Quality product, delivers on promise
We use it to identify digital content performance, story trends and conversion tracking. We also use it to share engagement metrics with …
Chartbeat
Chartbeat
Overview
What is Chartbeat?
Chartbeat delivers real-time analytics, insights, and transformative tools for content teams around the world, to help improve audience engagement, inform editorial decisions, and increase loyalty.
Recent Reviews
Great for real time alerts and trends
We are an O&O (owned-and-operated) collection of several online brands with separate content staff and goals for each pub. It's crucial …
Chartbeat Review
We are a news organization and tracking the daily, weekly, and monthly performance of our content online is essential to our business. We …
A must have platform for the digital newsroom
Chartbeat enables the newsroom to be data-driven, from curating the homepage and recirculating articles to social media, to making key …
I love Chartbeat!
I use it to track visitors to our website, and learn what they are reading, how much time they are spending on the site, where they are …
Best in class real-time data!
We are a media company. Publishers use Chartbeat primarily to understand how their journalism is performing in real time. A number of …
Chartbeat continues to deliver
Used to track performance of our articles within sections of our digital platforms. Helps us clarify what specific headlines work to draw …
Would definitely recommend Chartbeat - 100%
We use Chartbeat on a regular basis every day to monitor the analytics of our website, both in realtime and reflecting on the past …
Great to determine quality of stories
We use it companywide for analytics to see what is and what isn't working to see where we need to focus our website content. It helps …
Using Chartbeat for actionable editorial insights
We use Chartbeat to select the stories we'll repromote, to inform pitches for SEO articles, to review the performance of authors, to …
Useful real-time analysis to optimise performance and develop employees
9 out of 10
March 04, 2024
We use Chartbeat across the editorial departments in our organisation to track performance of pages on our website in Real-Time, along …
Big fan of Chartbeat
We use Chartbeat to monitor live (fluid) recurrents to our website, other sister publications, and specific sections of our website. …
A useful tool in the newsroom
I use it for analytics. It's a valuable tool for tracking how well our audience is responding to a story, how well a headline has …
Chartbeat: what we needed to improve our website
Thanks to this software we have considerably improved the traffic on our website, improving the content we publish, attracting more …
Chartbeat provides easy-to-use, real-time data
I currently use Chartbeat to monitor which fundraisers people are currently viewing. Chartbeat allows us to stay on top of the fundraisers …
How Chartbeat Differs From Its Competitors
Real-Time Data
It's helpful to understand the realtime flow if we need to to update our homepage to offer the trending content in different ways, prompting push alerts on trending content or understanding spike referrals if they come out of the blue.
Content Optimization
We have used the testing to improve headlines as well as prompted content decisions.
Engagement Metrics
It is in process- we are using the Chartbeat metrics in reporter meetings and story planning. I don't know if any single metric has influenced decisions - we often use it as backup for strategy as well.
Real-Time Data
Yes, as specified earlier. Real time data may help indicate when there is an issue with one of sites - either on the tech side or with our ad stack.
Content Optimization
We use mostly to monitor - both tech issues and trends
Engagement Metrics
Our content hasn't changed much but we do track for reader trends
Real-Time Data
This enables us to make realtime decisions on optimizing stories when they are still hot in the eyes of the public. This is key for breaking and trending topics.
Content Optimization
We use Chartbeat to look at what stories perform best and what channels the work best in. So we are able to create stories target for those channels and then monitor whether we are successful in these efforts.
Engagement Metrics
The reader engagement metrics have enabled us to understand which stories do a better job of driving engagement. We also get ideas for related stories to link to from our stories.
Real-Time Data
Enables us to make critical decisions for effective curation of the homepage
Content Optimization
Google Discover data in real time allow us to follow the trends on the platform and act accordingly
Engagement Metrics
By knowing the type of content our loyal users read, the newsroom can adjust the content strategy and create the content that they are most interested in.
Content Optimization
When I see a story that isn't performing well, I can test different aspects of it, such as headline, position on page, etc.
Engagement Metrics
It hasn't changed our content per se, but more the approach to the content and trying new story formats, etc.
