The Speed of Now: What is Real-Time Analytics?

Google monitors all web traffic that flows through its search engines. By using Google Analytics, savvy web managers can gain many insights about the behavior of visitors to their website.

Google Analytics shows us:

• Where visitors click.
• How long they stay on certain pages.
• How often they accomplish conversion goals (like buying an item or submitting a request form.)
• When and why they leave the site.

 

Real-Time Analytics

Optimizing a site for analytics tracking is a best-practice must-do. And now, Google is taking it a step further. Thanks to a recent added feature, we can learn all about what a user is doing on a site: while the user is still on the site. We can track analytics in real time—meaning we can monitor a visitor’s behavior on the site at the exact same time they are on the site.

Does it seem a little Big Brother? Perhaps. Would you feel like Mrs. Kravitz, peering through the curtains to scope out what’s going on at the neighbors’ house? Possibly. But this new service was an inevitable evolution of tracking software.

Real-Time Alalytics tracking can provide you with actionable insights faster than ever before. This development doesn’t mean Google is collecting any additional information; rather, it simply means Google is monitoring it as it happens and reporting it to you as it happens, rather than generating a daily or weekly report.

Watch What Happens As It Happens

There will be a ton of uses for this functionality. You can check out how well new content is performing. You can track traffic from promotions or special events. You can observe link traffic from social media sources or a new blog post.

This enables you to make course corrections and adjustments at the speed of now—and isn’t that where the web seems to be going?

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Real-Time Analytics: cool business tool—or—creepy privacy-invader?

Mrs. Kravitz: nifty throwback reference—or—is she related to Lenny?