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Sams Teach Yourself Google Analytics in 10 Minutes
Sams Teach Yourself Google AnalyticsÖ in 10 Minutes gives you straightforward, practical answers when you need fast results. By working through its 10-minute lessons, you'll learn everything you need to use Google Analytics to accurately measure your website's performanceùand improve it!
Tips point out shortcuts and solutions
Cautions help you avoid common pitfalls
Notes provide additional information
10 minutes is all you need to learn how to...
Quickly create a Google Analytics account and add Google Analytics to your site
Define goals and measure how well your site is achieving them
Track visitors from search engines, pay-per-click advertising, email, and other sources
Discover the pages your visitors view, how long they stay, and where they exit
Monitor specific user actions, such as playing embedded video, selecting Flash menu items, or downloading files
Identify your best and worst content, and fix poorly performing pages
Improve your site by tracking error pages and broken links
Measure AdWords traffic, position, and e-commerce performance
Manage Google Analytics through the Dashboard
Customize Google Analytics to work more effectively with your site
Capture more accurate information by filtering out internal traffic
Choose the right reports and data, understand them, and act on what you learn
Tips point out shortcuts and solutions
Cautions help you avoid common pitfalls
Notes provide additional information
10 minutes is all you need to learn how to...
Quickly create a Google Analytics account and add Google Analytics to your site
Define goals and measure how well your site is achieving them
Track visitors from search engines, pay-per-click advertising, email, and other sources
Discover the pages your visitors view, how long they stay, and where they exit
Monitor specific user actions, such as playing embedded video, selecting Flash menu items, or downloading files
Identify your best and worst content, and fix poorly performing pages
Improve your site by tracking error pages and broken links
Measure AdWords traffic, position, and e-commerce performance
Manage Google Analytics through the Dashboard
Customize Google Analytics to work more effectively with your site
Capture more accurate information by filtering out internal traffic
Choose the right reports and data, understand them, and act on what you learn
- GenresTechnology
234 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2010
6 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 17, 2018
Exactly What Was Needed
Recently I joined a corporate IT steering committee and I needed a quick managerial overview of Google Analytics. The basic steps of applying to Google for a free account and using and managing the software were quite clear, even to someone like myself who is not a web administrator and did not have a web site to try it on.
The way Google Analytics works is that you have to retrofit a small snippet of JavaScript code to each of the pages on your web site which in our case would be quite easy to do as all our web pages refer back to a common page of JavaScript. Additionally one can trace file downloads, the use of social media widgets (digg, facebook) and the playback of embedded media - in our case this would not only take some effort to retrofit but since we outsource a number of projects, we'd find it difficult to maintain and monitor as a standard. The attached code sends Google information about the web interaction: ip address, page requested, country and of the requester, information about the capabilities of the browser (we're interested in measuring and segmenting mobile traffic), search engine used and which keywords were used to get to the page among other information.
According to my IT guy any or all of this information could also be made available, with minor adjustments, from our Apache web server. The difference is that with Google Analytics we can choose to monitor individual web pages and with Apache we either monitor all web pages on a site or none, but we don't have to modify our pages. The other advantage of GA is that it comes with a complete set of reports which can be customized. Its a build or buy kind of decision. Since we're not yet sure which information is useful having prepackaged reports would speed our learning curve and with GA we'd have something to work with fairly quickly.
Ch 14 describes "funnels" and "goals". Often a web site will drive you to a particular page - be it a confirmation page for purchase, the thank you page of a survey or the end of an online tutorial or a search for product information. GA counts the number of times each of your "goal" pages are reached. A "funnel" is a series of pages has been designed lead you to a "goal". GA not only tracks the use of funnels, tells you how often the funnel failed (the client started the funnel but did not reach the goal). It can also tell you about "reverse funnels" - alternate routes that people took to reach your goals. There's also an adjustable "push" feature that will email you when a certain number of your goals have been met.
An idea that was an immediate hit with our group came from Chapter 21. By defining the "Page Not Found" page as a goal we should be able to trace back to the referring page and start fixing dead links on our sites. This can be done either with GA or just plain Apache.
There's also a subscription version (described in Ch9-12) which tracks the use of Google adWords, which is one of the main methods Google uses to make money through advertising. With the paid version you agree to anonymously provide information on your traffic including "impressions" and "click through rate" - in return you get information back on how adWords are used in by others in your market segment. IMV it's really quite ingenious how Google sells you back your own information (along with that of your competitors) in order to more effectively market the sale of adWords. I found this interesting, but not relevant to our section of the company.
In summary: Miller's book was able to quickly bring me up to speed on terminology and the capability of the product without needing more than a normal user's grasp of web pages. And if you are a web site administrator or if you've created your own web site for your business there is enough here to get you going. Recommended.
Recently I joined a corporate IT steering committee and I needed a quick managerial overview of Google Analytics. The basic steps of applying to Google for a free account and using and managing the software were quite clear, even to someone like myself who is not a web administrator and did not have a web site to try it on.
The way Google Analytics works is that you have to retrofit a small snippet of JavaScript code to each of the pages on your web site which in our case would be quite easy to do as all our web pages refer back to a common page of JavaScript. Additionally one can trace file downloads, the use of social media widgets (digg, facebook) and the playback of embedded media - in our case this would not only take some effort to retrofit but since we outsource a number of projects, we'd find it difficult to maintain and monitor as a standard. The attached code sends Google information about the web interaction: ip address, page requested, country and of the requester, information about the capabilities of the browser (we're interested in measuring and segmenting mobile traffic), search engine used and which keywords were used to get to the page among other information.
According to my IT guy any or all of this information could also be made available, with minor adjustments, from our Apache web server. The difference is that with Google Analytics we can choose to monitor individual web pages and with Apache we either monitor all web pages on a site or none, but we don't have to modify our pages. The other advantage of GA is that it comes with a complete set of reports which can be customized. Its a build or buy kind of decision. Since we're not yet sure which information is useful having prepackaged reports would speed our learning curve and with GA we'd have something to work with fairly quickly.
Ch 14 describes "funnels" and "goals". Often a web site will drive you to a particular page - be it a confirmation page for purchase, the thank you page of a survey or the end of an online tutorial or a search for product information. GA counts the number of times each of your "goal" pages are reached. A "funnel" is a series of pages has been designed lead you to a "goal". GA not only tracks the use of funnels, tells you how often the funnel failed (the client started the funnel but did not reach the goal). It can also tell you about "reverse funnels" - alternate routes that people took to reach your goals. There's also an adjustable "push" feature that will email you when a certain number of your goals have been met.
An idea that was an immediate hit with our group came from Chapter 21. By defining the "Page Not Found" page as a goal we should be able to trace back to the referring page and start fixing dead links on our sites. This can be done either with GA or just plain Apache.
There's also a subscription version (described in Ch9-12) which tracks the use of Google adWords, which is one of the main methods Google uses to make money through advertising. With the paid version you agree to anonymously provide information on your traffic including "impressions" and "click through rate" - in return you get information back on how adWords are used in by others in your market segment. IMV it's really quite ingenious how Google sells you back your own information (along with that of your competitors) in order to more effectively market the sale of adWords. I found this interesting, but not relevant to our section of the company.
In summary: Miller's book was able to quickly bring me up to speed on terminology and the capability of the product without needing more than a normal user's grasp of web pages. And if you are a web site administrator or if you've created your own web site for your business there is enough here to get you going. Recommended.
October 6, 2010
A nice hands-on explanation of the many functions of Google Analytics. Less a "read" and more of a "reference".
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews