The author Brian Clifton, an expert in search engine optimization and web analytics, had never written a book before, but published his first piece of work this last year titled ‘Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics’. His organization throughout the book is phenomenal and he has written a useful guide to turn to again and again for help regarding Google Analytics issues as well as several other useful tips. The book is broken down into four main parts:

Part 1: Measuring Success

Part 2: Using Google Analytics Reports

Part 3: Implementing Google Analytics

Part 4: Using Visitor Data to Drive Website Improvement

Part one provides a good introduction to what web analytics is and why understanding web traffic is vital to your business. He explains in detail the available methods for tracking and comparing data by describing how Google Analytics works and how you can make it work for your particular business.

Part two dives right in on how to properly navigate your way through the Google Analytics interface, and examples are provided of report layouts and how to effectively organize your web traffic information. There are over 80 default reports Google Analytics has that can be used, but Clifton does a great job at highlighting the top 10 reports and explaining their functions and usability.

Part three explains how to get started on your journey towards making Google Analytics work for your website. This section shows how to make an account if you didn’t already have one, how to start tagging pages so nothing is left out of your reports, and takes a deeper look at advanced implementation methods for tracking E-commerce, online campaigns, events, and customizing GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code). Clifton provides several techniques for measuring visitor behavior and the best practices and tools you can use to get the most out of your website.

Part four is all about using the visitor data collected to help your website improve. This sections talks about KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and what they are, how to prepare them, how to present them, and gives tips for benchmark considerations. He finishes the book with real world tasks that can be performed to start effectively measuring the success of your website on, and offline.

This book was well thought out and has a plethora of information showing exactly what you can do, through detailed instructions, on how you can track your websites traffic correctly, present it effectively, and implement your findings properly.

I have little experience in the web analytics field and some of the reading was well over my head and a better background of JavaScript and HTML would have helped greatly. However, this book taught me interesting and useful facts about the technical tools of Google Analytics and also how to interpret the results. I give this book five stars for its excellent organization, and I would recommend it highly for marketers and web masters.

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