Very informative. i have done web site analysis before and still enjoy reading the book.

This book is fantastic. Not only does it cover everything, but it does it in a simple way, an hour a day!

I reckon once you have finished this book you will be a head of the majority.

Must get for analytics.

Technologies evolve, but the PROCESS by which we should collect and analyze online data in order to gain solid, actionable insights will remain constant for the foreseeable future.

I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the smartest online marketers in the business, and, to say the very least, most of these people -- especially those in the analytics community -- seem content to share their expertise in the most confusing and theoretical manner possible. But not Avinash Kaushik. And in "An Hour a Day," Avinash proves why he is the world's most trusted name in analytics: he brings us up to his level without unnecessary jargon, so we can actually understand how to do this stuff!

Without question, this book is required reading for ANY online marketer, business owner, or anyone currently outsourcing their web analytics. (Warning: You may become better at this than the people you're paying to do it for you!)

Have a website you're not properly tracking? You're not alone! Less than a third of e-commerce and B2B sites have sufficient web analytics tracking -- let alone a process by which to glean insight from it -- and it's not the technology's fault. The problem is that most people don't understand the VALUE and NECESSITY of web analytics. They don't realize it's the difference between sink or swim. For most organizations, web analytics is an afterthought; something pawned off to those with technical knowledge when it should really be understood by those who need to use this data to make serious business decisions. Well, folks, those days are over. If all you know about your site is how many page views, uniques, or (*yikes*) "hits" it's getting, you're in much worse shape than you currently realize, simply because you have no idea how much money and attention you're missing out on if you have no clear goals in mind or a system by which to quantify it.

If you're not measuring it properly, how can you ever claim to have an online strategy that's working? How else will you know how successful your campaign is? How else will you know which elements to test and optimize?

Whether you're a beginner or you know just enough about web analytics to be dangerous, you should absolutely buy this book today. The book pays for itself a hundred fold in the very first hour of the very first day.

My only issue is that the book doesn't address how to use google analytics more. He gives a lot of suggestions, but there isn't enough guidance in actually how to use GA to pull the data he recommends.

This book is amazing. If you think you knew everything or are in an analysis slump, just flip through this book and you'll find something new to analyze.

I have used Web Side Story...moved to Omniture....also work with Google Analytics.....This book does a good job of getting away from the mountains of data, to provide a clear cut "THINK ABOUT WHAT THE ANALYTICS MEAN" on a business basis- definitely worth the time investment.

I can consider myself as pretty noobish in the field of web analytics. I know SEO and usability, but web analytics has always been just looking at the number of visitors and pageviews. Until I received this book, because this book is a real eye-opener for the new comers to web analytics. It totally change your way of thinking about what web analytics is and how you can pull the best out of it.

I can't wait to finish it, which costs a lot of time by the way.

And students, you can consider this as a good step up to web analytics with theory plus hands on stuff. Like a real school book you learn everything you need from what to why. More than 400 pages long.

P.S. There is also a cd included with some nice stuff like a presentation from the writer, pdf and mp3 files with valuable information.

If you buy 'Web Analytics ...' looking for some guidance, or even a few ideas, as to analysis of your internet marketing/sales endeavors, you will be disappointed. This book is about data collection ... nothing more.

To Avinash Kaushik's credit he appears thorough. I did appreciate his flagging the limitations of data collected by the various methods. On the downside the book is repetitive and could have been better ordered. The '... Hour a Day' is appropriate, as that is about all a reader can risk in one sitting. The text makes an arduous read. If better structured, this book could have been half its length.

If I learned one thing, it is this. I'll architect my approach to web analysis, define the data I need, and then recruit an IT type to build the process to collect the data. Having read the book, I now know what data there can be. For this I'm grateful to the author.

If you find yourself stumped with how to improve your website, or don't know where to begin with looking at web statistics, this book has everything. It begins with going through the foundation of what web analysis really is and definitions and explanations of different metrics and how they can be useful. He then goes into detail with different metrics such as bounce rate, segmentation, and some things you probably never considered. It steps you through knowing what analytics tool to use and how to implement it. It has wonderful examples and sample reports that you can tailor to your own company.

This book is very actionable. I can only speak from a beginner's perspective, but this book is easy to follow and has golden nuggets that even experienced web statisticians can take another look at. The highest recommendation possible from me. I will be waiting for another of Avinash's books.

I have read several web analytics books and Avinash's book is definitely the one I would recommend first.