Real-Time Data
it has helped us to easily identify what is working and to publish more content like the piece in question or enhance what has already been published. Chartbeat also lets us know what should stay on the page longer and when something might be able to be moved lower or off the page.
Content Optimization
We have. The additional tools are greatly appreciated. The A/B headline testing tool is a bit more complicated to use properly and understand but more advanced teams have found it helpful.
Engagement Metrics
Definitely. As we try to move teams away from vanity metrics to focus on engagement, we appreciate all of these more qualitative metrics that Chartbeat provides. For us, engaged time is particularly helpful in terms of looking at performance.
Real-Time Data
Hugely. This was our main reason for linking up with Chartbeat. We cover a live news sporting environment, so any lag in our data reporting is costing us time and affecting our position in a competitive market. Our editorial team has to be able to make decisions in an instant, not wait for the …
Content Optimization
The main thing we have been able to do is find ways to get people to engage for longer with our longer content. We are a specialist publication which often focuses on depth, so we spend a lot of time working out how we can make people stay on articles that could be up to or over 1500 to 2000 …
Engagement Metrics
We want to make sure that we are catering to many times of fan, not just the super hardcore who form a large part of our most engaged audience. So the breakdown of reader loyalty is important because it quickly enables us to see if we are bringing in enough new users by making sure our content is …
Real-Time Data
It helps us figure out what stories are bringing readers to our site and what stories we should avoid going forward. We are also able to keep track of which stories work better as found in organic searches and which work better as stories that are passed around through social media.
Content Optimization
It allows us to see what evergreen stories people want to see for weekend posting, while also showing us which stories our DMA want to see during the week. It also allows us to make sure we are prioritizing page views while keeping our commitment to keep our stories relevant to our local community.
Engagement Metrics
Concurrents have helped us not only with what stories do well, but also what times readers will read our stories or watch our videos. Quality clicks do the same thing, and reader loyalty will allow us to figure out which stories to focus on for the broadcast as opposed to the website.
Real-Time Data
Yes, especially now that we're in the middle of migrating to Google Analytics 4, which is still our official source of data for reporting. We use Chartbeat for day-to-day newsroom operations and taking action on the fly. For one, our social media managers consult Chartbeat to select stories they …
Content Optimization
We have used the Headline Testing feature to encourage people on our homepage to read the top stories at the moment. Also, our SEO team uses Chartbeat when it formulates search-optimized article pitches for our editors every day. Lastly, we use Spike Alerts to identify our "drop everything and …
Engagement Metrics
Chartbeat’s reader engagement metrics have helped us confirm our theories about our audiences' behavior. We use them in content planning during weekly editorial pitch meetings. We also look to these metrics to inform our inchoate first-party data strategy, particularly when we try to check for …
Real-Time Data
It ensures we can react quickly to any stories which are attracting particular interest, and we can also look at individual articles and pages to see if there is a point where people are leaving the page, and which links they are clicking on, to ensure we are maximising every visit.
Content Optimization
The Heads-Up Display and testing tools provide vital insights into what our readers are interested in and enable those that use it to get better at choosing the right content and writing the right headlines to optimise performance. You can now look further back through headline test results than …
Engagement Metrics
We look at the pages read by loyal users to help judge the content we should particularly focus on.
Real-Time Data
It is a hugely beneficial tool as we can, basically, see what works and what doesn't, as well as having an idea as to which content needs more love ie social pushes etc
Content Optimization
We can give content that is performing fairly well some additional pushes, and content that fails to reach a certain readership level is noted and it is unlikely to be repeated - at least not in the same format
Engagement Metrics
Reader loyalty is of the utmost importance so being able to see dwell time is great. It is a big asset to have engagement time as well as page views
Real-Time Data
Recent coverage of a breaking news story that was shared on a live blog meant Chartbeat was an invaluable tool. By being able to see the story ranking live on our home page, we could see and make the most of engagement spikes and respond to sudden surges of interest in real time
Content Optimization
My newsdesk uses the above tools, I just use it to monitor engagement in real time.
