Web Site Measurement Hacks: Tips & Tools to Help Optimize Your Online Business

by Eric T. Peterson

Book Overview

In order to establish and then maintain a successful presence on the Web, designing a creative site is only half the battle. What good is an intricate Web infrastructure if you're unable to measure its effectiveness? That's why every business is desperate for feedback on their site's visitors: Who are they? Why do they visit? What information or service is most valuable to them?

Unfortunately, most common Web analytics software applications are...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596009887
• ISBN13: 9780596009885
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 430 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A rare one-size-fits-all book!

Web Site Measurement Hacks is the best book in the Web Analytics field. The book explains introductory topics as well as the most advanced ones in a chronological natural way. Subjects like what is web analytics, how to choose a vendor, how the technology works, and how to implement a web analytics program in your company are covered extensively. Besides being well written and almost encompassing, it presents also the point of view of several of the Web Analytics' experts and vendors. Many of the Hacks are co-authored by big names, such as: * Bob Page (Yahoo!) * Bryan Eisenberg (Future Now) * Jim Sterne (Target Marketing!) * Jim Novo (Drilling Down Project) * Jim MacIntyre (Visual Sciences) * Jason Burby (ZAAZ) * Brett Hurt (Coremetrics) * Xavier Casanova (Fireclick) * Jeff Seacrist (WebTrends) * Akin Arikan (Sane Solutions) * Jay McCarthy (WebSideStory) * John Marshall (Clicktracks) * ... and many more! The index is very helpful and you find subjects very easily. The book is well organized and I refer back to it every time I have doubts. It works for me as a Web Analytics' Encyclopedia.

Like a conversation with a mentor

No matter which page I read in this book, I always felt like I was a student in the area of web site statistics and had been afforded the privilege of speaking one on one with someone who really knows their stuff. Unlike other Hacks books I've read, in this text, all the sections flow together, redefining "Hack" as sub-topics of the current sections primary focus. Although you are expected to have a basic understanding of the underlying technology, the author writes in a very easy to follow, natural language fashion that neither dumbs the topics down nor makes the reader skip ahead passed fluff. In fact, there is a refreshing lack of sidebar or call-out sections, author's useless opinion about the weather in Albuquerque, or paragraphs dedicated to promoting some commercial product. Which leads me to another positive point about this book; any topic presented that requires a third party application to demonstrate with - uses freeware products readily available and without hitches. After spending a few pages explaining what networking traffic tools are appropriate for web site visit tracking and which are appropriate for internal network traffic monitoring, the reader is then introduced to what is / is not appropriate data to monitor, and why. Once a foundation has been laid, time is spent reviewing the different mechanism of gathering usage statistics from your web site, including the web server's intrinsic logging, cookies, Macromedia Flash Local Shared Objects, RSS, JavaScript page tags, and Web Bugs. This book considers the last two to be the primary data gathering engine and are well covered, from general flow and browser trends, to implementing the code and ensuring you have a good privacy policy posted. The bulk of the book is then dedicated in showing you how you you can implement these tools into your web site, RSS feed, and emails to best gather real-time user environmental settings, dynamically display information or reconfigure your presentation based on said settings, and learn if parts of your presentation need to be reworked. There is no end of good information in this book for anyone who wishes to learn the basics & intermediates of web site usage measurements. An abundance of code examples and plain-English presentation ensure that you understand the material and are never lost due to overly complicated presentations of concepts, or put-off by over simplifications. The author has brought an abundance of real-world experience into this text and it shows.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Web Site

In order to keep a web site going, not only do you have to have a great portal for users to view and buy the service you are providing, you also need a way to determine WHO is going to your site. Without the proper tools and analysis, you are stumbling in the dark while plays darts, only occasionally hitting a bullseye, usually just by pure chance. With Eric Peterson's 'Web Site Measurement Hacks', you can maximize not only how you interpret the data you retrieve from visitors, but how to get more users to come to your site and why they are doing so. Chock full of 100 hacks (I would rather call them suggestions), the author uses his 10+ years of vast experience in web statistical analysis to provide a highly educational book that would be useful for anyone that needs to work with web traffic data. This is a very useful guide for the following individuals: Engineer concerned with harvesting of web traffic data for reporting purposes Any marketing individual that is concerned with their online presence (that should be nearly everyone in the field) Web analyst whose job is to sift through web data and track where business is coming from Most of O'Reilly's "Hacks" books are very helpful that provide lots of great information and this guide is no exception. ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A smorgasbord of great ideas

Practical advice from Eric and an amazing number of contributors (disclaimer: I contributed to one hack). A lot of best practices are represented here. Like other books in the Hacks series, this one is not philosophical, but gives you hands-on tools. If you're dealing with Web data, this is one of the best books on the subject. The focus here is on measurement and reporting. If you're a marketer looking strictly for deep insights into consumer behavior, this is not the book. However you should still check this out .. it lays the solid foundation that you can build on. And at 16 cents a hack, why wouldn't you? This book will pay for itself.

Has something for everyone

In addition to being well organized and well written, this book does an outstanding job of breaking a complex subject down into understandable pieces. Whether you are new to web analytics or have been using a web analytics tool for years, you will learn something from this book. I highly recommend this book.