Real-Time data analytics is a data science discipline that deals with real-time data analysis. It is a data-driven decision-making process that seeks to deliver actionable insights and decision-making support in real-time. It aims to use data analytics tools to streamline business processes and optimize decision-making.

Real-time data analytics is growing significantly as companies increasingly seek ways to act on data using real-time analytics. While data science has evolved considerably over the last few years, real-time analytics applications can still be limited by latency and inaccuracies. This blog will look at real-time data analytics, how it differs from batch analytics and its business applications when it should be used, and how to build a real-time data analytics pipeline for better business decision-making.

The need for real-time data analytics

Real-time data analytics refers to collecting, processing, and analyzing data as it is generated in real-time. Here are some reasons why real-time data analytics is vital for businesses:

Immediate insights: Real-time data analytics gives businesses quick insights into their operations, allowing them to identify issues and make necessary adjustments quickly.

Better decision-making: With real-time data analytics, businesses can make more informed decisions based on current and accurate data. This can help companies to stay competitive and respond quickly to changing market conditions.

Enhanced customer experience: Real-time data analytics can help businesses improve their customer experience by providing real-time insights into customer behavior and preferences. This can enable companies to deliver personalized experiences and enhance customer satisfaction.

Improved operational efficiency: Real-time data analytics can help businesses optimize their operations by identifying inefficiencies and areas for improvement. This can lead to cost savings and improved productivity.

Competitive advantage: Real-time data analytics can give businesses a competitive advantage by allowing them to respond quickly to changing market conditions and customer needs. This can help companies to stay ahead of their competitors.

Real-time data analytics is essential for businesses to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced digital world. By leveraging real-time data analytics, companies can gain immediate insights, make better decisions, improve the customer experience, and optimize their operations, ultimately leading to improved performance and growth.

Balancing speed and accuracy in real-time data analytics

Real-time data analytics involves analyzing data as quickly as possible to gain insights that can be used to make informed decisions. However, balancing speed and accuracy in real-time data analytics is essential to ensure that the insights gained are reliable and trustworthy.

Speed is essential in real-time data analytics, as delays in processing data can lead to missed opportunities or incorrect decisions. Real-time data analytics requires efficient data processing techniques, such as streaming data analytics, to handle large volumes of data in real time. This allows businesses to react quickly to market conditions or customer needs changes, gaining a competitive advantage.

However, accuracy is equally vital in real-time data analytics. Real-time data analytics often involves making decisions based on incomplete or uncertain data, leading to inaccurate insights and incorrect choices. Ensuring that the data used in real-time analytics is accurate and trustworthy is essential to avoid costly mistakes.

Challenges of real-time data analytics

Real-time data analytics is a powerful tool that allows businesses to gain insights quickly and make informed decisions in real time. However, implementing real-time data analytics comes with its own challenges that must be addressed for successful implementation. One of the biggest challenges is handling the volume and velocity of data, as real-time data analytics involves processing large amounts of data at high speeds. This can be a significant challenge for businesses that need more technology infrastructure or expertise to handle large data streams.

Another critical challenge is data quality, as real-time data analytics requires accurate and reliable data to produce trustworthy insights. Data quality can lead to correct insights, resulting in better decision-making. Additionally, businesses must address security and privacy concerns, especially when dealing with sensitive data, to avoid data breaches and cyber threats. Technology infrastructure, cost, and the need for more skilled talent are other significant challenges businesses face when implementing real-time data analytics. By addressing these challenges, companies can fully leverage the benefits of real-time data analytics and gain a competitive advantage in their industry.

Best practices for implementing real-time data analytics

Real-time data analytics can help businesses gain valuable insights quickly and make informed real-time decisions. However, implementing real-time data analytics can be challenging and requires careful planning and execution. To ensure successful implementation, here are some best practices to consider:

Start with clear business objectives: Define the goals you want to achieve with real-time data analytics. This can help you identify the suitable data sources to analyze and the insights that will be most valuable to your business. This step will also help you measure the success of your implementation and ensure that you are achieving your desired outcomes.

Focus on data quality: Real-time data analytics requires accurate and reliable data to produce trustworthy insights. Ensure that the data you analyze is high quality by implementing data governance processes and quality control checks. This can help you avoid errors and inconsistencies in your data analysis, resulting in better decision-making.

Implement a scalable infrastructure: To handle the volume and velocity of data in real time, it’s essential to implement a scalable infrastructure. Invest in the right technology, such as high-speed data networks, real-time processing capabilities, and cloud-based solutions, to ensure your infrastructure can handle the data volume and velocity.

Embrace automation: Automation can help speed up the data analytics process and reduce the risk of errors. Implement automated strategies for data ingestion, processing, and analysis techniques, and use data visualization tools to help you clearly and effectively communicate your insights.

Foster a data-driven culture: A data-driven culture can help ensure that your team is aligned around your business objectives and that everyone is working towards achieving them. Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making by educating your team on the value of real-time data analytics and providing them with the training and resources they need to use data effectively.