Engagement Metrics
It has a big influence. News output is always engineered to suit the current interest in a topic. If interest wanes, we can divert resources elsewhere, but if interest surges we know we need to channel our efforts into that particular story.
Real-Time Data
It analysis the content of the page, through the analysis of historical data or in real-time.
Content Optimization
It allows integration with important software such as WordPress, Slack, and Brightcove.
Engagement Metrics
Undoubtedly we have increased our profits, by having more web traffic on our website.
Real-Time Data
Having access to real-time audience data with zero lag is an essential feature and one of the highlights of Chartbeat. With this component, I am able to adjust articles in real-time (ex: adding imagery, breaking apart blocky text paragraphs, or editing SEO headlines) to further bump up my story on …
Content Optimization
My web content performance has significantly risen since using Chartbeat, but the key is you have to USE it and use it often. If you have no intention of looking at this daily, then try something else. The benefits are in real-time engagement metrics showing you exactly where you need to tailor a …
Engagement Metrics
The reader engagement metrics (including reader loyalty and engaged time) are something I look at daily and in historical reports. If I see a loyal reader is only spending 30 seconds on a story that took a lot of reporting and typically takes 7 minutes to read, then I know there is some adjustment …
Real-Time Data
It's the best. You are able to see what users are reading to the second. It helps move stories around on your site to make sure the story doing well gets more prominence.
Content Optimization
The engagement metric helps us change the layout of stories on our site to make sure the ones getting read and the ones that could do a lot better get more prominence
Engagement Metrics
Yes, mobile-first. Chartbeat showed us that more than 80% of our readers are on a mobile
Real-Time Data
The real-time data allows us to manage our site on the fly, giving more users stories of interest as they're developing. It's key to stay on top of things in the breaking news cycle that we live in.
Content Optimization
As mentioned previously, the HUD allows us to A/B test headlines, a huge asset to my team. We often debate which headline will work best, and Chartbeat gives us the answer in 5-10 minutes, a great tool to have at your disposal.
Engagement Metrics
We've found that robust articles, full of links, graphs, charts, videos, and more do the best. Chartbeat has shown us that, thus allowing me to task my team with more in-depth coverage.
Real-Time Data
We get to up our monthly listener rate because I can see what posts our listeners interact with the most and act accordingly which has made our listeners feel heard and valued and important to the content curating process.
Content Optimization
I use the engagement metrics the most considering I use it mostly for social media seeing as we're a podcast primarily. So that way I can gauge whether followers prefer certain pictures over others or how comments change based on the content and what that means for our curation process.
Engagement Metrics
This has less-so been a make or break metric for us because we're primarily a podcast so we used Chartbeat mostly for social media posts but when we do use reader engagement metrics its' helpful to know how long readers stay on our page and if we have recurring readership because it's a good gauge …
Real-Time Data
It's fantastic to know what our readers are interacting with at a certain time, or what story is getting traction to open avenues to further story digging. It also allows us to step up promotion or post it more to get more traffic.
Content Optimization
I haven't ventured too much into using it for analyzing engagement, but I am able to easily use the real-time function to see what is being interacted with the most at a certain point.
Engagement Metrics
Concurrents definitely is something we look at to help organize the homepage and learn more about what is being selected by readers. It also shows us what old content may be resurfacing, signaling to us what else we can post online to fit the search.
Real-Time Data
We have benefitted from Chartbeat in the sense that we could take informed decisions and customise our approach towards content that users might want to engage more with.
Content Optimization
As I have mentioned earlier, we have used the results of the Chartbeat metrics to decide what kind of content does well on our website and that has helped us produce such kinds of contents.
Real-Time Data
It helps us determine what types of stories we should pursue in the future.
Content Optimization
When something does well via Chartbeat, we can use that information to assign stories.
Engagement Metrics
When something does well via Chartbeat, we can use that information to assign stories. Or, we can decide if we follow up on a story.
Real-Time Data
We're able to adjust story placement on the site based off user popularity. We also sometimes include certain stories in newsletters or in push alerts based off of seeing the real-time success in Chartbeat.
Engagement Metrics
We have adjusted the way we lay out a story page and include internal links based off data we've seen in Chartbeat.
