Why Should You Care about Real Time Visitor Tracking?
Real time visitor tracking on your website lets you know how people are using your site as it’s happening. This hasn’t always been the case with the web’s most accessible tracking tools. Back in the good old days of internet advertising – i.e., about four or five years ago – Google Analytics didn’t offer a real time tracking option. If you wanted to see how visitors were using your site, you’d need to check in hours or even a full day after the traffic happened.
Analytics competitors like Woopra changed the way the game works. Google was faced with other companies out there doing robust tracking with real time visitor tracking, which necessitated some differences in the way their platform works. Over the years, Google’s interface has changed so that website hits are now reflected more accurately in real time – but is this really all the info you need?
Real Time Visitor Tracking Isn’t Enough
Because of Google’s TOS, you’re not going to be able to pull out IP addresses from Analytics. Rewiring your Analytics account via any kind of API changes to show you this information will only get you banned for life from Google. If you want to get a more specific idea of who’s visiting your site via real time visitor tracking, you’re going to need to rely on something other than Google Analytics.
Doing real time visitor tracking isn’t just about seeing what recurring IPs are flipping through your website. You can also:
Record user data. Watching how users are interacting with your website while it’s happening gives you a clear picture of what’s eye catching and what’s not. You can use heat maps to assess this data over the long-term, but there’s nothing like seeing how an individual user from a recognizable IP is viewing your data. Today’s marketing automation software typically includes real time visitor tracking resources that allow you to watch visitors using your website live.
Look for Patterns. Google doesn’t allow you to identify particular users, but most marketing automation software does. Once you know a user or group of users is coming from a certain IP/company, it’s worth it to consider marketing to those folks based specifically on how they’re interacting with your website. Real time visitor tracking allows you to do this kind of monitoring for patterns in user behavior.
Get a Holistic Perspective. Because Analytics doesn’t allow you to see individual users, a holistic perspective isn’t as possible. You should be able to figure out how individual users are responding to your website, your email marketing and all other forms of marketing – not just one marketing channel at a time.
Why Marketing Automation Works
When you’re able to drill down to a very specific level of detail with real time visitor tracking, you’re able to get a clearer picture of how your marketing efforts affect the end user. Lead Liaison has a set of marketing tools that will not only allow you to do real time visitor tracking, but will give you a full picture of how one marketing channel affects the other.
Visit Lead Liaison for more information on real time visitor tracking today!