What you can learn from the book:
- how to think about and how to approach web analytics -- this is where this book excels
- how to deliver actionable results - the mantra of Avinash
- how to start with the basic metrics

What not to expect from this book:
- you will not learn how to use any analytics software
- you will not learn details about the technical aspects, frequent problems with data and measurement, what to avoid etc.

Check out Avinash's blog to get a picture of what you can get from the book.

Before I begin I must apologize for the length of this review, I suffer from acute conciseness deficiency.

Avinash's greatest strength is his humility, and it comes through in this book and his blog in spades. All too often the broader analytic community (which I include myself in), is so caught up in its metrics, graphs, charts, esoteric calculations and acronyms that we forget that our fundamental purpose is to inform and assist in change. Even if we do not lose sight of that goal, we get so caught up in our analysis that we begin to think we know better than anyone else, including the people buying our products/consuming our content.

With the risk of sounding terse, Avinash cuts through all of that crap to right the ship as it were, and his resulting material can be summarized in 5 points.


1. Customers know best - should be self evident but really isn't (get over yourself and start trying to figure out what the customers want because you really don't know).


2. Capture data that can assist said customers - in other words, if the data and other pretty charts you are constructing cannot lead to an insight or action that will assist your customers; you're wasting your time. Yes, even that amazingly color coded spreadsheet with pivot tables and charts bursting out of every cell.


3. Quantitative data is limited in what it can tell you - another pitfall of the analytic community is that we're so caught up in numbers that we rarely stop to consider the source or validity of our observations, a particularly fatal flaw in an emerging industry with less than ideal methods of capture.


4. Context is king - When it comes to data, context is everything and a second piece of data, incorporated with the first, can have powerful effects. As a quick example, page hits, combined with bounce rate (a metric that measures how many people left your page within a predetermined interval), can indicate how many people are truly coming to your website to engage in its content). In other words, if you achieve a 100% increase in hits but 90% of them "bounce", you're not doing as well as if the same site achieved an 80% increase in hits with a 40% bounce rate. A very different conclusion would have been drawn if hits alone were observed in this case.


5. Qualitative data is a key piece of the puzzle - as a corollary of #3, a truly effective analysis of a website will utilize qualitative and quantitative data to help inform ones decisions.



Avinish then does an excellent job of showing how one can go about creating, analyzing and acting out ones web analytics strategy within the framework laid out above. If one has even a cursory understanding of how a website is built and therefore how to input a simple tag into the relevant pages, one can utilize this book to get started analyzing their web traffic in a meaningful way, for free, this instant. In addition, and more importantly, you will have formulated the solid framework and understanding necessary to adapt as the industry changes, something it does at an exciting/terrifying pace. An excellent read.

Thank you, Avinash! Avinash has done the impossible: he's made analytics fun, easy-to-understand, and clearly communicated how analytics is even more important than many of us have treated it. Avinash's "Trinity" approach of creating actionable insights & metrics from focusing on the right clickstream data, doing the right kind of customer research, all of which leads to knowing how to produce the right kind of dashboard. If you buy only one book on analytics, this has to be it.

In depth, easy to read, detailed from a web analytics pro. My only complaint is that he should identify himself as the Evangelist for Google Analytics. He recommends GA because it's free, but he should make it clear that companies that use GA are providing confidential company data to Google that could be used against them in the pricing of keywords.

I'll keep it short and sweet. This is the ultimate guide for web analytics. Unlike many other books which gloss over the details, this one does not. It is very topical in terms of having up to the minute information about competitors and key players in the industry.

More importantly, it provides a methodology that is more important than how to use the tools and techniques. It is this high level vision of web analytics that will make your implementation a success or not.

He reminds me of a great consultant, but without the BS or sales pitch. I recommend this book to all levels of readers!

Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics: An Hour a Day provides a realistic and practical approach to understanding and using web analytics. I strongly recommend that you read this book if you use any web analytics tool or are just looking to improve the results on your website.

From the simple metrics such as "bounce rate" (where a visitor comes to your website and then leaves immediately) to more complex qualitative analysis this book steps you through the key things that you need to know.

It is a book that can be picked up and put down as needed, you don't need to read it cover to cover to get significant value from this book.

Buy this book if you want to get results from your website using web analytics.

This book should be a mandatory read for those of us who are tasked with web analytics reporting. Like many, we are asked from management to produce weekly top-down reports based on click-throughs and pageviews, new visitors, etc. Clearly, there is much more actionable data you can and should be reporting on.
This book will help you understand how to do just that. It also provides you with information on how to communicate the importance of effective analytics to those who can influence change.

