Complete Web Monitoring: Watching Your Visitors, Performance, Communities, and Competitors (Paperback)

~ Alistair Croll (Author), Sean Power (Author), Croll Alistair (Author), Power Sean (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Do you really understand your online presence? Are you confident that visitors can use your website? Do you know their motivations? How do online communities perceive your company? To innovate and adapt your business quickly, you must know the answers to these questions.

Complete Web Monitoring demonstrates how to measure every aspect of your web presence -- including analytics, backend performance, usability, communities, customer feedback, and competitive analysis -- whether you're running an e-commerce site, a community, a media property, or a Software-as-a-Service company. This book's concrete examples, clear explanations, and practical recommendations make it essential for anyone who runs a website.

With this book you will:

• Discover how visitors use and interact with your site through web analytics, segmentation, conversions, and user interaction analysis
• Find out your market's motivations with voice-of-the-customer research
• Measure the health and availability of your website with synthetic testing and real-user monitoring
• Track communities related to your online presence, including social networks, forums, blogs, microblogs, wikis, and social news aggregators
• Understand how to assemble this data into clear reports tailored to your organization and audience

You can't fix what you don't measure. Complete Web Monitoring shows you how to transform missed opportunities, frustrated users, and spiraling costs into online success.

"This is a very comprehensive view of just about everything one needs to know about how websites work and what one needs to know about them. I'd like to make this book required reading for every employee at Gomez." -- Imad Mouline, CTO of Gomez

About the Author

Alistair Croll is an analyst at research firm Bitcurrent, where he covers emerging web technologies, networking, and online applications. Prior to Bitcurrent, Alistair co-founded Coradiant, a leader in online user monitoring, as well as research firm Networkshop. He has held product management positions with 3Com Corporation, Primary Access, and Eicon Technology. Alistair contributes to industry events such as Interop (where he runs the Cloud Computing and SaaS tracks), Structure, Mesh and Web2Expo. He also writes for a variety of blogs ( http://www.linkedin.com/in/alistaircroll) and is the author of numerous articles on Internet performance, security, cloud computing, and web technologies. Alistair co-authored Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Applications (1999) from Prentice-Hall.

Sean Power spends way too much time on the computer and needs to get out more. He has worked as a web systems administrator since the mid 90s, has worked with online communities for companies such as MTV Northern Europe, and helped users reduce the headaches of managing and monitoring web infrastructures through Coradiant, a web performance monitoring vendor. Prior to working at Coradiant, he was technical reviewer for the Addison-Wesley book Troubleshooting Linux Firewalls. Sean is currently working as community gardener for Akoha, a company pioneering the industry of "social games," where he handles all things community and analytics. This puts a mile on his face, and lets him sleep well at night. He completes his full plate by supporting the companion website to the book he wrote with Alistair Croll, Total Web Monitoring, published by O'Reilly. In his spare time, Sean makes sure that servers stay up and curses spammers in the EFnet IRC community and occasionally updates his personal music related blog, when he's not writing web optimization articles. You can find out more about him on LinkedIn (http: //linkedin.com/in/slpower), hear him ramble away on Twitter (http: //www.twitter.com/seanpower), or read about other stuff he's thinking of at the website he shares with Alistair, http: //www.totalwebmonitoring.com.

---

Product Details Paperback: 662 pages Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (June 29, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 0596155131 ISBN-13: 978-0596155131 Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.5 inches Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #38,489 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: (What's this?) #15 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Modeling & Simulation #21 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Databases > Data Mining #27 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Project Management > PMP Exam

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Search Inside This Book:

---

Inside This Book (learn more)

Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Search Inside This Book:

---

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	68% buy the item featured on this page: Complete Web Monitoring: Watching Your Visitors, Performance, Communities, and Competitors 5.0 out of 5 stars (4) $31.50
	16% buy Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers 4.8 out of 5 stars (8) $23.10
	6% buy High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers 4.4 out of 5 stars (38) $19.79
	6% buy Website Optimization 4.9 out of 5 stars (15) $26.39

Explore similar items

---

Tags Customers Associate with This Product  (What's this?) Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people. Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below.  performance(3) usability(3) user experience(3) business(1) interaction design(1) monitoring(1) optimization(1) web development(1) See all 10 tags... Your tags: Add your first tag