Real-Time Data
Being able to see when website visitors interact with content in the moment is helpful because I can use that data to then refresh the content when it is performing badly, or provide supplementary content when it is doing well. This means that the benefits of one good article can often lead to …
Content Optimization
I have used the engagement metrics to refresh headlines when they were not performing as expected, and used Chartbeat to compare and contrast that performance with other, similar content. Using this, content that might not have performed well has been edited and changed rapidly, and performed …
Engagement Metrics
Using Chartbeat’s reader engagement metrics has influence the content we have published because we are able to target it to audiences that we already know read the content, thereby increasing the chance of its success. It has also helped develop the format of content in order to increase engaged …
Real-Time Data
This is such a critical feature because it has helped in so many ways. First, we can see what's working at any given moment and therefore have a sense of what's trending. Secondly, we can see what to put money behind. If something is taking off on social, we can boost it and capture new audience, …
Content Optimization
Yes, we've used the engagement metrics to test our content and improve performance by tweaking words in headlines—A/B testing headlines, promoting stories that are doing well, and even promoting content on other platforms, especially new content when we see it do well on a particular platform. We …
Engagement Metrics
Chartbeat’s reader engagement metrics has influenced the type of content we publish by giving us data insights that we can use to make informed decisions on what to create next. A great example of this is content we've created around small town travel. We saw our first small town story take off on …
Real-Time Data
Allows us to find out which stories can be shared across multiple sites and how likely they are to have good page views.
Content Optimization
Allows us to find out which stories can be republished on different sites if it has a wider appeal outside one area.
Engagement Metrics
It helps us design how a page can be laid out to help find the style that helps keep users on our pages.
Real-Time Data
We are able to launch real-time social campaigns that coincide with rising stories.
Content Optimization
It helps determine what stories should go out as push notifications or at the top of the homepage with prominent placement.
Engagement Metrics
It informs us what our audience is interested in and willing to click on. So yes, in the initial ideation process Chartbeat data comes into play.
Awards
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Popular Features
- Reporting in real-time (10)8.989%
- Pageview Tracking (10)8.585%
- Referral Source Tracking (10)8.383%
- Device and Browser Reporting (10)7.777%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Verified User
Manager in Product Management
Media Production Company, 51-200 employees
Verified User
Manager in Sales
Entertainment Company, 51-200 employees
Pricing
N/A
Unavailable
What is Chartbeat?
Chartbeat delivers real-time analytics, insights, and transformative tools for content teams around the world, to help improve audience engagement, inform editorial decisions, and increase loyalty.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
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Features
Web Analytics
Web Analytic features such as SEO tracking, user engagement tracking, pageview tracking, and behavior analysis.
7.6
Avg 7.7
- 6.4Lead Conversion Tracking(5) Ratings
This tool allows you to follow a user's path through your website until they complete a certain action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, enabling you to understand what leads to conversions.
- 8.5Bounce Rate Measurement(6) Ratings
This feature measures the number of users who visit only one page on your website before leaving, helping to identify issues with content quality or website design.
- 7.7Device and Browser Reporting(10) Ratings
This enables an overview of the type of devices or browsers users are using to access your website, helping in improving website design, usability, and visibility.
- 8.5Pageview Tracking(10) Ratings
A feature that records and provides data on a specific page's popularity and the number of times it has been viewed by users.
- 5.8Event Tracking(6) Ratings
This enables the tracking of specific actions or 'events' on your website, such as button clicks, form submissions, and engagement with other interactive elements.
- 8.9Reporting in real-time(10) Ratings
This feature provides immediate data and analysis about web traffic and user behavior, facilitating real-time decision making.
- 8.3Referral Source Tracking(10) Ratings
This feature tracks the original source of your web traffic, informing you where your users are coming to your site from whether it be through other websites, social media, etc.
- 6.8Customizable Dashboards(8) Ratings
This feature allows users to personalize their view of data and reports to focus on specific metrics that best fit their business needs.
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Chartbeat?
