Real time website analytics is an online tool that provides accurate, detailed, and reliable reports to webmasters and web site owners almost instantaneously. Real time website analytics answers questions related to visitor behavior, site performance, and retention of customers. Vendors of this technology claim that it is up to 60% more accurate than the traditional log-file analysis. The service can be purchased online from a host of providers. With real time analytics, you can obtain page views, visits, visitors, navigation, entry and exit pages, time spent on site, countries, languages, continents, search engines, and keywords used online within no time.

Real time web analytics keeps you informed about visitors to your site in real time. It also tracks where the visit originated from and visitors are navigating through the website. This valuable information can be used to sell more products and improve advertising campaigns. Firms can utilize analytical tools and successfully monitor scenario conversion to segment their visitors by behavior type.

To improve scenario success rates, firms use real time analytics to track site visitors at key stages like user registration or checkout and learn why they abandon shopping carts full of products or stop navigating through a site before reaching the company's goal. Real time web analytics also provides live traffic statistics and provides answers to questions such as which advertising campaigns are helping sales conversions.

Most real time website analytics applications are web browser based. This mean you can easily set up the tracking without the requirement of an expert and access reports online using a web browser. No hardware is required since the tracking and analysis is handled by the servers of the analytics service provider. Reports can also be filed as Microsoft Excel files for further analysis.

Most service providers charge a fixed monthly fee for providing the service. Often a limited period free trial is provided to allow customers to test the service before making a payment.