Web Site Measurement Hacks (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: total visits, buy process, total visitors, Online Marketing Measurement, Web Measurement Basics, Measuring Web Site Usability (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In order to establish and then maintain a successful presence on the Web, designing a creative site is only half the battle. What good is an intricate Web infrastructure if you're unable to measure its effectiveness? That's why every business is desperate for feedback on their site's visitors: Who are they? Why do they visit? What information or service is most valuable to them?

Unfortunately, most common Web analytics software applications are long on functionality and short on documentation. Without clear guidance on how these applications should be integrated into the greater Web strategy, these often expensive investments go underused and underappreciated.

Enter "Web Site Measurement Hacks," a guidebook that helps you understand your Web site visitors and how they contribute to your business's success. It helps organizations and individual operators alike make the most of their Web investment by providing tools, techniques, and strategies for measuring--and then improving--their site's usability, performance, and design. Among the many topics covered, you'll learn:

definitions of commonly used terms, such as "key performance indicators" (KPIs)

how to drive potential customers to action

how to gather crucial marketing and customer data

which features are useful and which are superfluous

advanced techniques that senior Web site analysts use on a daily basis

By examining how real-world companies use analytics to their success, "Web Site Measurement Hacks" demonstrates how you, too, can accurately measure your Web site's overall effectiveness. Just as importantly, it bridges the gulf between the technical teams charged with maintaining your Web'sinfrastructure and the business teams charged with making management decisions.

It's the technology companion that every site administrator needs.

About the Author

Eric Peterson has been working in Web analytics since 1998 in both a technical and a marketing capacity. Currently, he is an analyst at JupiterResearch, a well-respected analyst firm focusing exclusively on the Internet, covering analytics, search, content management systems and related application technology. In his short tenure at JupiterResearch, he has been quoted in a number of well-respected publications, including InternetRetailer, InfoWorld, The Deal, Ecommerce Guide, Datamation, MediaDaily News and Clickz. He regularly give Webinars on a number of site operations subjects including Web analytics, key performance indicators, search, usability and content management.

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Product Details Paperback: 430 pages Publisher: O'Reilly Media (August 19, 2005) Language: English ISBN-10: 0596009887 ISBN-13: 978-0596009885 Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #495,991 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: (What's this?) #58 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Web Browsers #88 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Internet > Web Browsers This item is part of The O'Reilly Hacks Series.

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More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Eric T. Peterson Page

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

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Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
total visits, buy process, total visitors, marketing data, technographic data, blank media, customer retention rate, new buyer, portable audio, home audio, shared object, last updated date, online retail model, using custom variables, multiple value events, web measurement tools, web server logfiles, one value event, entry page report, browser overlays, web site measurement, actual search queries, web analytics product, visitor segmentation, paid search keyword

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Online Marketing Measurement, Web Measurement Basics, Measuring Web Site Usability, Build Your Own Web Measurement Application, Tracking Application, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Excel, Buying Sessions, Zero Results, Use the Entry, Use Cross-Sell Data, Measure Content Syndicated, Key Conversion Rates, Measure Paid Search Engine Marketing, Use Language, Define Conversion Events, Fireclick Index, Percent Returning Visitors, Leo Schachter, Entry Page Visits, Percent of Visits Under, Understand Specific Group Activity, Deconstruct Time Spent, Document Object Model, Measure Your Mistakes

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

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	55% buy the item featured on this page: Web Site Measurement Hacks 4.8 out of 5 stars (17) $18.21
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	12% buy Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics 4.8 out of 5 stars (21) $25.19
	11% buy Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions 4.2 out of 5 stars (16) $19.79

