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There’s one universal truth for every modern organization. It doesn’t matter whether you’re starting a business or already established: to succeed, you need data. Of course, not just any data will do. For strong data-driven decision-making, you also need the best insights. Thankfully, due to data analytics tools, businesses of all sizes can dig deep into their data.
But as time moves on, simply having access to analytics is no longer enough. The most successful businesses are now using data to make near-instant decisions. How are they doing this? It’s all thanks to real-time data analytics.
You might not have heard of this tool. It is, however, essential for every business that wants to stay afloat in an increasingly data-dependent world. Luckily, this article is here to give you a helping hand. We’ll explain real-time data analytics and we’ll also explore some of the many benefits of using this tool.
What is real-time data analytics?
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If you’re running a modern business, you’re probably already familiar with data analytics. From your chosen tool, you can access reports detailing all sorts of insights into your data. But first, you have to wait for information to filter into your reports. Sometimes, you might be waiting as long as 48 hours. Web analytics is one such tool that provides real-time insights into website performance.
With real-time data analytics, there is no delay. You receive data as soon as it’s available. Let’s imagine that a user logs on to your website. They head from your homepage to the contact page and sign up for your mailing list. Thanks to real-time data analytics, you could watch these interactions take place before you.
Of course, real-time data analytics is used for more purposes than simply for website data. The tool can help practically every aspect of your business. This ranges from marketing to customer support.
What tools provide access to real-time data analytics?
There are many tools that provide access to real-time data analytics. Let’s look at some popular tools that meet your needs.
- Website Analytics – Google Analytics (GA) provides ‘Realtime Reports’. These enable you to monitor customer journeys as they take place. If the size of a user base is an indication of quality, GA puts you in safe hands. The tool is used by a huge 55.8% of websites.
- Customer service – The customer service tool Woopers can analyze customer journeys to create user profiles in real-time. This ensures that agents instantly have the information they need.
- Cybersecurity – Cybersecurity Marketing can also benefit from real-time data analytics. By constantly monitoring network traffic, businesses can detect any suspicious activity and take immediate action to protect their systems and data from cyber threats.
- Internal Processes – The business BI tool Domo draws real-time data from your business processes. From detailed dashboards, you can gain insights that help improve company efficiency.
Another tool that can provide real-time data analytics is web scraping with Python. With the help of Python libraries like BeautifulSoup and Scrapy, businesses can extract data from various websites and receive real-time updates on their competitors’ pricing strategies, customer reviews, and more.
Real-time data analytics can also be used in conjunction with residential IP proxies, which offer a unique IP address assigned to a specific physical location, for a more accurate and comprehensive view of your data.
But why exactly should you use real-time data analytics? Here are six benefits that demonstrate how handy the tool is.
Improve user experiences
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There’s been a huge focus on user experience in recent years. Every business wants to make sure that its customers are happy. But not only that, user experience is a huge factor in your website’s SERP ranking. Search engines like Google want to ensure that users can access your site without running into issues.
Start by building user experience into every aspect of website development. Reading Platform.sh’s web application best practices can help. Once your website is developed, however, you need to keep a constant eye on user experiences. Real-time data analytics can provide useful insights into user journeys and help you make improvements.
We mentioned earlier how you can monitor user interactions in real time. Are you noticing any frequent issues for users? For instance, are people failing to click a certain link or leaving a page after only a few seconds? You can use these insights to make improvements to your website.
Similarly, when launching a new product, you’ll want to make the best first impression. Are users behaving in the way you want them to? Most crucially, can customers add products to their basket without a hitch? Other factors, however, are also important. Can customers easily share a product? Does the page function well for mobile users?
By keeping a close eye on real-time data analytics, you can make quick decisions, keeping users happy and boosting your SERP ranking.
Adapt to the market
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At the heart of real-time data analytics is speed. There are times in business when rapid decision-making is essential. Nowhere is the case more than when it comes to looking at the market. As we all know, the market isn’t static; it can change in the blink of an eye. This can alter the picture dramatically.
