was published, so I made sure I keep my eye on the blog, in case something goes wrong. I use a great tool for that called Clicky Web Analytics.
What it lets me do is observe what is going on on my blog in real time.
Anyway, I was making sure there is nothing wrong happening with the blog while the new visitors were coming in large numbers. And then I saw it! Someone landed on a page I call “You missed it”.
It is a page I created to tell people the page they are searching for has been removed from the blog (this is not a 404 page!). I redirected all the deleted pages to that one page.
The ones I deleted are the ones from the beginning of this blog, about shooting and travel. I didn’t need them here anymore because of the course my blog has now.
In my Clicky Spy tool, I could see that someone landed on “You missed it” page, I saw which link he clicked to get there and I saw it was a visitor from Pat’s blog.
So I went straight to my post, removed the link and updated the post.
That way, I avoided more people landing on the “You missed it” page by clicking the link to a page that wasn’t there anymore.
What are the benefits?
The link was in one of the first paragraphs of the post. After I removed it, there was nothing to click on until through half of the post, hence, longer time on the blog.
People would probably click out of the blog if they landed on the “You missed it” page. This way they stayed on the spammer post.
I saw a specific link I missed during the maintenance of the blog posts I do from time to time. This way, I was able to remove it.
Although one person did click it, I managed to prevent everyone doing the same, which would probably be shooting myself in the foot (having a “broken” link in a post).
If I hadn’t seen the link in the post after someone clicked on it, I would not be able to get anything out of the high number of new visitors. This way, by fixing one little thing I missed before, I was able to keep people on the blog and get some of them to sign up for my newsletter.
Should you use tools like these?
Most definitely YES.
Unlike Google Analytics, Clicky gives you stats in real time, as they happen.
How much will this cost you?
Nothing! Clicky is free for one blog. You should definitely give it a go.
It helped me a lot and I make more money now than before Clicky, because I am able to see, fix and optimize things as they happen.
Have you tried Clicky yet?
Hi Brankica,
I know your feeling a plugin down my site completely, last week!
Clicky is great to see what’s happening in your traffic, right now. I use it together with GA.
I didn’t know you were deleting those old shooting and travel pages.
It’s a permanent problem on mine after the transition to WP, with old pages
Have a nice week,
Gera
By using 2 analytics code at the same time, do you notice that they slow down your website?
Jenni I don’t see a slow down on my blog, at least, something that I can perceive or it’s reflected on my stats.
Cheers,
Gera
Thank you for your fast response, I’ll try this service on my test blog soon.
Same here. I don’t see it is making any difference.
I am using two codes here and on my Site Build It static sites and everything looks great.
It is interesting when you are loading the blog for example, to see those URLs in the bottom, when the browser tells you what it is loading. You can see Analytics sometimes, but I haven’t seen Clicky yet, which means it is really fast.
I am really loving it, especially for the reason I mentioned, being able to fix things in real time.
I thought about them a lot and I left only 3 of them, that actually get traffic and have PR. I wrote an intro, like “there are old pages I don’t want to remove” and cleaned the blog from everything else.
It took some rethinking but I think it is for the better in the long run.
I had Clicky on my old blog and when I started my current blog, I tried to install all of the plugins that I remembered as being most useful – and I can’t believe I forgot about Clicky!! Thanks for the reminder.
It’s a really great tool. I also like Broken Link Checkerto help me keep an eye on links I need to fix or delete altogether.
I completely forgot about that plugin, I planned to install it for months
I had so many plugin crashes that sometimes I am scared to install more of them, lol
Hi Brankica,
I had a similar experience, except the link for some reason went to 404 page. As I was using Woopra I saw the problem and was able to fix it with a redirect. In your opinion is Clicky better than Woopra?
I haven’t tried Woopra so I can’t compare them. But since Clicky is free for one blog, you can try it out and decide. I really think it is the best analytics tool, but like I said I can’t compare it.
If you decide to give it a go, I would love to hear how did you find it comparing to W.
man with as many 404′s as I’m going through in Webmaster tools right now all I need is something telling me what a screw-up I am in real time. lol
But I did not know about this one and it’s definitely going in the arsenal. good looking out. thanks!
