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Review: Web Site Measurement Hacks

Web Site Measurement Hacks is a wonderful book, the best how-to book on web analytics I've ever seen. But it's also fairly technical. Readers need to know Perl, web server configuration, etc. I wish the book could be mastered by the average small business person -- but alas, web analytics is a technical field -- no getting around it. So the average online business owner or marketing manager should be sure to get this book into the hands of the webmaster or technical person responsible for the company site.

The book is a collaboration between Eric Peterson, senior research analyst for JupiterResearch and author of Web Analytics Demystified, and 17 of the top people in the field, consisting of 100 "hacks," that is, clever, "quick-and-dirty" ways of solving a computer-related problem. The purpose of the book is "to help you know what to do to gain insight into how people use your web site."

Even though it's technical, the book doesn't rush into the subject assuming you know everything. The first chapter, "Web Measurement Basics" uses 13 hacks as sub-topics to go over the basics, explain the terminology, and get you started. A second chapter explains in great detail just how measurements are made using cookies, logfiles, and JavaScript. Successive chapters uncover ways to get to usable information about online marketing, website usability, technographics and demographics, e-commerce, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

The chapter on "Online Marketing Measurement," delves into terminology, objectives, conversion events, banner ads, e-mail marketing, paid and organic search, affiliate marketing, landing pages, RSS, visitor segmentation, referring domains and URLs, customer loyalty, etc.

The book is not packed full of computer code; many of the hacks are explanations of how to approach data measurement, rather than providing specific coding. However, the book (with the code available on a related website) includes several helpful programs, including one to measure RSS syndication and another to run split-path tests.

If you're serious about measuring so you can improve website performance, this book is an indispensable tool for your webmaster or site measurement personnel. Many books I review are passed on to a college library. Not this one. I want Web Site Measurement Hacks on my own reference shelf.

At this writing the book was available through Amazon for US $16.47, Canada CDN$23.42, UK £12.25, Germany €23.50, France €21.85, and Japan ¥2,318.