By following these best practices, businesses can successfully implement real-time data analytics and gain a competitive advantage in their industry.

How is real-time data analytics used in practical business applications?

Real-time data analytics has become a valuable tool in many practical business applications, allowing businesses to gain insights quickly and make informed decisions in real-time. Real-time data analytics is used in various business applications, including customer experience, fraud detection, supply chain optimization, predictive maintenance, and more. For example, real-time data analytics can help businesses improve customer experience by analyzing customer interactions, allowing companies to respond quickly to customer complaints or feedback.

Real-time data analytics can detect fraudulent activities immediately, helping businesses prevent financial losses. Additionally, companies can use real-time data analytics to optimize their supply chain by monitoring inventory levels, tracking shipments, and predicting demand. This can help companies to identify bottlenecks and make adjustments in real-time to improve their supply chain efficiency. Real-time data analytics can predict equipment failures and proactively schedule maintenance, reducing downtime and maintenance costs. Real-time data analytics is a powerful tool businesses can use to gain a competitive advantage and make better real-time decisions.

Why is real-time data analytics important?

Real-time data analytics is becoming increasingly important in today’s business environment, where the speed and accuracy of decision-making can significantly impact a company’s success. Real-time data analytics refers to the ability to process and analyze data as soon as it is generated, allowing businesses to make quick and informed decisions based on the most current information.

One of the key benefits of real-time data analytics is that it allows businesses to be more agile and responsive to changing market conditions. By monitoring data streams in real-time, companies can identify emerging trends and patterns and adjust their strategies accordingly. For example, suppose a company sees a sudden increase in demand for a particular product or service. In that case, it can quickly ramp up production to meet that demand, avoiding lost sales or dissatisfied customers.

Real-time data analytics also enables businesses to improve their operational efficiency. By tracking data on production processes, inventory levels, and supply chain logistics in real-time, companies can optimize their operations to reduce costs, improve quality, and increase throughput.

Another critical application of real-time data analytics is in customer experience. By monitoring customer interactions in real time, businesses can identify potential issues before they become significant problems and respond proactively to customer complaints or feedback. This can help improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately driving revenue growth.

Real-time data analytics is essential for businesses looking to stay competitive and responsive in today’s fast-paced business environment. By providing up-to-the-minute insights, companies can make better decisions, improve operations, and deliver a better customer experience.

Conclusion

Suppose you’re looking for a reliable and experienced partner to help you leverage real-time data and analytics to maximize the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. In that case, Oregon Web Solutions in Portland, OR, is an excellent choice. They have a proven track record of providing reliable, accurate, and timely insights that help businesses make informed decisions, improve their online presence, and stay ahead of their competition. With the help of their experienced team, you’ll be able to identify opportunities to help you reach your goals and grow your business. Contact us to learn more about our real-time data analytics services.

Why Wix wesbites dont rank on Google

 

There are two things we consider to be true about Wix and their website building abilities: 

  • They make it pretty easy to build a “good” looking website 
  • They make it REALLY easy to build a poorly performing website

So, if Wix makes it so easy for beginners to build their own website, why aren’t Wix websites showing up in Google and why shouldn’t you use it? Read below for our take on Wix, and why you should avoid using this uncannily popular website platform. 

We get it, designing a website is no easy feet, and paying someone to build one for you is typically expensive and out of most small-business owners budgets. That’s why a platform like Wix.com is so appealing to those looking to create a good looking, well performing website without breaking the bank, or their brains, in the process. Wix.com promises easy to use templates, and “Free” website building services. While this is a very effective marketing tactic used to get people on their site, and signed up, Wix is in fact not free. Yes, their base offering is technically $0, but with that free price tag comes Wix branding all over your website and absolutely no analytics tools available to you. Beyond the “Free” package, you can start with their basic package for a whopping $4 a month. So while it is not free, it is cheap enough that you can skip one coffee a month and pay your Wix bill in full. Beyond this their most expensive plan is still only $24 a month – so, more expensive than free or $4, but still pretty affordable. 

Where the real kicker comes in is when you have no choice but to connect “apps” from their app store to help your websites overall functionality. The largest cost when using Wix is essentially hidden from users. Wix and their offerings appeal most to inexperienced people who want, or need a website and don’t know where or how to start. Wix knows this and, in our opinion, takes advantage of people who don’t know what they’re doing. The reality is, in order to have a well functioning and searchable website, you’ll either need to skip Wix all together, or spend some cash for a subpar website at best. Like we said before, you can build a good looking website using Wix – that’s not the issue. The issue is that websites built using Wix are nearly impossible to actually find on the internet. In most cases, you would need to type in the exact URL in order to even find a specific website built on Wix. 

