Don’t Forget Realtime Analytics Monitoring for Your Website

Each new web project I do for Atomic Object requires some level of web analytics measurement. Just about every customer knows about and wants Google Analytics, but very few have heard about or understand the advantages of supplementing Google Analytics with a realtime monitoring web analytics service.

Using a realtime web analytics service allows you to react immediately to spikes in website traffic. Just recently our blog had a post go viral on Reddit causing an extreme spike in traffic. Using a live information radiator on our office dashboard enabled us to monitor the traffic spike and ensure our web infrastructure was able to handle the increased load.

Watching and monitoring the live website traffic gets your employees talking about your company around the water cooler. It is also a great way to establish interest, conversation, ownership and understanding of the effect of products, sales effort and marketing. Your employees will easily see where your customers are coming from, what pages are most viewed and what search terms are popular.

There are a lot of entries into the arena. I favor the realtime monitoring sites that focus on a simple, informative display of critical information and avoid the sites that strive to duplicate the functionality of Google Analytics. I currently rely on Google Analytics for analyzing my data and use a realtime website analytics monitor as an information radiator within the company.

I chose Chartbeat for my last project because of the simple dashboard design which makes an excellent office information radiator. Peteris Kelle created a Best of Realtime Web Analytics Services or you can Google ‘realtime web analytics’ as a good start for determining which service is best for your needs.