This book was waiting for me when I returned from maternity leave to my position. I just had a baby, so I didn't have any time to read it, other than when I had to pump breast milk at work. I was able to read this book and learn tons about analytics that I have now put to good use. My one hour a day break to read this book proved to be perfect timing and I was able to give it my undivided attention. My position was changed to include analyzing our site statistics and I needed to learn it from the ground up.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that has a web site or works in the web marketing field. It's full of great information and is easy to read.

Sidra Muoio
www.minicom.com

Understanding your web site's analytics--visitors, referrers, search engine traffic, etc--is crucial to any business. If you don't understand where your customers are coming from, and what they do when they get to your web site, you're flying blind.

Avinash Kaushik is not only the top mind in web analytics but he's also engaging and easy to understand. You probably won't have many web analytics books on your shelf, but you need this one!

I purchased this book with the idea of learning (with very limited base knowledge to start from) about the analysis of a web site's effectiveness beyond "clicks"! I am about 1/2 way through Web Analytics - An Hour A Day and much of what is being discussed is over my non-tech head.

That being said, my takeaway from the book so far is that I have learned usefully "dangerous" information about what I should expect from my web site, how it should be configured to capture information for analysis and, perhaps most importantly, "best practices" based upon this author's experience and perspective. Given that he is an expert in the field and his recommendations strike me as practical, I think this book is potentially valuable to someone of early to middle web utilization experience.

Be prepared, however, it is technical and long.

I've been meaning to write a review of this book on Amazon for a while, but haven't gotten around to it earlier since I typically buy my books through a Scandinavian competitor. Nonetheless, I hope my review will provide value to those considering a purchase of this book.

Avinash is probably the most generous web analyst in the world. Not only because he is donating his proceeds from the book to charity, but also because he is very generous in sharing his experience and expertise. Avinash is one of those people who are passionate about what they do, which is something that shows when you listen to him speak or read this book. He didn't just deliver a set amount of pages; he continued to write as long as he had something to share. And he had a lot to share!

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day is an excellent first read for aspiring web analysts. By reading this book you'll be introduced to the benefits and challenges of measuring visitor behavior on websites. You will learn about the pitfalls to avoid when selecting a tool and the challenges you will face when trying to create a data-driven business culture. Avinash knows that clickstream analysis is not enough and has made sure that you will be introduced to complementary methods of measuring online success. Furthermore, you'll learn which KPIs and reports you should not waste your time on.

I think Web Analytics: An Hour a Day is primarily a book for web analytics fans, written by a web analytics fan. I think there is also a demand for an executive edition. Not only web analytics aficionados should embrace the value of web analytics. I think Avinash should write a shorter teaser to rope in more readers and broaden web analytics adoption. Then more businesses would be queuing to buy the full 400+ page version for their employees.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day is the most extensive book about web analytics that I've come across and the first one I recommend you to read. Some of the other books on the market are a few years old and therefore less relevant than this book.

My advice is that the first three books you should read about web analytics are Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik, Web Site Measurement Hacks by Eric T. Peterson, and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators, also by Eric T. Peterson.

"Web Analytics An Hour A Day" is must read for anyone who is responsible in any way for the success of their company's website. It goes far beyond Web Analytics as we have come to know it. Avinash gives much food for thought as he presents in a very clear and concise manner where we have been, and most importantly where we are headed with Web Analytics.

No matter what kind of website you have, this book addresses the issues important to obtaining important and measurable data for your website. Avninash masterfully lays out detailed long term plans for accumulating meaningful and actionable data that will lead to positive improvements for your website.

Whether you are new to Web Analytics, or a seasoned professional, this book is a must read. Experts and novices alike will absolutely find valuable information that will put them on the fast track to maintaining a successful web presence.

I applaud Avinash for his strong conviction and devotion to the field of Web Analytics and the enthusiastic style in which he continually promotes Web Analytics.

Thank you Avinash!

i really enjoyed this book, it's not a boring textbook, the author's sense of humor is apparent throughout the book. it has become my reference guide for my new position. i transfered from a traditional TV research position to digital media and this book really made the transition easier. I highly recommend it.

In short, Avinash's book is amazing! In our firm (internet marketing, analytics and consulting), we have taken some of the chapters and literally transform the material into checklists and templates that we immediately used for existing projects. So you can say our ROI on the book and the knowledge gained was immediate and significant.

I liked the first few chapters that focused on theory, background and strategies, and as equally, I definitely benefited from the subsequent "hands-on" chapters that focused on specific metrics for the various type of sites and businesses.