Search Products Tagged with   See most popular tags

---

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

---

 

Customer Reviews

4 Reviews 5 star:  (4) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars A new paradigm for monitoring your business's online presence, September 23, 2009 By  Lenny Rachitsky "kaizen" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    Amazon Verified Purchase This book will change the way you think about your online business. From page performance, to conversions, to user experience, to social media, "Complete Web Monitoring" covers the gamut of tools, techniques, and services that exist today to help you truly optimize the success of your online business. The book breaks down all online business into four categories: Media, Transaction, Collaboration, and SaaS. Throughout the book, as you learn about the various flavors of analytics, usability, surveys, page performance, monitoring, online community management, collaboration...and how all of this fits together...you are given specific, direct, and actionable steps to take that apply to your specific business model. For example, "Transaction" businesses must focus on conversions, uptime of the checkout process, and what customers are saying about their products. "SaaS" companies should focus on the performance of their most common paths through the application, popularity of specific features, and the user experience of the holistic product. The amount of data and the number of tools at your disposal are overwhelming. At times this book is rather overwhelming. Choosing between an analytics provider, a monitoring service, or a social media tracking service could keep you from actually accomplishing real work. Sometimes too much choice and too much data is a very dangerous thing. It's important to remember to step back, remember the goals behind your measurements, and focus on solving the problems of your customers. With that in mind, the lessons learned in this book will help you zero in on optimizing those end goals. "Complete Web Monitoring" is valuable for the same reason it is difficult to categorize. The various tools and services that you learn about are generally used by many different departments across an organization, all for very different reasons, generally without any sort of collaboration. What you realize reading this book is that there is a lot more to the success of your business than the limited visibility you get from using these tools independently. To truly understand how your business is doing, and how you can improve not only revenue but also how you build your business, you need a holistic picture that includes data from numerous sources. "Complete Web Monitoring" gives you more then anything I've come across previously in giving you the tools, pointing you to the techniques, and teaching you to focus on what is most important. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, One Stop Shop for Achieving Complete End User Satisfaction, September 16, 2009 By  Ismail Elshareef "Ismail Elshareef" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)       This book is ultimately about the End-User. The content of this book is designed to answer the following four questions (in order) about the End-Users: - What did they do? - How did they do it? - Why did they do it? - Could they do it? To answer the first question, a closer look at data warehouse and web analytics is in order. The authors talk about that in detail, listing tools and services that address various issues often faced in collecting user data. The second question, "how did they do it?" is answered through constant monitoring of your site's usability and engagement, both of which are explained well in this book. The third question is about user interaction and feedback. The authors attempt to answer this question by explaining the process of VOC, or Voice of Customer, and all the details it entails. The most important content in this book, I believe, is laid out in the three chapters dedicated to answering the fourth question, "could they do it?" The first chapter talks about Frontend Performance and End-User Experience. The topic of Frontend Performance is relatively new and the list of books dedicated to it is growing rapidly with Steve Souders' books on top of the list. The second chapter tackles Synthetic Monitoring and its advantages and drawbacks. Following that, the authors move into Real User Monitoring in the third and last chapter attempting to answer this question. The authors then dedicate what I think is too much content to communities and competitors and how monitoring them can help you better your site. Although the information is useful, I feel it took away from the focus of the book but not too much to be a distraction. The authors then close the book with a recap and a look at the future of web monitoring. Both chapters are very useful and give a much needed perspective. All in all, this is an excellent book for any serious web entrepreneur and for all online businesses that hold "User Experience" paramount in their business objectives. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent depth of coverage, October 13, 2009 By  Steve S. (California, USA) - See all my reviews Amazon Verified Purchase The authors to an excellent job at covering the material. I especially liked the fact that they understand web sites are multi-faceted and thus generate information from different perspectives with each perspective giving their own view of what is happening and thus how the site can be improved. The authors have also clearly been involved with properties that tie into larger infrastructures through their reference to adjacent components like load balancers and how the web and these devices interact. The tone of the book is friendly and easy to follow (typical of O'Reilly books) and its easy to crack open a section and skim through that to get useful information quickly. The book is a little on the long side, though I don't think I'd want it to be shorter. This can make it appear at first glance to be intimidating, but tone removes that barrier quickly. Five stars for depth of coverage. I recommend it to anyone that is responsible in any way for a web site. You don't know what you can be told about your site's users until you've taken the time to go through this book.		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars Complete Web Monitoring How does your website serve your customers? Do your pages lead them on a merry chase looking for answers that they never really find? Read more Published 1 month ago by Tami Brady Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

