Customer Reviews
Highly overrated - By: Jane Lloyd, 27 Nov 2008 
Announced & marketed as a breakthroughin terms of explaining Google Analytics it delivers a lot of static knowledge. Most of it you can read up logging onto Googles own websites, for example Google Analytics Conversion University. It is writtenin a cumbersome & dry style & obviously aimed at people who are already "in the know" but it fails to address marketers & business owners with less specific knowledge.
If you really want to understand how Google Analytics works & how it can be utilised for your own business purposes, I would recommend
Web Analytics An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik.
Detailed and Relevant - By: Andy Gardiner, 17 Jul 2008 
If you are workingin online marketing & not taking web analytics seriously then it's time to do so. Brian's book is a good way to get started with one of the most popular, & cost effective (it's free), web analytics solutions around.
The book reflects Brian's extensive knowledge of the Google Analytics package & provides clear & practical techniques for using the product. It is useful either as self study material or as part of a more formal training course & something I would certainly recommend to delegates attending our own Google Analytics classes.
Highly Recommended - By: David Cross, 18 May 2008 I've been running Google Analytics on a number of web sites since it was first releasedin 2005. I've got a lot of good information out of it, but I've always suspected that I'm not using it to its full potential. Having read this book I now have a much better idea of what I'm missing and, more importantly, how I can put that right.
Brian Clifton has written a really useful guide to getting the most benefit out of Google's free web analytics system. He is, of course, well-placed to do that as he leads the Google Analytics team for Europe, the Middle East & Africa.
Part one is a good overview of web analytics is. Chapter one explains what web analytics is & what you can get out of it. Chapter two goes into more detail about the method that people use to analyse their web site traffic & chapter three introduces Google Analytics & explains where it fits into the web analytics landscape.
Part two gives an introduction to using Google Analytics. Chapter four looks at the interface to Google Analytics. This chapter gives the reader a good free for the interactivity of the Google Analytics interface. It's this interactivity that makes Google Analytics far easier to use than many of its competitors. Chapter five looksin more depth at ten of the reports that the system generates. By the end of this chapter I was already learning new little tips about the system.
Part three is about implementing Google Analytics on your web site. chapter six shows you how to tag your web pages so they are includedin your reports. This is about as far as my Google Analytics knowledge goes. So chapter seven introduces ways to customise the Google Javascript codein order to have more control over what data is recorded, it was all new (and very interesting). For example, the chapter has techniques for measuring page load time & tracking outgoing links. Chapter eight is all about Google Analytics best practices & is full of the kinds of tips that only an expertin using the tool would be able to share with you. Having read this chapter I configured up some of my sites to track search queries & set up more goals on my sites. Chapter nine is called "Google Analytics Hacks" & is a really useful cookbook of tips & techniques for getting even more out of Google Analytics. Top of my list of things to implement from this chapter is to add tracking to all of my error pages.
The sections we've discussed so far have all been about generating as much useful data about your web site traffic as possible. But, of course, huge piles of data don't do you any good at all unless you can make some sense of the data & then act on your findings. This is what part four is about. Chapter ten offers some useful hints on how to make sense of all of the data you have collected. Clifton looks at a web site from a number of points of view (sales, marketing, web content creator & webmaster) & for each of them suggests a number of key performance indicators that will be of interest to them. He then shows how to construct these KPIs out of the data that Google Analytics has captured. Chapter eleven moves on to the next stage & looks a number of real-world examples where data from Google Analytics can be used to identify poor performance from areas of a web site & suggests ways to improve matters.
I'm no web analytics expert and, to be honest, some of the stuffin part four made my eyes glaze over a little. But my company doesn't rely on its web site for income so I've never had to worry about the number of visitors I get or how long they spend on the site. Web analytics has really just been a hobby for me. If I wasin a company where those kinds of things were important, then I feel confident that this book would be the right one to turn toin order to learn more. This book certainly goes into more depth when talking about both the technical side of Google Analytics & how to interpret the data than any other book I've read on the subject.
This book has taught me a lot of new & interesting things about Google Analytics & I feel sure that I'll be going back to itin the future when I need to know more. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to get the most out of their Google Analytics installation.
A book providing instant ROI - By: Rogiers Vladimir, 29 Apr 2008 It only took me three evenings to read this book. This book is catchy, it has coherency & is very well written. It contains numerous tips & has a lot of clarifying images.
Don't expect the full story about web analytics & how to interpret figures & metrics provided by Google Analytics. And I guess this wasn't the true purpose of the book. Web Analytics is quite difficult. It can't be explained on paper.
But you can surely expect an excellent in-depth overview of Google Analytics & how to properly collect & find actionable datain the generated reports.
After a first reading, this book remains highly valuable. I'm sure I will use it a lot as a reference book (with a handy index). Therefore, I suggest a hard cover for the next issue. A special edition for the fans?
If you're interestedin the measurement side of online marketing, this book is highly advised. I've you like to learn more, if not everything about the Web Analytics power tool of Google, this book is a must read. You will not regret it.
It is a recipe for a growing enthusiasm for Google Analytics & Web Analytics. Brian Clifton gives you a long enduring ROI with his book. Five thumbs up for that!
