6 Free Realtime Google Analytics Dashboards

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Here is a collection of 6 free ‘Realtime‘ Google Analytics Dashboards that you can use for any website. The 6 Dashboards are as follows:

  1. Realtime Overview
  2. Realtime Channels
  3. Realtime Geographic Info
  4. Realtime Organic Search
  5. Realtime Content
  6. Realtime Social Media

Each of the dashboards is designed to be functional in the real world, and each is designed to be useful for any type of site from Ecommerce, to Magazine, to Lead Generation, etc.

There’s a full description of each below, along with a link to the individual dashboards. At the end of the post there’s a link allowing you to add all the dashboards at once to any Google Analytics account.

1. Realtime Overview Dashboard

dashboard---overview

This ‘Realtime Overview’ dashboard covers:

  • Total Active Visitors (with % breakdown by medium)
  • New vs Returning Visitors (broken down by medium)
  • Top Active Pages (by URL)
  • Top Active Pages (by Title)
  • Pageviews (Last 30 Minutes)
  • Pageviews (Last 60 Seconds)

Add it to any Google Analytics profile with this link: http://bit.ly/rtoverview

2. Realtime Channel Dashboard

dashboard---channels

 The ‘Channel’ dashboard covers:

  • Organic Search Visitors
  • Paid Search Visitors
  • Direct Visitors
  • Referral Visitors
  • Social Visitors
  • ‘Other’ Visitors (ie. the remainder outside of the above, which may include email traffic, and any other tagged campaigns)
  • Medium Breakdown (top 10)
  • Social Source Breakdown

Add the ‘Channel’ dashboard to any Google Analytics profile with this link: http://bit.ly/rtchannels

3. Realtime Geographic Dashboard

dashboard---geographic

 The ‘Geographic’ dashboard covers:

  • Returning visitors currently on the site
  • New visitors currently on the site
  • Visual breakdown by country
  • Trendline of activity on the site over the last 30 minutes
  • Top 10 Countries with current active visitors
  • Top 10 Cities with current active visitors

Add the ‘Geographic’ dashboard to any Google Analytics profile using this link: http://bit.ly/rtgeographic

4.Realtime Organic Search Dashboard

dashboard---organic-search

 The ‘Organic Search’ dashboard contains the following:

  • Active Visitors (By Search Engine)
  • Search Visitor Trend (Last 30 Minutes)
  • Top 10 Keywords (All)
  • Top 10 Keywords (Non-Brand) – click the ‘pencil’ and replace ‘YOURBRANDHERE’ with your brand name then hit ‘save’.
  • Top 10 Keywords (Brand) – again, click the pencil icon & replace ‘YOURBRANDHERE’ with your brand name then hit ‘save’.

As you can see from the graphic, I’ve added ‘(EDIT THIS)’ into the title of a couple of the widgets there. Those are on the ‘Brand’ and ‘Non-Brand’ specific widgets. To edit those, move the mouse over each and a small pencil will appear at the top right of the widget. Click that, and then you’ll see  I’ve placed ‘YOURBRANDHERE’ in one of the filters. By changing that to your most used brand name(s), it will then filter based on your own brand terms.

To add this to any Google Analytics profile, use this link: http://bit.ly/rtorganic

(note: I haven’t included a PPC dashboard, as I thought it would be fairly easy for you to copy the ‘organic’ dashboard and make your own. Do drop a comment if you’d like me to add one though).

5. Realtime Content Dashboard

dashboard---top-content

This is a slightly different dashboard – as you can see from the above. It simply lists the top 10 currently viewed pages on the site, segmented by various different means. From that you can answer the questions ‘what are visitors looking at on my site right now?’, ‘what are visitors from social media looking at right now?’, etc. You may wish to add others for your key channels.

It was tempting to add lots of other widgets here for the sake of it, but I thought this the most useful format.

To add this to any Google Analytics profile, use this link: http://bit.ly/rtcontent

6. Realtime Social Dashboard

dashboard---social

The realtime ‘Social’ dashboard contains:

  • Number of active visitors from social media (with a % bar showing split by social network)
  • Number of returning vs new visitors from social media.
  • Social visitor trend over the last 60 seconds.
  • Social visitor trend over the last 30 minutes
  • Top pages currently being viewed by visitors who arrived via social media
  • Top social sources. (eg. Twitter, Facebook)
  • Top cities where visitors are currently active on the site via social media

To add the social dashboard to any Google Analytics profile, use this link: http://bit.ly/rtsocial

Add All the Dashboards at Once

You can add all of these dashboards at once to any Google Analytics profile you choose, simply by logging in to Google Analytics & then hitting this link: http://bit.ly/6realtimedashboards . (note: there’s a small bug in Google Analytics meaning it will give you an error message the first time you do this. Submit it again & you should be fine.)

Any requests or questions?

Do drop me a note if you’d like me to add any others, or if you have any questions. I send out an occasional email containing info like this. Enter your email address below if you’d like me to include you on the list.

Job Ads for Amazon’s First Retail Store

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Amazon seem to be preparing to open their first retail store according to recruitment ads starting to appear on the web. If the ads are genuine, the store will apparently be in East London, in Westfield Stratford (the same site as the London Olympics).

There has been no official announcement from Amazon, and this hasn’t been covered on any news sites or blogs as far as I can see. But the ads seem genuine, and recruiters are apparently proactively approaching people via email.

The benefits listed in the job ads are fairly generous compared to similar jobs:

  • Up to £35,000 a year (around $53k)
  • 6 weeks paid holiday.
  • 25% employee discount.

