Web Analytics Demystified

Knowing everything you can about each click to your Web site can help you make strategic decisions regarding your business. This book is about the why, not just the how, of web analytics and the rules for developing a "culture of analysis" inside your organization. Why you should collect various types of data. Why you need a strategy. Why it must remain flexible. Why your data must generate meaningful action. The authors answer these critical questions—and many more—using their decade of experience in Web analytics.

As the world of marketing goes digital, companies must integrate web analytics into their process to see evaluate how marketing campaigns perform and to improve website conversion. Adobe SiteCatalyst, the principal component of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite (formerly Omniture), is the most advanced web analytics tool available on the market. The Adobe SiteCatalyst Handbook is your key to understanding how to use this powerful web analytics tool. Recognized SiteCatalyst expert Adam Greco walks you through the building blocks of the program and shows you real-world examples to help further your understanding of the product. For end-users of SiteCatalyst, the book provides how-to instructions for all major SiteCatalyst features. You will also learn how to apply SiteCatalyst to common web analytics challenges ranging from campaign tracking to shopping cart analysis to visitor engagement. It also includes useful tips on using on Adobe ReportBuilder and advanced features that will benefit seasoned SiteCatalyst users. In the end, you’ll be able to answer business questions that you never thought you could address and generate web analyses that should improve your website’s return on investment. You’ll learn how to: * Create web analytics reports and data exports * Design sophisticated web analytics dashboards * Effectively track online marketing campaigns * Analyze website shopping cart performance * Connect online and post-website data * Master website segmentation techniques * Use basic and advanced pathing analysis * Understand the inner workings of Adobe SiteCatalyst

Your Groundbreaking Framework for Measurement and Reporting Most people find measurement, analytics, and reporting daunting—and L&D professionals are no different. As these practices have become critically important for organizations’ efforts to improve performance, talent development professionals have often been slow to embrace them for many reasons, including the seeming complexity and challenge of the practices. Few organizations have a well-thought-out measurement and reporting strategy, and there are often scant resources, limited time, and imperfect data to work with when organizations do attempt to create one. Measurement Demystified: Creating Your L&D Measurement, Analytics, and Reporting Strategy is a much-needed and welcomed resource that breaks new ground with a framework to simplify the discussion of measurement, analytics, and reporting as it relates to L&D and talent development practitioners. This book helps practitioners select and use the right measures for the right reasons; select, create, and use the right types of reports; and create a comprehensive measurement and reporting strategy. Recognizing the angst and reluctance people often show in these areas, authors and experts David Vance and Peggy Parskey break down the practices and processes by providing a common language and an easy-to-use structure. They describe five types of reports, four broad reasons to measure, and three categories of measures. Their method works for large and small organizations, even if yours is an L&D staff of one or two. The guidance remains the same: Start small and grow. Measurement Demystified is a great first book for talent development professionals with no prior knowledge of or experience with measurement and a valuable resource for measurement experts. Those adept at lower levels of training evaluation will grow their knowledge base and capabilities, while measurement experts will discover shortcuts and nuggets of information to enhance their practices. A more comprehensive treatment of these important topics will not be found elsewhere.

Any organization that has a searchable web site or intranet is sitting on top of hugely valuable and usually under-exploited data: logs that capture what users are searching for, how often each query was searched, and how many results each query retrieved. Search queries are gold: they are real data that show us exactly what users are searching for in their own words. This book shows you how to use search analytics to carry on a conversation with your customers: listen to and understand their needs, and improve your content, navigation and search performance to meet those needs.

Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this step-by-step guide shows you how to implement a successful Web analytics strategy. Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his thought-provoking style, debunks leading myths and leads you on a path to gaining actionable insights from your analytics efforts. Discover how to move beyond clickstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company’s bottom line. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Learn Google Analytics Step-by-Step in Plain English The 4th Edition of Google Analytics Demystified covers Google Analytics'' current features, paying special attention to new metrics, support such as Intelligence Questions, and the new Global Site Tag tracking code. The book discusses the characteristics of the new code as well as the code''s impact on page and link tracking, Ecommerce reporting, and event creation and transmission to Google Analytics. Additionally, new scripts have been provided to allow scroll depth, video play and form completion monitoring when the new tracking code is used.Google Analytics is a free platform that you can use to significantly improve the performance of your digital properties. Unfortunately, many are deterred from using the data provided by Analytics because they fear that it is too complicated, too technical, and too time consuming. Google Analytics Demystified eliminates all of these potential barriers.The 4th Edition of Google Analytics Demystified covers Google Analytics'' current features, paying special attention to those that have been added or updated in the past year. All of these features are explained in easy-to-follow, non-jargon discussions with particular emphasis on interpretation and strategic application. The book helps you better understand how to use and apply Google Analytics data so that you can immediately improve the success of your own digital property.Google Analytics Demystified is real-world in orientation. It presents practical examples and is written for those who want to improve the performance of their digital properties without being sidetracked on technical detours. As a result, the book helps you better understand how to use Google Analytics to make better informed and therefore more successful decisions.The sequenced instructional approach will help you answer questions such as: How do visitors find my site and what do they do when they arrive? What are the most common entrance pages? What are the most common exit pages? What content do my visitors find most interesting and motivating? How much of my content is actually being consumed? What do visitors do after they read my content? How easily can site visitors find what they are looking for? Is my site content aligned with the search terms my visitors use? What can I do to improve visitors'' experiences and facilitate site interactions? How effective are my campaigns and how can I make them more effective? How are my site transactions influenced by visitor characteristics and other aspects of site engagement? How do I create and evaluate site goals? How can I conduct tests to optimize my site''s layout, content, organization, and navigation? How can I identify and examine the characteristics and behaviors of key subgroups of site visitors? How can I monitor and evaluate important site interactions, such as downloads, video viewing, and page scrolling? How can I ensure the integrity of my data by eliminating referral and ghost spam? What can I learn from an examination of individual visitors and their behaviors? What is the Lifetime Value (LTV) of my customers acquired through email, social media, and paid search? How do I calculate certain metrics not provided by Google Analytics, such as Revenue per User or Searches per User? How do I create a custom report that is tailored to my exact information needs and business goals; and how do I share this report with colleagues and clients?

Invaluable advice on analyzing and measuring the effects of social media Do you wish you could sit down with an expert to figure out whether or not your social media initiatives are working? With Social Media Metrics Secrets, you can! Expert John Lovett taps into his years of training and experience to reveal tips, tricks, and advice on how to analyze and measure the effects of social media and gauge the success of your initiatives. He uses mini case studies to demonstrate how to manage social operations with process and technology by applying key performance indicators, and assessing the business value of social media. Highlights how social media can impact all aspects of your business and transform the way you quantify successful interactions with customers Shares innovative techniques for managing the massive volume of social analytics data by putting data to work in ways that contribute to your organizational goals Details techniques for adopting a Social Analytics Framework for understanding evolving consumer behavior necessary to compete in a socially networked future Written in a conversational tone, Social Media Metrics Secrets goes behind the scenes to present you with unbeatable advice and unparalleled insight into social media metrics.