Chartbeat, a content intelligence platform for publishers, empowers media companies to build loyal audiences with real-time and historical editorial analytics across desktop, social, and mobile platforms. Chartbeat helps digital publishing organizations understand what, within their content, is keeping people engaged. Partnering with over 60,000 media brands across 70+ countries, Chartbeat’s real-time and historical dashboards, in-depth headline testing and in-page optimization tools, and reporting help media organizations understand, measure, and build business value from the attention earned by their written and video content.
Chartbeat Features
- Supported: Real-time and historical analytics dashboards
- Supported: Headline Testing
- Supported: Image Testing
- Supported: Reporting Tools
- Supported: Raw Data Pipeline
- Supported: Conversions Dashboard
- Supported: Recommendation Engine
Chartbeat Screenshots
Chartbeat Competitors
Chartbeat Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Countries | All |
Frequently Asked Questions
Chartbeat delivers real-time analytics, insights, and transformative tools for content teams around the world, to help improve audience engagement, inform editorial decisions, and increase loyalty.
Reviewers rate Reporting in real-time highest, with a score of 8.9.
The most common users of Chartbeat are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(111)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 13, 2024
Quality product, delivers on promise
Verified User
Manager in Product Management
Media Production Company, 51-200 employees
We use it to identify digital content performance, story trends and conversion tracking. We also use it to share engagement metrics with journalists and highlight potential action items for the newsroom. Headsup display assists our digital team with realtime curation of our homepage and the API helps us populate a trending story widget on our site.
- performance tracking of trending stories
- highlighting audience segments (subscriber, guest)
- highlighting social traffic - what social referrals are important
- track conversions and conversion path
- Monthly reports -can we get a dashboard so we can better manage these?
- more than 12 months of data would be nice - like 24 months is probably sufficient
- user path is a bit vague based on the types of reporting available
Is very helpful for sites with a decent amount of content. It's less useful for our smaller publication. I also don't know if I could enable it on our app - I've never asked about that. We don't have good visibility for user journey between our multiple digital channels. Chartbeat's competitor Marfeel touts some SEO features that would be nice to have - things like keyword suggestions or keyword trends could help the newsroom develop content suited to those suggestions. I don't see our newsroom doing that however. We would be better served by doing more content optimization of what we currently write about and make use of the headline tester more. The problem is that reporters don't have time to use these tools and we only have two digital team members who would potentially use it at this time.
86.25%
8.6
- Traffic Reporting
- 100%10.0
- Lead Conversion Tracking
- 70%7.0
- Behavior Analysis
- 80%8.0
- Device and Browser Reporting
- 80%8.0
- Pageview Tracking
- 100%10.0
- Event Tracking
- 60%6.0
- Reporting in real-time
- 100%10.0
- Referral Source Tracking
- 100%10.0
- We don't have any hard numbers on Chartbeat affecting sales or subscriptions.
- We share daily Chartbeat numbers in our morning newsroom meetings to understand what stories might need a follow on
It's helpful to understand the realtime flow if we need to to update our homepage to offer the trending content in different ways, prompting push alerts on trending content or understanding spike referrals if they come out of the blue.
Site is pretty intuitive. I have not had to search for much of anything in Chartbeat and am able to find what I need quickly.
We have used the testing to improve headlines as well as prompted content decisions.
It is in process- we are using the Chartbeat metrics in reporter meetings and story planning. I don't know if any single metric has influenced decisions - we often use it as backup for strategy as well.
Much easier to use and understand than GA4. We tested Marfeel, but felt Chartbeat was so good there was no reason to change.
I still feel like our audit is still based on GA4 so we do have to still pay attention to that.
I still feel like our audit is still based on GA4 so we do have to still pay attention to that.
20
Journalists, web developers, digital strategists
2
Web developer, Product manager
- monitoring user engagement
- noting trending content
- conversion optimization
- the api to populate trending articles on our site
The only reason we would discontinue use is if we were forced to cut technology costs.
March 06, 2024
Chartbeat continues to deliver
Verified User
Manager in Other
Broadcast Media Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Used to track performance of our articles within sections of our digital platforms. Helps us clarify what specific headlines work to draw readers in, and in general, Chartbeat is an incredibly useful tool. The entire organization is using Chartbeat and it provides my colleagues with equally useful data to help guide the decision-making process that takes place every day.