Another aspect that the book highlights (and Avinash is known for) is to couple the qualitative analytics along with the quantitative. I have already taken some of the survey ideas and putting them in practice for our consultants and their clients (as a matter of fact we now have purchased several copies of the book for our consultants to have a copy of their own).

As a project manager for several small to medium websites, I'm faced with lots of responsibilities, like content and design strategy, online media planning, and site stats reporting. I've been using a robust stats program since 2004, but was literally drowning in data. Avinash's book saved me. I finally have a good, solid understanding of web analytics and how I can get the most from my stats program to really understand what's happening with my sites.

I am not a math guy by any stretch, but Avinash actually makes this stuff fun, and he breaks down what's important beautifully, by outlining different core metrics and concepts in plain english, then following up with the REASON the reader should care about those metrics and WHAT SPECIFICALLY they should care about.

I'm a little over halfway through the book and it's already dog-eared and marked up with notes and highlighter streaks - I don't think I've delved into a book repeatedly this much, ever. And I'll definitely continue to rely on it as an incredible reference tool for the next several years.

Finally, Avinash takes all this to the next level by encouraging dialogue from readers via his active, informative blog, Occam's Razor, as an excellent living companion to the book. If you've ever wanted to get a good handle on how to interpret your website traffic and have a good time doing it, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Thanks Avinash!

This is absolutely a marvelous book. Avinash does a wonderful job of taking a very confusing, and sometime mundane, topic and breaking it down to its most important parts. Very well done with lots of excellent, real-world examples.

Plus it's a fun read to boot!

This is an excellent book and has become the backbone of our marketing plan for the next year.

Eric Garrison
Unitek

'Web Analytics: An Hour a Day' is one of the most insightful and deligtful books I have read in recent times on any topic. It is an indispensable read to those who want to understand not only the "hows" of webanalytics but also the "whys" of executing a task or implementing a webanalytics strategy.

Being a practitioner myself, the first thing I would say is that Avinash's passion for Webanalytics and his depth of knowledge and perspective comes out very clearly as one goes through the book. Avinash has done a remarkable job in taking a complex subject and making it fun and in a style that is easy to read.

And then there is the Trinity approach, a framework that is simple in its outlook and yet is robust enough to encapsulate all the key components for a successful Webanalytics program -- from density analysis & segmentation to conversion rates to A/B testing and VOC.

I also enjoyed reading all the titbits about the different technologies, data capture mechanisms etc. Another thing that makes this book unique are the "Why should you care" sections - which I thought was very cool since many folks spend too much time getting something executed without understanding the "so what" aspect of it.

And lastly for those folks deep into TQM, zero defects etc, Avinash has a section applying the Six-Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) process to continuously improve the WA program.

In summary, an excellent book that is a must read for someone in the Webanalytics space -- and recommended without any reservations.

A few days after I became unemployed, I spotted this book, picked it up and started reading, and reading, AND READING. Bells and whistles and lightbulbs went off in my head, and I met my NEW CAREER path face-to-face...

I opened my wallet to look at the last remaining dollars, put the book back, and spent the next half hour talking myself out of spending precious food and gas dollars for another book.

Well, I just finished reading the book I ended up buying that day. It was probably one of the best acquisitions I ever made. Avinash is a gifted technical storyteller with fire in his belly and charm in his delivery; I'd like to thank him here, publicly, for sharing his gift and helping me to launch what I hope will be a new livelihood.

One of the first things that impressed me about this book was the fact that it went beyond what I was expecting to read: how to better read analytics dashboards. What I found was a sophisticated and marketing-oriented book that teaches how to use the available data to create a clear picture of return on investment in the online world. This is more than your typical programming book, this is a marketing book.

Kaushik does a great job with the format. As is the fact with any subject you are committed to knowing, reading the information and applying it in small pieces is the best way to learn. The bulk of the content is arranged by subject and segmented into daily readings allowing you to focus and build upon the knowledge one brick at a time.

The book is easy to read, full of practical application, and one that will be tattered, bookmarked, and referenced often.

I loved this book. It is fill with lots of practical examples, useful URLs, graphics and summaries that help you really get the point of what all the theoretical part is trying to make.

There is something for everyone in this book, whether you are a novice in the field, an experienced analyst, a Marketing Mgr or the owner of your own cyber-business, you will read avidly every page of this book with the feeling that you are actually learning something useful for your professional change.

