We've used www.getclicky.com for simple visitor tracking. It's free for small accounts and rather inexpensive if you have many. They have a great api and we pull data into our own apps.
Might wanna check it out.
We started using it a few months ago as well.
Our traffic was skyrocketing and we wanted to quickly capitalize on incoming traffic....adding additional content to increase PPV, adding specific offers to match the content, etc. And GA isn't real time...it ended up being anywhere between 4 to 12 hours behind.
GetClicky is great as a real time analytics package...basic data, but definitely helpful to stay on top of traffic.
The Spy is pretty cool too. Real time live stats on the users on your site right now.
I've got about a dozen sites in getclicky and while the reporting isn't nearly as robust as Google Analytics, it has a few things going for it.
First, it ain't google. Second, it gives a much clearer view of where the action is at a glance and real-time like agerhart pointed out.
I like the "it's not G" angle. According to their chart they kick Piwik (http://th3core.com/talk/traffic/piwik-tracking/)'s butt on a number of features.
If you use GetClicky with WordPrees and install the plugin "Clicky for WordPress" clicky will track names of commenters. So instead of an IP or ISP hostname you will se the actual name of the visitor.
Wow cool. That means you should be able to do the same for purchases on a ecom site.
>That means you should be able to do the same for purchases on a ecom site.
My God. Talk about personalized marketing. LOVE that!
On high traffic blog with lots of commenters, the data is awesome. Once the comment, they're tagged and Clicky will be able to follow their every move. Nice feature.