Google Analytics and the Power of Real-Time Reporting

Life moves fast. Think about the average price of gas recently. Today gas is $1.55 for a gallon in Dallas county. The national average of gas is $1.79. In February 2015, just this time last year, the national average of gas was $ 2.30 for a gallon.

With so many abrupt changes happening everyday (from the weather to the economy and financial climate), marketers need to have the power of real-time reporting to make decisions for optimized campaigns and promotions.

Brands can use Google Analytics real-time reporting feature to monitor activity as it takes places on a website or app. Real-time reporting updates with every click, seconds after it occurs. See how many people are actively on your website and their locations, which pages or events they are interacting with, and which goal conversions have occurred.

Let’s take a look…

Upon logging in to Google Analytics, you can find real-time reporting on the main menu underIntelligence Events.

When you click on Real-Time you get a list of options.

The capabilities of Google Analytics real-time data are pretty sweet!

Here are the many wonderful things to monitor in real-time on the overview page:

• number of current website visitors
• page views every minute (with a one minute delay in reporting)
• page views per second (with a 15 second delay in reporting)
• top referral websites (where your traffic is coming from)
• top social traffic and sources to show which social channels are bringing you website traffic
• top keywords people are searching on your website
• top active pages to show the links of specific pages currently open by visitors
• top locations where people are located based on IP address when viewing your website

I love the map! If the locations of your visitors are just the USA then it will only show the country, but if your visitors are around the world, the map expands to show a global view.

See the data as your visitors explore your website. Check out a real-time overview page.

Some Application Inspiration

There are many different ways marketers can use real-time data to drive decisions.

Let’s look at two examples.

Rain, rain go away

For example, an eCommerce retail brand can take advantage of real-time data by observing that the top active page is the rainboots category web page. By adding a pair as a featured product to the home page, especially when the weather is raining in particular cities on that day, you can capitalize on that real-time data to increase conversions and sales.

One day only

Let’s say you are a local automotive dealer running a one-day promotion on convertibles. You’ve got paid search ads running, social media posts blasting and radio advertisements announcing your special deal. But is it enough? You’ve had slow foot traffic in the dealership today. Are you getting enough traffic on your website viewing convertibles to help reach your sales quota for the day? It’s lunch time, so you decide to check Google Analytics on your break.

Taking a look at the real-time reporting overview you notice that the top three keywords are “heated steering wheel” “leather” and “navigation mirrors”. These are all features of the convertibles in your inventory you can highlight in your promotional campaigns for the rest of the day.

Time for optimization! With the upgrade features in your arsenal you chat with your social media manager about creating posts for the rest of the day including the top searched keywords from the real-time report. By the end of the day, a big difference has been made from marketing efforts. The dealership not only reached the quota, but sold over the goal – providing a nice bonus to the employees from the commission.

I don’t know about you, but with these current low gas prices, I would love to have a convertible to sport around town as the spring season kicks into gear this year. Cars.com here I come!