Jeff Bezos talked about opening retail stores late last year, saying “We want to do something that is uniquely Amazon, but we haven’t found the idea yet.” The ads talk of the store as a ‘showroom’, and say applicants will be ‘actively enticing’ into the store. The job description also leans heavily on helping users with website info (selling, order info, using search functions), so it sounds like the store will be as much a ‘helper store’ for the online business as it will be a shop in its own right.

Here is a screengrab of one of the job ads. Judge for yourself whether it’s genuine:

amazonado

(you can view a cached version of the ad here)

Amazon opened a London ‘development centre’ last year, saying they did so because “the capital is brimming with world-class tech talent.” Apple previously opened their first European store in London (Regent Street), and Google opened their first ever retail outlet on London’s Tottenham Court Road in late 2011.

Do get in touch with me or leave a comment if you have any further info.

The Guardian’s Terms & Conditions: Worse than Instagram?

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The Guardian have launched a new ‘user content’ site in collaboration with EE called “Guardian Witness”, they are now urging users to post their content to the site at https://witness.guardian.co.uk. The site itself is nice and slick, as you’d expect if EE’s tech team has been involved.

The official announcement is full of comments criticising The Guardian for asking for free content, accusing them of trying to build up a free picture library, etc.

But something else seemed strange to me: throughout the launch article they keep saying that you ‘still own the copyright’ of any content you post. I have read The Guardian’s Ts & Cs before, and that didn’t seem quite right to me, so I did a little more digging.

Here are some notes, plus the key ‘Instagramesque’ part of their terms & conditions:

“You still own the copyright”

As part of the terms and conditions for using the site, they say this:

“You or the owner of the content still own the copyright in the content sent to us”

They’ve also put together a fairly friendly set of frequently asked questions which explain: “You (or whoever created the content) own the copyright to the content which means that you control what others can do with it.”

In their article promoting the site, they also point out in the comments that “the copyright is, and remains with, the creator of content added to GuardianWitness…” and later on in the comments they again say “The creator of the submission always holds the copyright.”

But what do the Terms & Conditions actually say?

Reading the above quotes, you may expect that it means that you, when submitting content, still control exactly who has the ‘right to copy’ any content you post there. What they don’t say in the launch article itself is that, in one of the clauses in the terms and conditions, there is this 50 word snippet:

“…by submitting content to us, you are granting us an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, perpetual worldwide licence to use, publish and/or transmit, and to authorise third-parties to use, publish and/or transmit your content in any format and on any platform, either now known or hereinafter invented.”

 

Going back again through a few of the key points there:

  • Unconditional – there are zero conditions on how they can use your content.
  • Irrevocable – once you’ve posted content, you cannot ever stop them from using it.
  • Royalty-Free – they won’t pay you anything.
  • Fully transferable – they can in turn pass the right to use your content on to whoever they choose.
  • Perpetual – the right lasts forever.
  • Worldwide – there are no geographical restrictions.
  • Any format and on any platform – your content can be used for anything. They also “reserve the right to cut, crop, edit” your content elsewhere in the terms.

In other words, they may be promoting this by saying you still ‘own’ the copyright, and the FAQs may say they will endeavour to assist in various areas, but according to the terms & conditions The Guardian can do anything they like with your content once you have uploaded it.

They could sell your content, use it alongside ads (in fact the Guardian Witness site is in collaboration with an advertiser, so the content is by default being used as part of a third-party marketing campaign), they could allow anyone they choose to use your photos, videos, text, or any other ‘content’ you submit in any way they choose, and even if it is used commercially they never have to pay you.

How does this compare to Instagram?

This may all sound a vaguely similar to one of the complaints around the big Instagram Ts & Cs issue that blew up late last year. Oddly, one of the differences seems to be that The Guardian’s terms are slightly heavier than Instagram’s.

Here’s what The Guardian said about the Instagram issue in one of several articles about it:

“Instagram photos could be used in advertising, without reference to the owner, with all the payments going to Instagram. There is no opt-out from that use except to stop using the service and to delete your photos.”

The situation here is roughly similar, except that in The Guardian’s case you cannot opt out at all (even if you stop using the service). From the moment you post any content to Guardian Witness, you have granted them an “irrevocable, perpetual worldwide license”.

Keep that in mind when you read this advice, written by the excellent Jo Farmer in another Guardian article about user generated content following the Instagram fallout:

“Brands might be thinking that they can then use that content in future marketing, which might lead to a temptation to write something in the user terms and conditions to the effect that, “any content submitted by users may be used by the brand for any purpose without any payment to the user”.

The lessons we are learning from Instagram and other social media channels is to avoid any ham-fisted attempt to acquire such wide licence rights from your users in relation to their UGC.”

 

You can read the full terms here: https://witness.guardian.co.uk/terms.

Feedback very welcome on this, or do share this post if you think it would be of interest to others.

100 Digital Publishing Influencers

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Here’s a list of ‘100 digital publishing influencers’, put together by:

1. Archiving tweets from the #digiconf13 hashtag.
2. Compiling a set of twitter stats for everyone using the hashtag.
3. Running that through peerindex’s (somewhat arbitrary) ‘influence’ ranking tools.

Drop me a note at @danbarker with any questions.

It’s not perfect, but it shows it’s fairly easy to go from nothing, to a rough picture of a group of influencers within a particular area without much trouble.

If you’d like to be added to the list, or have suggestions for some who should, do drop me a note at @danbarker