In the digital age, your websites online visibility is crucial to your business’s success. In order to rank in search results, you need to implement SEO strategies in your businesses marketing plan. For those that don’t know, SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and is the process of using different tools and tactics to boost your websites rank in search engine results. SEO and SEO strategies are not “hard” to implement, and are actually really easy to tackle when building websites through a content management system like WordPress (our preferred website builder.) With a site built through Wix, it is nearly impossible to implement any SEO strategies killing your websites SEO. They don’t offer the option to download an SEO boosting plug-in, and instead leave you to use the on-page SEO that they offer. Yes, their on-page SEO can cover the very basics, but it won’t do you any favors. Additionally, their link structure is served through javascript and is essentially unreadable by search engines. 

To boost your websites SEO and rank in search engine results, you’ll need to build quality links and create/distribute SEO rich content. Essentially, link building is the process of getting other quality websites to link back to your website. This is important not only because it directs traffic to your website you might not get otherwise, but it helps establish and build your sites “authority” – a factor that Google pays attention to when ranking websites. No matter how much or often Googles top-secret algorithm changes, quality backlinks remain one of the biggest factors in determining what websites rank for what keywords. So, how does this tie into Wix? Websites built through Wix will always includes a # in their URL meaning that Wix’s link structure is served through javascript which, like we said, is essentially unreadable by search engines. Even worse? If someone has javascript disabled in their browser, they will never even have the chance to stumble across your website, let alone seek it out. What does this mean? Backlinking to your Wix created website is pointless, and most definitely isn’t serving you, or your SEO efforts. 

Additionally, you will want to create SEO “friendly,” or “rich” content to help boost your websites rankings. SEO Friendly Content or SEO Based Content is content that you create and distribute with the purpose of attracting search engine traffic. It is called “SEO” content because the content should be based on/around keywords you are trying to rank for. Heads up – before diving into content creation, you will have wanted to identify your keywords already so you’re not wasting time creating/promoting content that isn’t going to help you rank in the long run. So, how does this also tie into Wix and why we hate it? If you dive really deep into Wixs page structure, you would find that all pages are “canonical,” or, simply put, they are just tabs of the homepage meaning they could never rank on their own. And, if you remember correctly, Wix only offers the most basic on-page SEO meaning any seo strategies you implement on your site won’t work, and your website wont be ranking high, if it ranks at all. 

We could go deeper, but we’ll leave it at this – Wix essentially kills any chance of implementing any kind of SEO, therefore killing any chance you have at ranking in search results. 

Instead of going on all day about why Wix is possibly the worst choice for building a website, we’ll discuss what site you SHOULD use, and why. 

Our #1 recommendation for website newbies and veterans alike is WordPress. WordPress is by far the best and most accommodating content management system, or, website builder. We will point out that WordPress isn’t exactly… “beginner friendly” BUT your investment will be worth it because a high-ranking, well functioning website will only make you more money in the long run.  If you want to learn more about how valuable a well-ranking website is to your business, check out this breakdown here.

Launched all the way back in 2003, WordPress is now used by more than 74 million websites across the globe. Aside from the sheer number of people that use it, WordPress is (in our opinion) the number one Content Management System available on the web for a multitude of reasons. Some of these reasons include… 

 

  • They are extremely flexible and customizable  

No matter what you’re using WordPress for, whether it be a website, a blog, an e-commerce site, etc. their offerings are extensive enough that they can meet virtually any need through their extensions and other features. 

 

  • They are extremely search engine friendly 

Search engines prefer sites that are built via WordPress because their structure is so easy to crawl compared to other site builders. 

 

  • Unprecedented support 

You get the sense that WordPress really cares about its users. They take their site safety extremely seriously, and the extensive WordPress community can troubleshoot just about any problem you have. Check out their WordPress Forums to get an idea of how helpful this community is, or troubleshoot your own site problem. 

 

  • Extremely mobile-friendly 

With more than 5 billion people now using mobile devices, website being mobile-friendly is more important than ever. It sounds like Wix has resolved their previous problem of not being mobile-friendly, but WordPress never had the problem to begin with. 

 

  • Powerful integrations and e-commerce solutions 

WordPress integrates with some of the most powerful platforms on the internet. Their extensive list of plug-ins and extensions can solve virtually any problem you may have. 

 

  • It is the best platform for SEO 

Editable permalinks, automated metadata plug-ins, super fast site speed, and so much more. Trust us on this one – WordPress is the best platform for SEO. Hands down. 

 

  • It just keeps getting better 

Because WordPress is so widely used, you can guarantee they are employing only the best developers in the biz. Better yet? They are open source meaning any developer can enhance the user experience so WordPress can continue to be the best CMS available.

If you are interested in learning more about why WordPress is your best option for SEO purposes, or more about SEO in general, contact us here. 

 

2018-02-22

Like I mention in the video, some people may wonder why I would suggesting or mentioning another hosting platform when we offer hosting ourselves. Well, sometimes people like to do their own thing and if you are going to, why not help you save a little money while you are at it.

I really hope this video helps some of you out there save some money. If you have any questions, please ask by commenting below in the chat area.

Also, below are the links and coupons I promised in the video.

Hostgator Coupons: