Real-time reports within Google Analytics present marketers with a prime opportunity to monitor website activity as it happens. As reports are updated continuously and convey activity within a few seconds, there are a variety of unique insights to be learned.
You will have access to six different reports:
– overview
– location
– content
– traffic sources
– events
– conversion
Let’s take a closer look at the function of each report and examine how you can use them to refine your marketing strategy and drive tangible results.
The overview report
The Real-Time Overview displays the top ten pages with the most active users, the source of each user, and the specific number of active users currently engaging with each page. Active users are defined as those who have been recorded by Analytics within the previous five minutes. This report will help you to see how recently published content and newly launched campaigns are impacting the activity on your website.
The location report
Here you will find a map alongside a list of countries where your active users are from. You can choose to deep-dive into specific regions and cities to determine how many web pages have been viewed from each location. Particularly pertinent for geo-targeted marketing campaigns, this report will show you the response you are receiving in real-time, which will allow you to make efficient modifications to drive better results.
The traffic sources report
This report will help you to monitor where your site visitors are coming from. This information will help you to assess the success of short-term campaigns, as well as monitoring how efficiently traffic is flowing through your marketing channels. If you find that traffic isn’t flowing through your channels as expected, you will be able to use this information to make the necessary adjustments to ensure that your campaigns stay on track from the very beginning.
The content report
If you need to know which pages have received the most attention during the previous 30 minutes, the Content Report will contain all the information you’re looking for. Informational websites and blogs will find this report particularly useful, as this data can be used to determine how visitors navigate between different pages and which pieces of content are performing particularly well.
The events report
Providing data on active engagement, downloads, video views, and button clicks, this report will allow you to immediately identify whether users are interacting with your website in the way you expected. This report can help you to determine the effectiveness of a campaign as soon as it has launched. It will also tell you whether users are acting on your call-to-action and successfully converting. Having access to this information immediately will help you to make refinements if necessary, to ensure that your campaign delivers the best possible return on your investment.
The conversions report
This report will help you to understand what your visitors are choosing to do on each page of your website. Here you will be able to see the total number of goal completions, as well as the percentage of active visitors that have completed each goal. This data is an excellent way to verify that newly launched campaigns are driving the number of conversions you expected to see.
These reports are a key piece of a search marketing agency’s armory and allow options to show both results and what needs to be focused on next it the SEO strategy.