For businesses that deal in commodities trading in particular, unexpected market changes can have damaging consequences. But every retailer will be vulnerable to changes in cost and demand.
Real-time data analytics can monitor the market. This allows you to be notified as soon as a fluctuation occurs. In the past, you could have been caught off-guard by changes in the market, and left to pick up the pieces. But with the assistance of real-time data analytics, you can adapt dynamically to the market.
Boost internal processes
The internal efficiency of your business is equally as important as market-facing aspects. Clunky internal processes can slow the overall progress of your organization.
Real-time data analytics can be utilized in multiple ways to help your business internally. These include the following:
Identifying issues
You might not always realize when issues such as workflow inefficiencies occur. For instance, admin tasks might take a few seconds longer than intended. While these problems are small, they can slowly chip away at the growth of your organization.
Real-time data analytics can identify these issues before they become too damaging. This data can be used to power machine-learning tools that can identify a solution to the problem.
Ensuring goals are met
Your business goals should guide each of your operations. But it’s easy to stray from the path, focusing resources in the wrong areas. So, how can you ensure that you’re always progressing toward your objectives?
Real-time analytics can monitor each of your internal operations. It can provide insights that help to plan a way forward and optimize the effectiveness of each business process.
Consistent payroll
Nothing upsets staff more than an inconsistent payroll. If pay is frequently irregular, staff might start looking elsewhere for a job. Real-time data analytics can support your payroll enterprise. This instant access to payroll data, helps to ensure a regular payment process.
Enhance customer support
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Customer support is a lifeline for your organization. In business, just as in life, at some point you’ll make a mistake, no matter how hard you try. During this time, it’s critical that customer support is on hand to reassure customers.
Get it right, and there can be big rewards – 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. But too many organizations are let down by ineffective customer support.
As customers, it’s something that many of us have experienced. You’re forced to wait in a long queue, only for your issue to go unresolved. It’s extremely frustrating, and the average customer feels no different. Real-time data analytics can solve some of these problems, and help get your customer support back on track.
Below, we’ve listed some of the ways that real-time data analytics can enhance your customer support.
Make more informed decisions
Real-time analytics is constantly drawing from a rich well of data. When a customer makes a call, it can identify patterns from historical calls to help identify a resolution. For instance, did another customer call with a similar issue? Analytics can quickly bring up information from previous calls, and how they were solved.
Predict future actions
In its own right, real-time data analytics is extremely useful. But combined with predictive analytics, it can become a game changer. Predictive analytics uses machine learning to, as the name suggests, predict future trends. By inputting your real-time data, you can better prepare for future issues that might crop up.
Create more personalized experiences
One thing we can say for sure about the modern customer, is that they crave personalization. As many as 49% of customers say they will shop with a brand again if they provide a personalized experience. It’s in the interest of your business to do everything it can to tailor customer journeys.
Real-time data analytics provide you with the means to personalize. You can plug real-time data about customers into tools with a variety of personalization options. These include:
- Presenting customers with offers that they are likely to enjoy.
- Altering the layout of the homepage, ensuring that customers are always presented with content that they are likely to respond to.
- Changing the color scheme of a page to match the preferences of a customer.
Support application development
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Lots of businesses are creating applications to promote their brand. An app provides customers with quick access to your product or service. But apps are only effective if they run smoothly. App development can be a tricky process. From interface development to sharing code using a CICD platform, lots of errors can crop up.
Real-time analytics can help improve your app development, providing a constant stream of data. As users interact you can provide continuous improvement.
Real-time data analytics is the next step
Staying on top of your data is key for every modern business. Simply having analytics software, however, is no longer enough. Real-time data analytics is the next step. It allows you to make instant decisions, keeping you ahead of the competition.
This article has only explored some of the benefits of this software. The full list of benefits goes on and on. And the best news is that it is constantly getting more advanced.
To put it simply, don’t get left in the past. Embrace real-time analytics, and enhance your business.
