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

July 10, 2008 | Posted by: John Kyle

The Web is a perfect medium for understanding your customers and prospects. The amount of data available on visitors to your site is incredible. The challenge is finding the priceless needle of insight in the haystack of raw data. Google Analytics is a great (and free!) tool for sorting through all of that data so that you can improve your site performance.

In his book, Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, Brian Clifton offers the long-awaited look into the bells and whistles of Google Analytics. As the leader of the Google Analytics team for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, he is well qualified for the task.

Clifton's writing style is very easy to follow and the concepts of the book will be familiar to everyone in the TMA. The book does contain some examples of HTML and JavaScript. Don't let this scare you if you're not a technical person. Clifton explains everything pretty well and, even if you can't read the code examples in detail, you'll come away with a much better understanding of what's possible with Google Analytics. The most technical material doesn't start until chapter seven. Up to that point, Clifton describes how to get started with Google Analytics, walks through the major features and explains the most commonly used reports.

Even if you're already using another web tracking software package, I recommend looking into Google Analytics. It's easy, free and well integrated with Google Adwords. This book is a great place to start.