- Instant data/feedback for how stories are performing.
- Instant data/feedback for how headlines are performing.
- Helps us decide which stories work depending on time of day/what regions of the world are awake.
- Deeper dive on what regions of countries are reading a story.
- The historical tool doesn't work as quickly as I would like it to.
- At times, can seem not particularly user-friendly.
Headlines is the best example: If the story is being covered by most/all of our competitors, it is absolutely crucial to get the headline right. The efficient ways that Chartbeat works means that testing different headlines will pay instant dividends with Chartbeat's data indicating what is resonating (or not) with the audience.
Across the board, I find Chartbeat incredibly useful and helpful.
Editorial
Editorial, marketing etc. People who are interested in creating and curating content.
- Editorial
- Marketing
- Creative
- Usage of content in specific regions
- Timing of release of content
- Targeting regions with specific content
- Different platforms such as vertical video
Essential to what myself and colleagues across the company need for our business needs.
- Different sections
- Regional breakdown for usage
- Numbers per day, week etc.
- Spikes in popularity
- N/A
Yes, but I don't use it
March 06, 2024
Would definitely recommend Chartbeat - 100%
Verified User
Team Lead in Product Management
Media Production Company, 11-50 employees
We use Chartbeat on a regular basis every day to monitor the analytics of our website, both in realtime and reflecting on the past performance of content using the historical dashboard. It's a crucial tool for our editorial team, and much more user-friendly (and well-presented) than Google Analytics. Our entire team is familiar with the product and encouraged to use it regularly, and we have daily quickfire reporting sessions every morning which are all carried out using data from Chartbeat.
- Realtime data is updated much faster than other tools
- All of the data in Chartbeat is presented clearly and very easy to understand
- It's very easy to navigate around. You don't have to be a master of the invisible corridors to know where to find things!
- Very easy to switch between live data and historical data
- Good breakdown of different user types, ranging from loyal to casual
- Traffic source data is well presented on the realtime dashboard
- Traffic source data is less granular on the historical dashboard than it is in realtime
- It can be hard to do a deeper report over a period of time, it tends to focus on top articles for any date range
- You can't sort the live data page, if for example you wanted to do a quick check of the total page views for articles so far that day. You have to wait for the following day to run checks like that as a historical report
The main point of benefit is the realtime data. This is vital to our team as we are publishing a lot of content per day, so we have a busy homepage to manage and it's important to know which content is performing well. We also like to get an understanding as quickly as possible - which Chartbeat offers - of where traffic is coming from. Often we will see an example where a page is getting high traffic from Google, for example, and we know that might not need to be placed so prominently on the homepage because the traffic is arriving to us externally anyway. Without that depth of understanding what is performing best and why - updated immediately, unlike in Google Analytics now - our homepage would not be as well optimised for users coming to us direct.
64%
6.4
- Traffic Reporting
- 100%10.0
- Lead Conversion Tracking
- N/AN/A
- Behavior Analysis
- N/AN/A
- Bounce Rate Measurement
- 80%8.0
- Device and Browser Reporting
- 100%10.0
- Pageview Tracking
- 100%10.0
- Event Tracking
- N/AN/A
- Reporting in real-time
- 100%10.0
- Referral Source Tracking
- 100%10.0
- Customizable Dashboards
- 60%6.0
- It has given us a much better understanding of how to maximise search traffic. We put a big effort into improving our SEO performance in late 2023 and thanks to the clear way Chartbeat reports traffic sources (inc colour-coded graphs) we were able to quickly measure the 8-10% jump we made in search traffic. This would have been much more difficult to track so quickly using other tools
- Chartbeat's excellent, and clear reporting of mobile vs desktop traffic, both in realtime and historical dashboards, has helped us focus any website design projects on the devices our audience are most likely to be using
- We've increased our focus on 'engaged minutes' which is a favourite metric in Chartbeat. This has led us to regularly reformatting content so our longer articles are easier to digest. In some cases we've been able to double the average engaged time on article pages.