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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews 5 star:  (14) 4 star:  (2) 3 star:  (1) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.8 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Like a conversation with a mentor, October 23, 2005 By  Jase T. Wolfe - See all my reviews No matter which page I read in this book, I always felt like I was a student in the area of web site statistics and had been afforded the privilege of speaking one on one with someone who really knows their stuff. Unlike other Hacks books I've read, in this text, all the sections flow together, redefining "Hack" as sub-topics of the current sections primary focus. Although you are expected to have a basic understanding of the underlying technology, the author writes in a very easy to follow, natural language fashion that neither dumbs the topics down nor makes the reader skip ahead passed fluff. In fact, there is a refreshing lack of sidebar or call-out sections, author's useless opinion about the weather in Albuquerque, or paragraphs dedicated to promoting some commercial product. Which leads me to another positive point about this book; any topic presented that requires a third party application to demonstrate with - uses freeware products readily available and without hitches. After spending a few pages explaining what networking traffic tools are appropriate for web site visit tracking and which are appropriate for internal network traffic monitoring, the reader is then introduced to what is / is not appropriate data to monitor, and why. Once a foundation has been laid, time is spent reviewing the different mechanism of gathering usage statistics from your web site, including the web server's intrinsic logging, cookies, Macromedia Flash Local Shared Objects, RSS, JavaScript page tags, and Web Bugs. This book considers the last two to be the primary data gathering engine and are well covered, from general flow and browser trends, to implementing the code and ensuring you have a good privacy policy posted. The bulk of the book is then dedicated in showing you how you you can implement these tools into your web site, RSS feed, and emails to best gather real-time user environmental settings, dynamically display information or reconfigure your presentation based on said settings, and learn if parts of your presentation need to be reworked. There is no end of good information in this book for anyone who wishes to learn the basics & intermediates of web site usage measurements. An abundance of code examples and plain-English presentation ensure that you understand the material and are never lost due to overly complicated presentations of concepts, or put-off by over simplifications. The author has brought an abundance of real-world experience into this text and it shows. 9 of 9 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Getting The Most Out Of Your Web Site, October 19, 2005 By  Daniel McKinnon (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)       In order to keep a web site going, not only do you have to have a great portal for users to view and buy the service you are providing, you also need a way to determine WHO is going to your site. Without the proper tools and analysis, you are stumbling in the dark while plays darts, only occasionally hitting a bullseye, usually just by pure chance. With Eric Peterson's 'Web Site Measurement Hacks', you can maximize not only how you interpret the data you retrieve from visitors, but how to get more users to come to your site and why they are doing so. Chock full of 100 hacks (I would rather call them suggestions), the author uses his 10+ years of vast experience in web statistical analysis to provide a highly educational book that would be useful for anyone that needs to work with web traffic data. This is a very useful guide for the following individuals: Engineer concerned with harvesting of web traffic data for reporting purposes Any marketing individual that is concerned with their online presence (that should be nearly everyone in the field) Web analyst whose job is to sift through web data and track where business is coming from Most of O'Reilly's "Hacks" books are very helpful that provide lots of great information and this guide is no exception. ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars Overall OK, but a lot of typos, and repetition, September 7, 2006 By  Rommil Santiago "Montreal Web Analytics Consu... (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    I personally disagree with the use of "Hacks" in the title - as less than 10% of the hacks in the book are truly hacks. In anycase, it's a decent book to learn about the technicalities of web "measurement" - but I found it really repeated itself a lot. Granted a lot of the KPIs are different for different types of sites - it could of been arranged better. It felt like I read the same thing 10 times, with only minor differences. (Could of been shown in a table maybe). The perl code could of been put all together under a section called "create your own analytics program" instead of breaking it up into parts. The index was incomplete - many abbreviations were not there. Towards the end of the book, the hack cross-references disappeared and abbreviations and other terms just popped up without explanation. This is where the incomplete index caused the most annoyance. There were a LOT of typos - every 20 pages, there was a typo. Frustrating. An appendix summarizing all the KPIs, terms, abbreviations, etc would of been of great use... as the index is incomplete, and there is no true table of contents - finding things with respect to "hack number" is tiresome. But at such a cheap price - worth the money.		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars One of the three first books you should buy about web analytics It has been a couple of years since I read this book, but I'm sure most of it is still relevant. It's definitely one of the first books you should get if you're interested in web... Read more Published 22 months ago by LJ (WebAnalysts.Info) 5.0 out of 5 stars Standard desk copy for web analysts I bought this copy and Web Analytics Demystified. This book repeats a lot of information in "demystified" plus it gives you coding tools to build your own metrics. Read more Published on October 21, 2007 by Karen M. Johnson 5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely useful Companies are looking for more and more business intelligence from their Web sites, both to improve their marketing efforts and determine ROI. This is a good thing. Read more Published on November 9, 2006 by Robert Blakeley 5.0 out of 5 stars A rare one-size-fits-all book! Web Site Measurement Hacks is the best book in the Web Analytics field. The book explains introductory topics as well as the most advanced ones in a chronological natural way... Read more Published on November 7, 2006 by Daniel Waisberg 4.0 out of 5 stars easy to read I think that the book is for differente people: programmers and marketers. But I found it quite interesting althought you have to select what hacks are appropriate for your job. Published on September 19, 2006 by Rafael Lopez Callejon 5.0 out of 5 stars A range of web tools are surveyed in a fine guide recommended for all web site owners Eric T. Peterson's Web Site Measurement Hacks: Tips & Tools To Help Optimize Your Online Business is designed with website operators in mind, providing the insights on how to use... Read more Published on April 3, 2006 by Midwest Book Review 5.0 out of 5 stars GOT HACK? Are you an analytic user or someone charged with improving and maintaining a Web site? Well, you're in luck! Read more Published on March 18, 2006 by John R. Vacca 4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful Guide Good overview. I need something more technical, but a good place to start. Published on January 14, 2006 by Pamlyn K. Nordstrom 5.0 out of 5 stars Very useful introduction to the subject Web site measurement seems to be all the rage at the moment. Look at the source code for just about any commercial web site that you visit and you'll find code that is there to... Read more Published on January 14, 2006 by David Cross 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource for website owners Web sites can be a wonderful thing but it can be hard to determine what to do to make your site better if you have no idea what is happening to visitors. Read more Published on November 23, 2005 by Harold McFarland Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Paperback: 430 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media (August 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596009887
• ISBN-13: 978-0596009885
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #495,991 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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

