Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success

Whether you're a small business owner, a corporate manager, or someone just starting a business venture, Web Metrics is a must- read. For small and new business entrepreneurs who cannot afford a marketing department, Web Metrics gives an inside look into how experts in leading industries improve their online marketing strategies.

This book provides an excellent overview of how to run a Web site like a real business. If your mandate is to improve the success of your company's online presence, and you're unsure of where to start, you'll find value in each chapter. Sterne does a nice job of connecting Web metrics to traditional business concepts. If you have a strong understanding of the value of Web metrics, or if your company already takes a serious approach to analyzing site data, setting specific business goals, and carefully measuring success, then you're better off selecting a more targeted book that delves deeper into your area of interest. Sterne covers a lot of ground at a macro level across a wide range of subjects. The table of contents provides a detailed overview, I recommend looking it over. I read this book in 2004 and still found it current and informative. A few sections are a little behind from a technology standpoint, but don't let that deter you. This book gets full marks for making it easy to understand why tracking and analyzing Web metrics is critical in today's online business environment.

A complete how-to book to determine the success of a Web site. Sterne clearly explains how to use metrics to quantify business goals. The tools, services, and techniques for measurement described in the book will be helpful for any e-business or other company with an Internet presence. A must-read.

One key phrase from this book sticks in my mind and summarizes the entire theme of the book, "You know your Web site is serving pages. But is it serving company?" Indeed, this is the most business-focused book among the ones I've read on web metrics. The author focuses on two major areas: marketing and customer relationship management metrics, which are closely related. If you're seeking a more technical book, I recommend "Scaling for E-Business: Technologies, Models, Performance, and Capacity Planning" by Daniel A. Menasce and Virgilio A. F. Almeida.Not only does this book go deeply into the business-related metrics, but it also shows how select the most meaningful metrics (you cannot economically measure or understand everything). It also shows you how to develop a strategy for gathering and using the metrics, including convincing upper management of the need for the strategy. Interestingly, you can also take the information provided in this book and use it as the basis for a competitive intelligence strategy, because the very metrics that are meaningful to your business are also key indicators for your competitors. You can either benchmark your competitors, or determine if their measurement strategy is as mature as yours. While the author didn't explicitly cover this, the material in the book certainly gives you the foundation for such a strategy.If you work in marketing or are responsible for CRM you'll find that the book's approach and wealth of ideas and techniques can be put to immediate use. As a side note, if you are using this book in conjunction with a CRM strategy, you'll also want to read "The CRM Handbook: A Business Guide to Customer Relationship Management" by Jill Dyché, which touches upon the metrics aspects presented in this book, and goes deeper into CRM. In addition to the material presented in the book, the accompanying web site is equally as valuable, especially the numerous links to related material that is grouped by book chapter.

This is *the* book to read about web metrics and measuring web site success.I read much of this book in a couple of days and found it to be superb -- clear, to the point, funny and informative. A really excellent, useful book -- I rarely read whole e-marketing type books because, to be honest, most of them bore me to tears.This is a winner.