Hugely. This was our main reason for linking up with Chartbeat. We cover a live news sporting environment, so any lag in our data reporting is costing us time and affecting our position in a competitive market. Our editorial team has to be able to make decisions in an instant, not wait for the data to catch up so we can find out what's going on on our own website.
It's just so user-friendly. It's easy to navigate, and the data is very well presented. It's not dumbed-down, but its presentation is clearly put together with the idea that everyone should be able to understand it, not just developers who know their way around a complicated back end of any system. It also does a very good job of putting the important metrics front-and-centre, you don't have to go looking around too hard or know specific inputs and requests to find what you're looking for.
The main thing we have been able to do is find ways to get people to engage for longer with our longer content. We are a specialist publication which often focuses on depth, so we spend a lot of time working out how we can make people stay on articles that could be up to or over 1500 to 2000 words. We've been able to experiment with formats, and different ways of keeping the content long but breaking it up so it's easier to digest, and we can clearly see on a daily basis that this has made a noticeable difference.
We want to make sure that we are catering to many times of fan, not just the super hardcore who form a large part of our most engaged audience. So the breakdown of reader loyalty is important because it quickly enables us to see if we are bringing in enough new users by making sure our content is expert but still accessible. Device type has been very handy for making sure our content is well optimised for mobile experience. Recirculation is particularly interesting - on our busiest days we want to make sure this is as high as possible, because we are publishing a lot of content, but if our recirculation is low, then we know we're not doing a good enough job of surfacing the depth of our offering to our audience.
Google Analytics has gradually become much more difficult to use, and much slower in its realtime reporting. It was the changes that came in with Google Analytics 4 that gave us the final push to work with Chartbeat - a product some of us were already familiar with from previous jobs. Things are just much harder to find in GA, and when time is always tight you can't afford to spend a long time looking for particular data - it should be quick and easy to locate.
Google Analytics, Google Drive, Ghost
10
This is our website editorial team, who create and manage our web content to allow us to provide near-round the clock coverage of the sport we are dedicated to. They are using the product both for its realtime data to help them make up to the minute decisions, and to reflect daily on the performance of content once the historical dashboard updates.
1
We only really have one person who liaises with Chartbeat from our side, and that person (me) also fields any queries or requests for help from less experienced users of the product that we have inside our business. If anything is too complex to work out ourselves, we go back to Chartbeat directly.
- Live analytics reporting
- Daily 24-hour reports that are sent to my team's inboxes
- Traffic source data
- We've been able to adjust the formats of our content to improve the dwell times on our pages.
- We were able to benchmark the improvements we made in SEO much faster than I expected. The data was so clear so quickly that something we thought might take months to make a difference was noticeable in a week or two
- We have a clearer understanding of how search traffic is reaching us, which prevents us from misunderstanding what the most important content on our homepage is for our direct users
- We understand they have an integration of Google Search Console data coming. A user-friendly version of this data would be another big step up
- I hope that they will allow deeper reporting than just the top 50 pages in future. We also like to focus on what isn't working, as well as what is, on our site
At any time of day, someone in our team is using Chartbeat and getting valuable insights from it. It has helped foster a better culture of analytics reporting within our business, and to stop using it now would halt that momentum, I am sure of it. I think people in our team were put off by other tools such as Google Analytics being hard to understand unless you were really familiar with it. Everyone was able to get up to speed with Chartbeat much more easily.
Verified User
Professional in Other
Newspapers Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Chartbeat across the editorial departments in our organisation to track performance of pages on our website in Real-Time, along with the Heads-Up Display to manage the homepage, and the headline and image testing tools. We also use the Historical and Advanced Queries functions to complete more detailed analysis when required.
- Provides easy at-a-glance look at what people are reading right now
- Heads-up Display allows you to make sure the homepage is showing the content people want to read
- Headline testing tool provides fascinating insight into what makes people read a story and improves headline-writing ability
- The 'Historical' tool has limited functionality for breaking down results (e.g. by specific referrer)
- Some of the data available in Real-Time is not easily available to look back on (e.g. Heads-Up Display) to see how a story performed in different positions
- 'Click-through rates' reported in Headline Testing results don't seem to tally with what would be an intuitive definition (clicks divided by views)
It is invaluable for at-a-glance and real-time measurement of performance, and for spotting spikes or trends quickly.