  #58 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Web Browsers
  #88 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Internet > Web Browsers

• This item is part of The O'Reilly Hacks Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a conversation with a mentor, October 23, 2005

By	Jase T. Wolfe - See all my reviews

No matter which page I read in this book, I always felt like I was a student in the area of web site statistics and had been afforded the privilege of speaking one on one with someone who really knows their stuff. Unlike other Hacks books I've read, in this text, all the sections flow together, redefining "Hack" as sub-topics of the current sections primary focus. Although you are expected to have a basic understanding of the underlying technology, the author writes in a very easy to follow, natural language fashion that neither dumbs the topics down nor makes the reader skip ahead passed fluff. In fact, there is a refreshing lack of sidebar or call-out sections, author's useless opinion about the weather in Albuquerque, or paragraphs dedicated to promoting some commercial product. Which leads me to another positive point about this book; any topic presented that requires a third party application to demonstrate with - uses freeware products readily available and without hitches.

After spending a few pages explaining what networking traffic tools are appropriate for web site visit tracking and which are appropriate for internal network traffic monitoring, the reader is then introduced to what is / is not appropriate data to monitor, and why. Once a foundation has been laid, time is spent reviewing the different mechanism of gathering usage statistics from your web site, including the web server's intrinsic logging, cookies, Macromedia Flash Local Shared Objects, RSS, JavaScript page tags, and Web Bugs. This book considers the last two to be the primary data gathering engine and are well covered, from general flow and browser trends, to implementing the code and ensuring you have a good privacy policy posted. The bulk of the book is then dedicated in showing you how you you can implement these tools into your web site, RSS feed, and emails to best gather real-time user environmental settings, dynamically display information or reconfigure your presentation based on said settings, and learn if parts of your presentation need to be reworked.

There is no end of good information in this book for anyone who wishes to learn the basics & intermediates of web site usage measurements. An abundance of code examples and plain-English presentation ensure that you understand the material and are never lost due to overly complicated presentations of concepts, or put-off by over simplifications. The author has brought an abundance of real-world experience into this text and it shows.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting The Most Out Of Your Web Site, October 19, 2005

By	Daniel McKinnon (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

In order to keep a web site going, not only do you have to have a great portal for users to view and buy the service you are providing, you also need a way to determine WHO is going to your site. Without the proper tools and analysis, you are stumbling in the dark while plays darts, only occasionally hitting a bullseye, usually just by pure chance.

With Eric Peterson's 'Web Site Measurement Hacks', you can maximize not only how you interpret the data you retrieve from visitors, but how to get more users to come to your site and why they are doing so. Chock full of 100 hacks (I would rather call them suggestions), the author uses his 10+ years of vast experience in web statistical analysis to provide a highly educational book that would be useful for anyone that needs to work with web traffic data.

This is a very useful guide for the following individuals:

Engineer concerned with harvesting of web traffic data for reporting purposes

Any marketing individual that is concerned with their online presence (that should be nearly everyone in the field)

Web analyst whose job is to sift through web data and track where business is coming from

Most of O'Reilly's "Hacks" books are very helpful that provide lots of great information and this guide is no exception.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Overall OK, but a lot of typos, and repetition, September 7, 2006

By	Rommil Santiago "Montreal Web Analytics Consu... (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I personally disagree with the use of "Hacks" in the title - as less than 10% of the hacks in the book are truly hacks. In anycase, it's a decent book to learn about the technicalities of web "measurement" - but I found it really repeated itself a lot. Granted a lot of the KPIs are different for different types of sites - it could of been arranged better. It felt like I read the same thing 10 times, with only minor differences. (Could of been shown in a table maybe).

The perl code could of been put all together under a section called "create your own analytics program" instead of breaking it up into parts.

The index was incomplete - many abbreviations were not there. Towards the end of the book, the hack cross-references disappeared and abbreviations and other terms just popped up without explanation. This is where the incomplete index caused the most annoyance.

There were a LOT of typos - every 20 pages, there was a typo. Frustrating.

An appendix summarizing all the KPIs, terms, abbreviations, etc would of been of great use... as the index is incomplete, and there is no true table of contents - finding things with respect to "hack number" is tiresome.

But at such a cheap price - worth the money.