Now if only we could get key sales and marketing folks to read this book and understand how much data is there for them to use

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity Avinash Kaushik

Web Analytics 2.0 is not a sequel to Kaushik’s first book Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.

The latter  was a hard core offering that covered all aspects of the subject.

2.0 is a more general book that covers a wide range of topics related to and around Web Analytics.

The coverage of Social Media and Mobile analytics is sparse and that’s my only gripe. Considering that both topics are quite hot and that Social Media has gained maturity it would have been helpful to have both these covered in depth. That said the book is pretty robust in its coverage of a wide mix of topics. The list of tools mentioned is also quite exhaustive.

Key Takeaways

· Paid Web Analytics providers are better than the free ones if you need advanced reporting. The other reason is that the paid tools integrate well with other allied offerings/tools. (A project that I’m working on validates both these points)

· Data needs to be actionable. No point collecting old data if the business cannot use it

· Keep an eye on the competition using Google Insights For Search(contains search keyword data on google.com only), Google Trends (contains broad web usage data), Compete, Hitwise. Also check Google Ad Planner and Quantacast since both use self reported data. Most analytics tools now allow you to benchmark against specific verticals.

· Use tools like page level/site level surveys to gather user feedback(kampyle, uservoice, opinionlab). The Voice of the Consumer is necessary to fill in the gaps

Now if only we could get key sales and marketing folks to read this book and understand how much data is there for them to use

Tools

Web Analytics: Omniture, WebTrends, CoreMetrics, Google Analytics

Mobile Analytics: Bango Analytics, mobilytics.net, percentmobile.com

Experimentation and Testing: Google Optmizer, Omniture Test and Target, Optimost, Sitespect

Voice of the Customer: 4Q, iPerceptions, ForeseeResults, Ethnio

Competitive Intelligence: Google Insights For Search, Google Trends, Compete, Hitwise, Technorati, Google Ad Planner, Quantacast

Analytics Tags Audit: SiteAudit(ObservePoint)

SEO gaps, Web Application Performance Management, more : Maxamine,  Coradiant

Page level/site level surveys to gather user feedback: Kampyle, Uservoice, Opinionlab

Usability: Ethnio, Usertesting

Analyze Actual Online Experiences: Tealeaf, Clicktale

Information Architecture: OptimalSort, Websort.net

Visual heat maps: Feng-gui.com, Crazyegg

Keyword Analysis: Google Adwords Tool, Wordtracker, KeywordSpy

Onsite Behavior Targeting Platforms: Audience Science, kefta, Netmining, BTBuckets(free)

Paid Search Tools: Marinsoftware, Kenshoo, ClickEquations

If you have Google Analytics tags installed on your website and need to see if the tags have been installed fine you can check using the tool SiteScan at www.SiteScanGA.com. You can sign up to have the tool crawl your site and check for implementation errors. Examples of errors could be pages that don’t have tracking code or pages that have both ga.js and urchin.js code on them (you shouldn’t run both on a single site). This is not a Google-supported or developed tool.

The tool is free for the first 100 pages (I think .. or is it 30 ?)

From the site:

SiteScan checks the following on websites with new tracking code (ga.js):

• Every Page Tagged with New Tracking Code
• Every Page Calling the pageTracker._trackPageview(); Method
• Every Page Declaring a Google Analytics Account
• No Old Tracking Code Found
• Query Parameters Check to Determine if a filter is Required
  

Limitations

SiteScan Does Not Scan or Complete the Following: 

1. Directories with more then 1000 files
2. Pages that are protected by a Robot.txt file (meaning that if your pages are not indexed by Google, they will not be scanned).
3. Pages that are password protected
4. Checkout Pages or any area of your website that requires a certain sequence of events or trigger
5. Non-standard GA Tracking Code (requires to be inserted as issued by Google Analytics)

Goal Conversion is the action you expect a visitor to take during a visit.
The path the visitor takes to reach this goal is called the funnel.

Here’s a step by step guide to how you can set a goal using Google Analytics.
Google Analytics allows you to set 4 goals per profile.
If you have more goals to set, set up a different profile and set the additional goals in that profile. (more…)

Here’s a list of must have books, if you are a Web Marketer.

All books by Subject. Price as on Amazon on Jan 3, 2009.

1. Analytics:

Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics By: Brian Clifton $26.39

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day By: Avinash Kaushik (Author) $19.79 (more…)

I’ve used WebTrends for some time. Used a very early version of Urchin circa 2005. Started with Google Analytics in 2008. Google Analytics has come a long way since Urchin. WebTrends is definitely more potent with a lot more features. But well .. you’re paying for it. Google Analytics is free. The only shortfall is that it retains data for the last 25 months, so if you want to compare with the last 4-5 years, that will be difficult. You could pull out data to your local system and workaround this or use Urchin which has a more diluted reporting capability. (more…)

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer (Paperback)
by Bryan Eisenberg , John Quarto-vonTivadar

Bryan Eisenberg details every aspect of the webpage that can be tested. There is a chapter by chapter .. blow by blow account of what can be tested. All the chapters mention additional online resources, you can get more detail from. (more…)