Historically websites remained fairly static, that is they were made then only updates as new products or services were released. Website owners could then use services such as Google Analytics to review the demographics and quantity of people who have visited their websites. Web developers could make a change, wait a week, look at the web statistics, and see how successful it had been.
This worked well, but these days the web is not static. Many websites are content managed, have blogs that are frequently updates and in the last couple of years social media has meant that the web is now about what is happening now, not last week. What happened a while ago is old news, and Google have now updated Analytics to include Analytics Real Time to enable us to monitor changes as they happen.
So what does Google Real-Time show us? Well, first of all a running counter of how many people are viewing the website at any time, and even more useful are the statistics of how many people are viewing each page.
You can review the statistics from the past in 5 minute intervals, meaning that you can immediately see whether your blogs or social networks are working. This allows you to easily analyse which of your Tweets or status updates are working most effectively, and at what time of day people are most responsive to you sending them. You can also see when your Tweets stop working, and therefore when you should Tweet again.
So how do you get started? They are in the new version of Google Analytics, just click the “New Version” link on the top right.
Google have also released Analytics Premium, another enhance to their service with a whole host of advanced features. The only set back is this costs $150,000 and so is obviously aimed at larger companies. For now stick with Google Analytics and Google Analytics Real-Time. They are both free to use and are exceptionally comprehensive.
We offer Google Analytics training if you want to analyse your traffic in more depth.
