Poynter has a handy eight-step guide for anyone wanting to test out Newsbeat, a recently launched real-time analytics tool specifically for news sites.
It comes with a hefty monthly price tag but there is a free trial on offer.
One of the advantages of Newsbeat, over free tools such as Google Analytics, is the ability to customise it for various members of the team, as Poynter’s post explains:
For example, managing editors can use it to see analytics for an entire site, section editors can personalise it to see analytics for the sections they edit, and reporters can use it to see analytics for their own stories. You can navigate through the tool to see smaller or bigger pictures of what’s going on within the site.
It also sends alerts when something unusual happens.
Newsbeat by default will send email alerts when traffic spikes above average, a page goes down or something else out of the ordinary happens.
But you can also set-up customized email or SMS (i.e. text) alerts that let you know whether people are reading or commenting on an article more than usual, or if a page is having problems loading.