46%
4.6
- Traffic Reporting
- 80%8.0
- Lead Conversion Tracking
- N/AN/A
- Behavior Analysis
- N/AN/A
- Bounce Rate Measurement
- N/AN/A
- Device and Browser Reporting
- 80%8.0
- Pageview Tracking
- 70%7.0
- Event Tracking
- N/AN/A
- Reporting in real-time
- 100%10.0
- Referral Source Tracking
- 70%7.0
- Customizable Dashboards
- 60%6.0
- Helps ensure we are writing the right articles that people want to read
- Helps maximise click-throughs from the homepage
It ensures we can react quickly to any stories which are attracting particular interest, and we can also look at individual articles and pages to see if there is a point where people are leaving the page, and which links they are clicking on, to ensure we are maximising every visit.
The basic Real-Time and Historical displays are very simple to use. The Advanced Queries option takes a bit more getting used to and some of the numbers in the Heads-Up Display needed to be interpreted with caution. Headline Testing is very straightforward. Image Testing is fairly simple, although would benefit from an option to automatically resize images.
The Heads-Up Display and testing tools provide vital insights into what our readers are interested in and enable those that use it to get better at choosing the right content and writing the right headlines to optimise performance. You can now look further back through headline test results than previously, allowing you to look for repeated patterns of winning headlines over time.
We look at the pages read by loyal users to help judge the content we should particularly focus on.
Chartbeat stands out in terms of real-time tracking and information from which to manage homepages, I found this better than Smart Octo's equivalent. However, the ability to quickly explore past data does not go as deep as Google Analytics.
500
Mostly in editorial departments, making decisions about what content to publish on the websites.
1
No-one is dedicated to the task but various people have the necessary skills and knowledge in different areas.
- Making editorial decisions
- Tracking real-time performance
- Managing homepages
- Testing headlines
- Combining headline and images for testing
- Using the API to feed information directly into Google Sheets
- Deeper use of Advanced Queries
- More extensive use of headline testing
It provides lots of useful information in decision making and tracking performance.
November 30, 2018
Chartbeat is the best realtime traffic tracker out there!
Verified User
Employee in Social Media
Media Production Company, 11-50 employees
We use it in the web department, and we use it to track how many people are on our web properties at any given time, and how they got there. We also use it to see spikes in traffic, and get the alerts to see if our servers go down. I send reports frequently to department heads in the organization based on information I get from Chartbeat.
- Real-time analytics
- Server speed/if the server is up
- Traffic sources
- Geo-location of sources
- The source of traffic sources could be a little more clear - where do "direct" links come from?
Very useful when you need to know how many people are on your site and where they're coming from.
- The most positive impact is that it gives us realtime outage emails — faster than our server provider does. So we know within seconds if one of our sites is down. This has proven an invaluable part of Chartbeat
- Another great feature of Chartbeat is the multiple sites dashboard, so I can see traffic to all my sites at once.
We often compare Google Analytics realtime with Chartbeat, but Chartbeat is better because it gives a more clear breakdown of where our traffic is coming from.
Google Analytics, Buffer
3
I'm the web producer and social media manager, and I use it to track who is on our site and from where. Our IT person uses it to track when our site goes down, and then he'll contact our server provider and let them know when our site goes down.
2
Not that many skills required! It's a very simple platform to navigate. We don't have to have a "support" team, just a usage team.
- When our site goes down, ChartBeat will tell us immediately (via email)
- We can tell how many people are on our site(s), and from where
- It acts as a server tool — it tells us when our site goes down
- It also tells us when someone is accessing our site via referral traffic that we might not have seen otherwise
- We could expand and keep track of it more to see who is on our site in real-time
- We could compare it with Google Analytics to see a bigger picture of our sites traffic
It's easy to use, simple to understand, and helps us a TON.
No
- Price
- Product Usability
Usability.
I might check what other features a program like this might have, from server alerts to checking other web trends.