Book Review: Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics – Brian Clifton

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.

All that aside. This is a fantastic book. A deserving 5 starrer.

The flow of this book has been well planned. Clifton starts with what reports can be procured from Google Analytics, giving everyone a quick insight into what kind of information gathering is possible. A really good way to tell you how potent this tool can be. The next section deals with the implementation and how pages can be tracked. Discusses in detail some of the implementation issues like:
Using the same analytics account to monitor diff websites
How to create a local copy of the analytics info

Also includes Advanced Implementation how-to’s for E-Commerce websites, online campaign tacking, event tracking. There’s also a chapter on hacks. These sections are the most relevant and covers the first 211 pages.

The last section of the books starts with KPI’s and discusses the topic in detail with examples related to e-commerce sites, Marketer’s KPI’s webmaster’s KPI’s and more. The last chapter also discusses Google Website Optimizer and is a good introduction for newbies.

This book is extremely comprehensive and does a very good job of introducing Google Analytics to both new users as well as experienced one. Javasript code shows up at various places and is definitely helpful as a reference for making quick changes to your website tags.

If you have a website that uses Google Analytics, just go ahead and buy the book. If you’re using other analytic tools, this book is a good introduction to what Google Analytics has to offer.

A few standout features of Google Analytics:
Two click integration with Google Adwords. (Two reports : Adwords Campaign, Keyword Positions)
Can be used to track paid search, organic search, links from pdf’s, videos, email campaigns etc
Site overlay report (something like a heat map. WebTrends calls this the click density report)
Map overlay report (shows which geographies people are coming in from)
Cross referencing (eg how many visitors from california, which keywords folks from california use)
Site search reporting (From which pages do visitors initiate a search. And which page do they go to. This needs some setting up.)
Event tracking of video files and load times, interactions in the file etc ..

(About Google Urchin: Urchin is a down loadable tool. Its a hybrid tool since it tags as well as processes log files. It can provide bandwidth reports, error page/status code reports, visitor history reports.
Benefits:
Can run behind firewall. Useful for intranets.
Data stored in house, so can be used beyond 25 months.
Google Analytics can analyze a max 5 million pageviews a month. Urchin doesn’t have this restriction.

The Disadvantages pertain to the hardware and manpower needed to set up a server, maintain and backup.)

Other References
Companion site for the book: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/
Scripts are at: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/ga-scripts/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34674820494
Support: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/
Advanced topics and methodologies: http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/
Blog: http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Pics of some of the Google Analytics Reports for Pune360.com:
A. All Traffic Sources Report