If you want to make a difference and be the reference for the Web analytics world of your surroundings (including friends and family!), buy this book and enjoy it.

The learning will be painless and will last forever. I highly recommend it.

When I first saw Web Analytics: An hour a day, I thought it would flow like the average programming books - an hour a day type path. Those types of books never appealed to me, because the books never seemed very deep. My first perception was quite wrong.

What I found instead was a very deep book that explained not just how to tactically use web analytics to improve my systems, but also the strategy and philosophy on why and when.

The book does a great job of giving real world examples on how to analyze your size, review and understand key metrics and what might be things to look at for improvement.

I recommend as a reading plan to read through the book, or at least ahead a few chapters at a time. And then use the weekly/daily plan to constantly drive improvement in your system and analytics.

One of the things that is great about this book, is that I could see using the weekly/daily plan, over and over on subsequent sites in the future.

The other thing that is worth pointing out is how thorough this book is in covering subjects like multichannel analytics when dealing with stores, call center and a web site. It also covers difficult unchartered areas like Rich Internet Applications(RIA) and how to capture the worth while data points.

This is definitely a book you need to own, if you have anything to do with improving your web sales or customer experience.

I swore I'd never buy another analytics book again. They all told me the same thing: visitors, page views, conversions, describing *how* to measure my customers' activity online. But, when I started reading Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, I was reminded of why I read his analytics blog every day. Because it answers practical questions about how to convert analytics into actions. Just like his blog, Avinash's book is the first one that focuses so completely on why your customers do what they do. In many ways, Avinash's book serves as a companion piece to Paco Underhill's amazing Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping. Whereas Underhill uses the methods of an anthropologist, observing behaviors in the field to determine what makes folks purchase, Avinash uses the tools of a (website) archaeologist, deciphering the hieroglyphics (OK, analytics) that unearth consumers' behavior online. This book serves as a most effective Rosetta Stone, illuminating behaviors, translating data into actions, turning actions into profits.

Why buy another book about analytics? Because this one answers the most important question: Why your customers do what they do and what you can do about it.

As someone who works in the web industry and deals with web analytics daily, I highly encourage you to add this book to your library. Avinash knows his stuff. Everyone in the analytics's space reads his blog. He sometimes even helps the big guys, like Google, improve their analytics-related products (e.g., Google Analytics).

There's something in this book for everyone. Beginners won't be overwhelmed and seasoned analytic veterans will find places to improve their analytics implementation.

I waited with anticipation for this book and was not disappointed in the least. It is written in a very candid and informative manner that helps the reader easily digest the ideas. Although I did not take the "hour a day" approach, I feel the book is very easy to read cover to cover and as a reference resource as well. The author does a great job making a topic that can be quite technical very accessible and understandable. I strongly recommend this book for anyone grappling with web analytics and looking for a way to turn the volumes of data points into actionable online business intelligence.

I'm writing this review long after the initial surge of reviews (it IS a long book), which makes it hard to contribute much that's useful to discussion. Many others have explained how thorough and detailed the book is. I agree completely. It is, indeed, the best hands-on guide to the subject I have yet found.

This book balances both the high-level aspects of web analytics -- the philosophy, if you like -- with a huge amount of specific, practical, how-to information. I don't see how it could have been any shorter and still delivered so much.

The aspect of this book which seems to me to have been under-played in other reviews is how readable it is. The subject has been touched on in a few places, but I think it deserves more prominence. I like the language and the style of the book. Avinash's enthusiasm for the subject comes singing out of the pages. He makes the subject seem fun and he sustains that over hundreds of pages. That's a remarkable achievement when you consider the length.

I disagree strongly with the reviewer who suggests that this is padding. I'm puzzled by that. I have a shelf full of business or self-improvement books which try to make themselves readable and accessible by interjecting folksy anecdotes full of people with made up names every few pages. It's a very common approach. The result is often repetitious fluff. This book is very different. There is no padding of that kind: the examples given are all very clearly based on personal experience and are there for good reason. They are informative. They are not simply structural devices.
"Structural devices" brings me to the only aspect of the book which does not really work for me: the 'an hour a day' theme. I believe that might work well in the context of an on-line tutorial series, but in a book it seems a little out of place. Most of the time I wasn't really conscious of this element, but occasionally it popped up and seemed slightly intrusive.

There: I've done it. In an effort not to gush praise, I've found something to quibble with about this book. It was a struggle, believe me. In reality I cannot recommend this book highly enough. One of my colleagues has a copy where most of the pages are thick with highlighter ink. The quality of information is that high.