---

Customer Discussions

This product's forum Discussion Replies Latest Post No discussions yet Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight Start a new discussion Topic: First post: Receive e-mail when new posts are made Prompts for sign-in   Guidelines Active discussions in related forums Discussion Replies Latest Post science Life's Irreducible Structure 110 3 minutes ago science Problems with the Natural Chemical "Origin of Life" 146 13 minutes ago science GM crops will kill us all 17 15 minutes ago science Why are people here so scientifically illiterate 959 22 minutes ago science Global warming is nothing but a hoax and a scare tactic 3656 51 minutes ago science intelligent design: hypothesis+mechanism+experi... = science 1198 2 hours ago science Protein homologies provide overwhelming evidence for common descent. 129 3 hours ago Search Customer Discussions Search all Amazon discussions

The Performance community Latest activity 18 hours ago 719 customers have contributed 534 products, 36 lists & guides and more... › Explore the community The Usability community Latest activity 12 minutes ago 770 customers have contributed 249 products, 86 lists & guides and more... › Explore the community The Web Development community Latest activity 2 hours ago 1,761 customers have contributed 779 products, 79 lists & guides and more... › Explore the community Related forums oreilly books (2 discussions) performance science (1023 discussions) usability (2 discussions) user experience web development (6 discussions) Explore more › See all Customer Communities › Your communities

---

Listmania!

Next shopping list: A list by Ivan Zuzak   Web Performance and Operations: A list by Joshua S. Spiewak "jspiewak"   Usability and Web Design: A list by S. Yates Create a Listmania! list

Search Listmania!

---

So You'd Like to...

become an Open Source Web Developer: A guide by Jeff Parker "Jeff Parker"   design a better user experience: A guide by Paul Hibbitts Create a guide

Search Guides

---

Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)

Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.

› See featured Amapedia.com articles

---

Look for Similar Items by Category

• Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Modeling & Simulation
• Books > Computers & Internet > Databases > Data Mining
• Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design
• Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Internet
• Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia
• Books > Computers & Internet > Project Management > PMP Exam
• Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Programming
• Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Website Architecture & Usability
• Books > Science > Technology

---

Look for Similar Items by Subject

Search Books by subject:
Publishing on the Internet
Web graphics & design
Computers
Computer - Internet
Computer Books: Web Programming
Computers / Data Modeling & Design
Computers / General
Computers / Internet / General
Computers / Internet / Web Page Design
Computers / Internet / World Wide Web
Computers / Project Management
Computers / User Interfaces
Data Modeling & Design
Internet - Web Site Design
Internet - World Wide Web
Technology & Engineering / General
Web - General
Web - Page Design
Web - Web Programming
Web site development
Web usage mining
Computing: Professional & Programming


i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Ad feedback

 

Feedback If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? Is there any other feedback you would like to provide? Your comments can help make our site better for everyone. Please note that we are unable to respond directly to all feedback submitted via this form, but we'll ask you to sign in so we can contact you if needed.

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.

› View and edit your browsing history

Get to Know Us Careers Investor Relations Press Releases Amazon and Our Planet Make Money with Us Sell on Amazon Join Associates Self-publish with Us › See all Let Us Help You Shipping Rates & Policies Amazon Prime Returns Help

Canada | China | France | Germany | Japan | United Kingdom  And don't forget: Amazon Windowshop | AmazonWireless | Askville | Audible | DPReview | Endless | IMDb | Shopbop | SoundUnwound | Warehouse Deals by Amazon | Zappos Conditions of Use | Privacy Notice  © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Product Details

• Paperback: 662 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (June 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596155131
• ISBN-13: 978-0596155131
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #38,489 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #15 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Modeling & Simulation
  #21 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Databases > Data Mining
  #27 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Project Management > PMP Exam

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new paradigm for monitoring your business's online presence, September 23, 2009

By	Lenny Rachitsky "kaizen" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This book will change the way you think about your online business. From page performance, to conversions, to user experience, to social media, "Complete Web Monitoring" covers the gamut of tools, techniques, and services that exist today to help you truly optimize the success of your online business.