Hey John, this one is awesome for another reason. Let’s say you have a sales page and you are looking at what is happening on it today. And you keep seeing people clicking out to some other page and not purchasing anything.
You realized you put a link to your portfolio on the blog and they click out to see it and never come back. What would you do? Remove the link and make sales
If you have a lot of 404′s, you need to try/install the plugin mentioned by Tisha, the Broken Link Checker.
I used Clicky for a while on my blog but at that time, I was also using Reinvigorate so I decided to just keep one and I chose Reinvigorate. At that time, Reinvigorate was still in beta and it was free. Then it started charging sites that had more than 100,000 daily pageviews so I had to upgrade my plan and pay $5/month. I did that for a few months until I decided I’d be better off using Google Analytics for free. One thing that Reinvigorate had that Google Analytics and Clicky doesn’t have/offer are heatmaps.
I remember Clicky used to offer the free plan for sites with <100,000 daily pageviews, now its up to 500,000 pageviews. I might go back and reactivate my account. Clicky provides accurate stats and like you, I like the Spy Tool because it allows you to see your visitors in real-time. I also like that they have an iPhone friendly version (http://i.getclicky.com/) and there's a third-party app that you can use for it called ClickyTouch.
I use Google Analytics too, of course, but it doesn’t give me real time stats that are sometimes (like in the situation in the post) really important.
I am using Clicky on all of my sites so I am paying the premium version, but it is totally worth the money.
Hi Brankica,
Although I did sign to Clicky (actually through your link
) I almost immediately thought “ok, I’m pretty sure this tool is very cool, but I’ll dabble with it later” and I still haven’t checked it out.
As I’m still going through a lot of hoops in my online marketing experiments (can’t really call them ‘my businesses’ yet lol) not only I’m sure this is going to turn out to be a great tool for me, but I’m also 99.9% I’m going to upgrade so I can have it going on more than one site.
I’m not very sure about this though but I believe you have the option to track mouse movements as in hot spots, right?
It might be limited for paid versions only but I could be wrong.
I don’t think Clicky has it, not that I know of
I do know there is a thing called Crazy Egg that does that and I think it is about $9 a month.
Oops, my bad then!
Definitely need to check that out, thanks on the feedback Bran!
Clicky doesn’t have that feature for now and I think the one you’re referring to is CrazyEgg. Btw, if you want site analytics with built-in heatmaps, you can try Reinvigorate. They offer free accounts for sites with less than 100,000 monthly pageviews and the basic plan is only $5/month with 500,000 pageviews/month.
Amazing info Jaypee, thank you!
You’re welcome!
I haven’t tried clicky but I am off to check it now…girl, you have some amazing resources stored up your sleeve!
Love your new header! The girl’s hair is awesome…looks similar to you! Love it!
Sorry to come by so late and so less, new job! Promise to be more regular!
I forgive you everything
You know that! Glad you like the girl, I did actually work on her to look a bit more like me, even her eyes are green like mine, lol
Ah yes… I noticed the eyes just now…both yours and her’s!
I think I will give this clicky system a try as it sounds like a very needed tool to keep track of movement across my blog. I am very interested in seeing real time activity as well. Off to create my account right now.. Thanks.
Except ‘Clicky’ is a ripoff. It makes you think it’s free then after all the work of installing it, it says ‘your site has too much traffic for the free version. You must upgrade.”
I know that’s crap because my blog’s new and nobody’s even been there yet!
I never had issues like those and I have had 1.200+ visitors on daily basis with no such reports. Maybe you should have contacted their support and see what was going on.
Hi, Brankica.
I am now in the last stages of having Clicky for our blog. I just need the Clicky site ID as well as the site key and site admin key from my boss and I’m all set. My problem is I don’t know where to find the Clicky Site ID.
Just goes to show how inept I am, huh? Care to help me please…
Click on the name of the site you need the ID for and when it opens that site’s dashboard, there is a link preferences all the way at the bottom, in the left sidebar. In those preferences are all the numbers you need
Hi Brankica,
Clicky sounds like a great tool and it’s free too, I am going to give it a try : )