slow load times due to tracking

I've recently noticed that the getclicky tracking code is slowing down the load time of the site a bit. The header loads fine, then the site hangs for about 5 seconds before the rest of the page loads and there's a msg at the bottom of the browser saying "waiting for getclicky.com". I remember reading somewhere that ping times can be reduced by altering the code somehow.

Can anyone let me know where to find this info so that I can adjust the load time?

Thanks

5 seconds? Ouch. I haven't noticed this myself at all. We use Clicky to track people using Clicky, including ourselves, and I am very observant of slowdowns like that - which do occur every once in a while but rarely are they more than 1 or 2 seconds!

@dand

Has your site https pages?
Our problems started when we added SSL to our website.

We got alerts about " insecured items" , caused by the clickycode. My developers deleted it from those https pages. Alerts disappeard, but the https pages were LOADING VERY SLOW(2-4 minutes). So no-one would probably register! Then we decreased our SSL-logfiles, and then loading went normal again (from 4GB to 1GB). But still we thought pages were not loading as fast as before...

But now, we see for every page on the left corner below, a yelow triangle " ready, but with errors" ..
The SSL-company said that was caused by the clickycode.

We only deleted the clickycode from https-pages, but when i read again the comment from clickyteam now again, they are talking about " secure websites" and not about " secure pages".
I think we should replace the " secure clicky code" for whole website and not for only http pages....

So if your website has https, then maybe this might help you a bit.

Yes, there is special code from tracking a secure site. Using the normal code will throw errors.

I plan to fix it so it's automatic in the near future, as we've been getting lots of people with this problemr ecently.

Hi jobojobo, I don't think that in my case it's the secure pages. It's the whole site that's loading slowly.

Yesterday I waited 10 seconds for the page to load, so I've asked my hosting company to have a look at it as well.

Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it.

To avoid slowing down the web page it's possible to load the Clicky JavaScript after the rest of the page is done loading. This way the page is available and working before the Clicky tracking is done.

In our case this seriously improved page load times.

You can see an implementation example with jQuery here: http://getclicky.com/forums/?id=1440

The downside is that if Clicky is slow, and the user navigates quickly to another page, their actions may not be logged.

BTW, a full jQuery example would be:

(function($){
$(window).load(function(){
$.getScript("http://static.getclicky.com/12345.js");
});
})(jQuery);

I think doing it that way would disable the automatic download and outbound link tracking though.

Thanks for posting that solution.

Still not sure what's going on, but the site seems to be loading alot faster now. It's not hanging anymore saying "waiting for getclicky.com". The hosting company didn't know what was causing it either as it seemed to only affect AU users - the site loaded straight away in the US.

Thanks again for your help.

Friendly Clicky Admin - I'm not sure this would disable any tracking, since whatever JavaScript event handlers Clicky registers should still be registered, only later.

If the user performs actions before Clicky loads then no tracking will be done, but if it's after should there be a difference?

We use an "onload" handler to add "onclick" events to links that we think are downloads or outbound links. If you inject the script like this, using an onload handler, I think that our onload handler would never happen since onload has already occured. Maybe not though. I haven't tested it.

Guys, I'm suffering from the same problem (http://www.aroxo.co.uk). Is it possible to just host the javascript on our servers to prevent the issue?

A client is complaining that clicky is slowing down their pages....I don't see any reason why they should even know about clicky unless they looked at the source code.

I notice that the last message in the status bar (bottom left) hangs on clicky for about 3 seconds, pretty commonly. In clicky's defense, I did confirm that the page loads completely but it displays waiting for clicky for up to 5 seconds somtimes (not always).

Is there anyway to hide that? Is it the "noscript" tag that hangs this up?

This is equivalent to keeping the clicky image in the code, which I'm sure most people are deleting...I love clicky but this can be a deal breaker with some clients.

How recently were these complaints? We just made a bunch of major updates to our tracking servers which should result in a lot less lag. There's no way to completely eliminate it (I see people complain about Google's tracking code sometimes - Google, the company with very likely the best infrastructure in the world) but we've tried to eliminate it as much as possible.

I run i site that have the same problems =/ The site load quickly, then hang on "Waiting for clicky something something". This unfortunately is very bad for me, because my site is for mobile phones, and "fullscreens" when site is done loading. This make people wait 2-5 sec before that happends.

So, that Ajax solution, what do I lose by doing that?

I too am getting this problem. I took the js code off and pages load fast. Getting the message that it is loading "static.getclicky...". Any solution to this?

How Can I get the tracking code for HTTPS website.