(review by Gradiva Couzin)

How shall I praise this book, let me count the ways!

Do you wonder what people are doing on your website? How they found it? Are people finding what they want or need on your site? If you don't know where to begin, this book will get you there, painlessly. If you've been in analytics for some time already, this book will move you forward to a whole new level, painlessly.

I'm an SEO (search engine optimization) consultant and have worked on the fringes of the web analytics field for several years. This book spoke to me clearly without ever speaking down to me. It was easy to understand without skimping on the serious stuff. Having written a book myself, I know how hard this is to achieve! If I had one criticism, it would only be that Avinash has such high standards and such a clear vision of how web analytics can and should be done, that after you read his book you will not want to tolerate a lazy or cowardly approach from yourself or others - and this might leave you feeling a bit guilty if you aren't up to his standards. If you've been doing this for years and have fallen into a rut, be warned: curves ahead!

The very first 10 minutes of owning this book I was digging into it for help with analyzing a Google Adwords campaign for a client. Next, I read the 3 Layers of So What, a web analytics philosophy that is so simple and clear, so convincing, so totally useful that I am excited to apply it immediately to my own work. Today I wrote a report for a client that included a bunch of stats... After three paragraphs of data reporting, the "Avinash" on my shoulder wrote this line: "What insights can be gained and what site edits are suggested by this data?" Closing the loop and turning raw web data into something meaningful and useful: that's what this book is all about.

All of the acclaim and the 5-star reviews could not be more deserved. And to boot, the author's proceeds are going to very worthy charities. BRAVO and congratulations to a really wonderful author and man!

The book has been very insightful. I would recommend it to any web design/developer. It teaches you the importance of analytics across an entire company.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik delivers an informative perspective on the subject of web analytics. This book is an excellent resource to Web analytics students, analysts, company executives and search engine/usability industry enthusiasts. While editing errors plague some of the chapters, I hope many of the shortcomings of this first edition will likely be alleviated by later editions. These problems are only a minor distraction to the web analytics story being told.

The author, Avinash Kaushik is an industry insider and has generously put his practical knowledge to his readers. I highly recommend this book to any one who may have some interest in knowing about web analytics

I've read a lot of material on web analytics and it all has value. Some of it talks about the great need for process but none of it that I've seen provides the "how-to" of the process, until now. All you have to do is study the TOC to know how the mind of Avinash works. It's brilliantly simple, direct, and somehow finds a way to take advanced web analytics and present it in a manner that makes sense without requiring a slide rule or software to decipher. Avinash provides the necessary, foundational, background material first upon which he then builds the rest of his thesis, that of the Trinity (which has little to do with saving your soul; more directed towards improving your roi and your job security). The balance of the book is devoted to explaining the macro-picture he paints in the first segment. Gimme the big-picture then paint in the numbers, all day long. Never follow an act with animals, small children or anything written by Avinash Kaushik. I'm just glad he has to write his own sequel. Buy the book.

I am big fan for Avinash's blog and the book is equally good. It's a step by step guide that will be useful for every practitioner in this field and the book will help even if you are just getting started on this subject. I loved the real world examples in the book. Avinash always suggest appropriate tools for every step and is not afraid of naming tools that will work and also the ones that won't work.

Avinash Kaushik focuses on the key issue: the visitors. Learn what your visitors want and then give it to them. Use analytics, competitive intelligence, and user polls to find out. Many sites focus only on customers (the ones who actually buy) and pretty much ignore the remaining visitors (who make up 60-80% of the traffic). By looking at visitors, you can improve the overall experience, and very likely the conversion rate as well.

Avinash's book is far away the best book on analytics. He has solid experience in using analytics tools at large companies. He also has a degree in engineering and an MBA, so he understands both the technical and the business aspects. The book is a solid presentation of how to use analytics to establish and reach business goals. As you've figured out by now, analytics is not about tracking URLs or auto-generated reports. It's business.

For Kaushik, there are three main strategies: discover the visitors' intentions, compare your website against benchmarks, and use analytics.

The first item is to understand your visitors. Learn what they want. Find out what they are seeking at your website. It's a mistake to focus on conversions; at best only 20-30% of your visitors will convert. If you concentrate on them, you're ignoring 70% of your visitors. To learn their intentions, ask them. Add polls and surveys at your site. Avinash offers several questions to ask your visitors: What are you looking for at our website? Were you able to complete your task? If you were unable to complete your task, please explain why. How can we improve our website to make it more useful for you?

