Google Analytics [Paperback]

Justin Cutroni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0596158009 | ISBN-13: 978-0596158002 | Edition: 1

Do you know what people do when they visit your website or web app? Or how much the site contributes to your bottom line? Google Analytics keeps track and makes it easy for you to learn precisely what's happening. This hands-on guide shows you how to get the most out of this free and powerful tool -- whether you're new to Google Analytics or have been using it for years.

Google Analytics shows you how to track different market segments and analyze conversion rates, and reveals advanced techniques such as marketing-campaign tracking, a valuable feature that most people overlook. And this practical book not only provides complete code samples for web developers, it also explains the concepts behind the code to marketers, managers, and others on your team.

• Discover exactly how the Google Analytics system works
• Learn how to configure the system to measure data most relevant to your business goals
• Track online marketing activities, including cost-per-click ads, email, and internal campaigns
• Track events -- rather than page views -- on sites with features such as maps, embedded video, and widgets
• Configure Google Analytics to track enterprise data, including multiple domains
• Use advanced techniques such as custom variables and CRM integration

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Justin Cutroni is a web analytics expert and Google Analytics Certified Partner. Justin commonly interacts with senior level management to drive the strategic use of web data and collaborates with marketing and IT teams to develop implementation plans and processes needed to generate actionable data and business insights. An active participant in the web analytics community, Justin speaks at various industry events with a strong passion for sharing knowledge and advancing the analytics industry.

Justin is authorized by Google to teach Google Analytics Seminars for Success and has conducted numerous training events in the US and Europe.

Product Details

• Paperback: 218 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (September 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596158009
• ISBN-13: 978-0596158002
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #245,896 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #82 in Books > Computers & Technology > Internet & Web Culture > E-Commerce

More About the Author

Justin is a consultant, author, and the Analytics Advocate for Google. Some of Justin's former clients include Toyota, Sony Music, Universal Music, the National Hockey League, Wells Fargo, and HomeAway.

As a consultant, Justin commonly works with executive to help them understand how they can leverage digital analytics and online data to improve their business. He also interacts with marketing and IT teams to define what business metrics they should track and how to collect the data.

Justin is also an active participant in the digital analytics community. He publishes the blog Analytics Talk and has authored or co-authored three books: Google Analytics (O'Reilly, 2007), Performance Marketing with Google Analytics (Wiley 2010) and Google Analytics, 2nd Ed. (O'Reilly, 2010).

In 2006 he developed the initial content for the Google Analytics Seminars for Success program; an international training program focused on measuring websites performance and website optimization using Google's suite of tools. He taught the class for over 5 years.

Justin has been invited to speak at various analytics and online marketing events around the world such as eMetrics, Web Analytics Association Symposiums, STRATA Online Events and various Google Analytics user events. He's known for his entertaining presentation style and ability to simplify complex subjects and communicate them effectively to an audience.

In 2011 Justin was nominated as Innovator of the year by the Web Analytics Association. In 2012 he was nominated for Most Influential Industry Contributor by the Digital Analytics Association.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting Analytics Book September 9, 2010

By Anthony Lawrence VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I had low expectations for this. After all, Google Analytics has very detailed help pages and you can find specific pages for all of the major concepts covered in this book. So what's the point?

Well, maybe there is a point. First of all, someone new to Analytics may prefer the structure of a walk through. But even someone who has been using Analytics from the day they turned it loose in December of 2005 (that's me) can benefit from the specific examples and gotchas detailed here.

For example, I had never thought of tagging links I send out in emails. I don't know why, and it's not that Google's help pages don't mention that. But their page on link tagging is very Adwords oriented, so I missed that you can tag any link. After reading this book, I have even tagged some internal site links so I can easily see if they get used.

I also hadn't thought about tracking outgoing links. Oh, I knew I could, but again I just didn't ever do it. For reasons I can't entirely explain, the section of this book that ytalks about that made me realize that there actually are a few outbound links I would like to track!

The only complaint here is the same complaint I have about far too many books: excruciatingly boring detail in the beginning that far too quickly ramps up to off-hand references without detailed explanation. I do not know why so many technical books exhibit this same pattern, but I suspect it's probably because the basic stuff is easy to detail and the more tech stuff would just get far too complicated. That's fine, I get it, but leave out the detail on the basic stuff. Nobody who is interested in the more complicated subjects needs the detail of the basics!

I do think the book would have a wider audience if it didn't ignore Adsense entirely. The author is probably accustomed to dealing with large sites that don't care much about that, but for many of us little guys, Adsense is an important part of our site income. A bit of attention wouldn't have hurt, I think.

Other than that, this is very good. I picked up some references to tools I did not know about, got some hints that I do not remember noticing in the Analytics Help pages, and have some new ideas percolating in my head.

By the way, this book led me to the author's Analytics Talk blog at [...] I have been enjoying reading that, probably even more than the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Google Analytics for the power user May 19, 2012

By Ilya Grigorik

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you know the right knobs, Google Analytics can do just about anything. Of course, the flexibility of the tool also comes at a price: there are a dozen ways to accomplish each task, and often it is not clear which path you should take. This book fills this void by providing a number of great recommendations for how to setup your profiles, why and how to setup profile filters, best practices for instrumenting your links, configure cross-domain tracking, deep dive on the format of the gif hits, and much more. This is a book for a power user. It mostly assumes you are already familiar with Google Analytics, you've read through the docs, you've already setup a couple of profiles, and you've bumped heads with GA on several occasions trying to configure more advanced use cases. Think of this book as your GA consultant in a box - instead much cheaper, and well documented.

Disclaimer: I've worked as an engineer/manager with the Google Analytics team. I would without hesitation (and have) recommend this book even to the GA engineers on the team.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Google Analytics - The Missing Manual September 11, 2010

By Jason L. Mcdonald

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I agree with the previous reviewer. It is excruciating detail, and Analytics is probably anything but fun. I am not a metrics person, although I teach online SEO and AdWords (You can click on my profile or Google Jason McDonald and SEO). But... my students need Analytics, and the Google Support (especially Conversion University) is good, but it's nice to have a paper manual to "go along" with your journey thru Analytics.

The book has good organization. I really appreciated the chapter on FILTERS. This is very hidden in Analytics, and poorly explained. One critical thing to do is to EXCLUDE your own IP from Analytics, so that your own clicking around your website doesn't distort your data. Mr. Cutroni explains how to do this, well. I really appreciated it that.

Goals and funnels are other aspects that are explained well in the book. Unfortunately, some of the ideas like 'event tracking' are beyond the reach of the average person... That's why we have Geeks. But even if you are not going to implement these features, yourself, directly... It's good to know that they EXIST.

Knowing what to ask for is huge to Analytics success, and this book is an excellent overview. I recommend it.