The book breaks down all online business into four categories: Media, Transaction, Collaboration, and SaaS. Throughout the book, as you learn about the various flavors of analytics, usability, surveys, page performance, monitoring, online community management, collaboration...and how all of this fits together...you are given specific, direct, and actionable steps to take that apply to your specific business model. For example, "Transaction" businesses must focus on conversions, uptime of the checkout process, and what customers are saying about their products. "SaaS" companies should focus on the performance of their most common paths through the application, popularity of specific features, and the user experience of the holistic product.

The amount of data and the number of tools at your disposal are overwhelming. At times this book is rather overwhelming. Choosing between an analytics provider, a monitoring service, or a social media tracking service could keep you from actually accomplishing real work. Sometimes too much choice and too much data is a very dangerous thing. It's important to remember to step back, remember the goals behind your measurements, and focus on solving the problems of your customers. With that in mind, the lessons learned in this book will help you zero in on optimizing those end goals.

"Complete Web Monitoring" is valuable for the same reason it is difficult to categorize. The various tools and services that you learn about are generally used by many different departments across an organization, all for very different reasons, generally without any sort of collaboration. What you realize reading this book is that there is a lot more to the success of your business than the limited visibility you get from using these tools independently. To truly understand how your business is doing, and how you can improve not only revenue but also how you build your business, you need a holistic picture that includes data from numerous sources. "Complete Web Monitoring" gives you more then anything I've come across previously in giving you the tools, pointing you to the techniques, and teaching you to focus on what is most important.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, One Stop Shop for Achieving Complete End User Satisfaction, September 16, 2009

By	Ismail Elshareef "Ismail Elshareef" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is ultimately about the End-User. The content of this book is designed to answer the following four questions (in order) about the End-Users:

- What did they do?
- How did they do it?
- Why did they do it?
- Could they do it?

To answer the first question, a closer look at data warehouse and web analytics is in order. The authors talk about that in detail, listing tools and services that address various issues often faced in collecting user data. The second question, "how did they do it?" is answered through constant monitoring of your site's usability and engagement, both of which are explained well in this book. The third question is about user interaction and feedback. The authors attempt to answer this question by explaining the process of VOC, or Voice of Customer, and all the details it entails.

The most important content in this book, I believe, is laid out in the three chapters dedicated to answering the fourth question, "could they do it?"

The first chapter talks about Frontend Performance and End-User Experience. The topic of Frontend Performance is relatively new and the list of books dedicated to it is growing rapidly with Steve Souders' books on top of the list.

The second chapter tackles Synthetic Monitoring and its advantages and drawbacks. Following that, the authors move into Real User Monitoring in the third and last chapter attempting to answer this question.

The authors then dedicate what I think is too much content to communities and competitors and how monitoring them can help you better your site. Although the information is useful, I feel it took away from the focus of the book but not too much to be a distraction.

The authors then close the book with a recap and a look at the future of web monitoring. Both chapters are very useful and give a much needed perspective.

All in all, this is an excellent book for any serious web entrepreneur and for all online businesses that hold "User Experience" paramount in their business objectives.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent depth of coverage, October 13, 2009

By	Steve S. (California, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

The authors to an excellent job at covering the material. I especially liked the fact that they understand web sites are multi-faceted and thus generate information from different perspectives with each perspective giving their own view of what is happening and thus how the site can be improved. The authors have also clearly been involved with properties that tie into larger infrastructures through their reference to adjacent components like load balancers and how the web and these devices interact.

The tone of the book is friendly and easy to follow (typical of O'Reilly books) and its easy to crack open a section and skim through that to get useful information quickly.

The book is a little on the long side, though I don't think I'd want it to be shorter. This can make it appear at first glance to be intimidating, but tone removes that barrier quickly.

Five stars for depth of coverage. I recommend it to anyone that is responsible in any way for a web site. You don't know what you can be told about your site's users until you've taken the time to go through this book.