The second item is comparison with your competitors: how are you doing in your industry. It's very nice to say that you have two million monthly visitors, but... compared to your top competitors, is that low? If they're getting one to two million visitors per month, then you're fine. But if they're getting 50 million monthly visitors, you're in trouble. So, find out. Avinash describes two services for competitive information and the features of each. You can find out your competitor's traffic share, level of activity, conversion rates, demographics, and so on. Other tools let you compare the amount of traffic for you and your top competitors. It's all in the book.

The third step is analytics. There is so much useful content in this book that I can't give a short summary. Avinash has solid experience in setting up KPIs and dashboards for dozens of companies and you'll learn how to do this. He describes what is useful, how it matters, and how to use it. He tells you why you should avoid real-time reporting.

A major issue in analytics is the soft numbers. Computers and the web gave us the promise of fully-trackable activity. Web analytics itself implies accurate measurement of data. This turned out to be an illusion. Nearly all of our clients are unaware that the numbers are off by as much as 30%. This is caused by a number of factors: the various analytics tools use different definitions for an event. Users block JavaScript, so tagging can't collect data. As much as 40% of users delete cookies every day. There are tracking problems with Ajax and Web 2.0 sites. And there are many more problems. The book has a clear explanation of log files, tagging, web bugs, and packet sniffing, along with the advantages and disadvantages for each one. You need to understand the technical issues to understand the strengths and limits of your numbers.

Along with describing what to do, Avinash also tells you what to ignore. Analytics is not reporting, so don't deliver reports. Reports are not useful for business decisions. If they want reports, set up automated reporting. Nobody reads these anyway. You should also ignore page views, clicks, and exit pages. These are useless for business decisions. It sounds very nice to say you have four million monthly page views, but so what? What matters is the visitors' intentions and your KPIs.

Avinash doesn't shy away from bold statements. He points out that analytics is interpretation and recommendation. But expensive analytics tools (which cost $50,000 to $100,000 per year or more) can simply be report-generating engines for your company, unless you have mastered their complexity. With tools like ClickTracks Analytics (which costs $90 per month) and Google Analytics (which is free) you can get all the reporting you want at a very low price. This allows you to invest in people or getting help from external consultants to move from reporting to doing analysis. You can even use both ClickTracks and Google Analytics. Google Analytics uses tagging and ClickTracks uses log files (or tagging); ClickTracks is good for SEO and Google Analytics is good for PPC. Each has features that the other is not capable of producing. By using easier tools, you can focus on the business goals instead of using the tool.

He also brings up the problems with Web 2.0. We have a number of Web 2.0 clients. How do you use analytics in a Web 2.0 world? On Web 2.0 sites, the concept of page views is irrelevant, because Ajax and Flash tools don't require a new page or a page refresh. There are lines of code from Google that allow you to track JavaScript events in Google Analytics. His book is current enough to discuss these issues.

A number of chapters are recommendations from Avinash: what is important? What is useful? What can you ignore? What is useless? He includes a list of best practices. The recommendations are extremely useful. That's why he is asked by Fortune 200 companies to help them with their analytics strategy. The same advice is in this book.

Avinash Kaushik's book is easily one of the best books for analytics, SEO, PPC, SEM, or the web industry. If you read only one book on web commerce, this is the one.

Avinash has a way with this topic that is elegant, brilliant and insightful at the same time. He is able to take a daunting task and help break it down for the beginner to advanced practitioners of web analytics. If you have severe information overload this is a book to begin or augment your web analytics journey. I will be making sure that this is required reading at our agency! Thank you Avinash. Avinash's blog is here kaushik.net

If you have the chance to here Avinash present go for it. It will be time well spent.

For professional reasons and personal passion about the subject I have been reading for some years a lot of web analytics books; the first one was web metrics by Jim Sterne (at that times the term "Web analytics" was not created yet..), followed by Web analytics demistyfied by E.Peterson, until the latter ones "Actionable Web analytics" by J.Burby and, at last, this wonderful book by Avinash Kaushik. I think this book represents the tipycal web analytics journey that every modern and innovative Company should make to become more aware and gain competitive insight about its customers, its marketplace, its competitive (online) space, and its business in general. The book is structured as a step-by-step guide, but it's much more than this: it helps you to think about your strategy, besides the operations and the tactics. There is a chapter, the 4°, in which the author explains the Trinity Model, a framework to improve and address your web strategy. it consists in a 3-d analysis: the behaviour analysis of the visitors (what we can assume by their visits, how we can interpret their footprints on our site, the outcomes analysis (how it's their business contribution, in terms of sales, leads and how we can analyse the correlated rates..)and , finally, the experience analysis (why our visitors are doing what they are doing, how we can understand their needs and desires, or their satisfaction related to their online experiece..). the holistic approach, I think that it's the strength and beauty of this book. Compliments again. If you come across to Italy, I 'd like to share a lunch with you. All the best.

