Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions

The authors of Actionable Web Analytics clearly understand the technical intricacies of Web analytics. More importantly, they clearly understand the challenges faced by Web marketers and managers in distilling and communicating the value and ROI of Web sites and interactive campaigns. Given the critical need for cost-effective marketing integration across all media, I believe this is a must-read for everyone from Web analytics gurus to corporate CMOs.

This is a great book, and provides a whole program for actionable web analytics. The chapters towards the end are especially useful (data driven brief, agencies, staffing and tuning the team are all quite different to what I've seen in other references) and of course the monetising chapter is worth the cover price alone. But what really stood out to me was what an easy read it is, Jason and Shane convey some hardcore and complicated concepts in such an easily understandable manner, it's a joy to read.

A simple, yet powerful, easy to understand approach for all levels of expertise in the area of web analytics. For those that feel they are just keeping their head above water in the ever turbulent web data ocean, this book is a must. The layout is such that its not only a good first read, but also easily referenced later. Great effort Jason.

If you are a web analyst, definitely, definitely add this book to your web analytics collection and read the two chapters on Monetization and Prioritization. Even if you read nothing else in the book, I promise your carreer will change for the better. People will start listening to you. You will get a promotion and you will get a raise. And you will start achieving more results with web analytics. It may not even take you more than 30 minutes to grasp the essence of those chapters. Awesome. And if you are a manager of a web analytics program. Why reinvent the wheel, this book has best practices for managing. Having been in the industry for seven years I read almost every book on web analytics. Was great to see that this book adds its own unique insights that must not be missing in ones collection.

I pre-ordered this book after hearing Jason and Shane speak at the Omniture conference in March. It was finally delivered yesterday and I read it cover-to-cover last night. The book provides an easy to read and easy to understand overview of what web analytics is and why it is such an important part of web marketing. It also does an excellent job of identifying key web marketing best practices and the differences in skills that distinguish an analyst that is trolling away in a cube and an analyst that CEO invites to his country club for lunch. Read this book if you want to implement best of breed strategies and tactics that work in almost any organization. Digest each page of this book and you might be the person that replaces the CEO one day.