This book pretty much covers the bulk of what you need to know about web analytics. Plus, there's a lot of practical actionable advice and steps to take.

The author has done a good job of explaining the issues in a somewhat straightforward and blunt manner which I appreciate. Covers real world issues quite well. I've seen the author speak and he's also pretty funny too - for a web analytics guy. :)

Recommend buying and reading the book and the author's blog is also really good.

As a newcomer to Web Analytics (both me and the company I work for) this book has been an outstanding resource for understanding the field. Avinash successfully balances broad core concepts (like the importance of customer centricity) with instantly useful directives (even to the point of recommending specific key measurement metrics) so the reader becomes grounded in the the foundational theory AND is armed actionable steps he can take to implement the concepts.

The refreshing part is that where Avinash truly believes in a concept he is unafraid to put himself behind it 100% (like recommending "task completion" as one of the most important metrics). A reader really can tell this book comes from the mind of one who has painfully learned lessons "in the trenches," and wholeheartedly wants to help others avoid pitfalls he personally experienced. Yet there is amazing objectivity in this book as well, as Avinash calls each practitioner to a sensible and fair assessment of his or her individual company needs (and gives insight how to do it).

Starting a journey down the road of Web Analytics has been that much easier as a result of this book. Again, just an invaluable resource. Highly recommended.

This is a fantastic book for anyone interested in Web Analytics. I've been a reader of Avinash's blog for some time now and was excited to finally get my hands on his book. A+

Web Analytics: An Hour A Day is a must read for marketing professionals, web analysts, online marketing managers and all those who wish to use key website insights to improve site visitor experience.

I'm a web metrics analyst in a top 20 e-commerce website in US. This book provides valuable knowledge and actionale insights in Web Analytics. The author has a significant experience as a web analytics practioner - it really differentiate this book from other web analytics books.

I have been reading about Aninash on several Web Analytics blogs for some time now and finally now I know why I was. He really knows how web analytics should be implemented and how it works. The book gives a lot of practical information, a must-read for anyone doing web analytics.

We here at the ISG media & analytics team have been anxiously awaiting the publication of Avinash Kaushik's book, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, since we first "met" Avinash at a webinar back in February. Avinash's passion for web analytics was evident throughout the webinar, and we've been subscribers to his blog, Occam's Razor, ever since.

Web analytics is an important part of what we do at ISG. Years of experience in online marketing has reinforced the idea that there's no point in having a website, microsite, or campaign page if you have no idea how it's performing. That's why Avinash's book is a must read for anyone involved in Internet marketing. His book is a great read for anyone from the director of media & analytics to senior analyst to summer intern. Whether you are involved in complex decision-making and web strategies or are looking at conversion rates to provide actionable insights, this book is great for people of all levels of experience, while providing a fresh look at web analytics.

The book is "a step-by-step guide to implementing a successful web analytics strategy." It is meant to be enjoyed over a span of eight months, but you can read it as quickly or slowly as you like. We here at ISG are sharing a couple of copies between us and are relishing each page as we read, so what follows is a summary of the book based on what we've read and reviewed so far.

The book is divided into four parts:

Part I: Foundation
Part II: Trinity Approach
Part III: Implementing Your Web Analytics Plan
Part IV: Advanced Web Analytics "Data in your DNA"

Part I gives a brief history of web analytics, which makes this book perfect for someone just starting out in the field. Avinash takes the time to describe all the metrics that can be analyzed, how they are derived, and how they are useful for web analytics. He focuses not only on the "what" but on the "why" and proposes a new framework called the Integrated Trinity Platform. Part I (19 pages in total) is chock full of information that will give you the background you need for starting your web analytics study or, if you are experienced in the field, propose a new way to think about the role your job plays in your company.

There's also a bonus CD with 5+ hours of podcasts for your listening pleasure, a 45-minute video presentation, PowerPoint presentations, and other useful web analytics resources. And at the end of the book, Avinash directs the reader to two companion websites so that they may continue on their web analytics journey.

The best part about this book is that it is written by someone who is so passionate about web analytics that he is voluntarily receiving no profit from his book: 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Smile Train and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).