Measuring Success

As you may have noticed I have not been particularly active when it comes to blogging recently. Essentially this autumn I have been busy writing the third edition of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. I am about 2/3 of the way through with the plan to finish before Christmas and have the book ready for Feb 2012 (note new cove colours!). As you may know, my aim with these books has always been to give the reader a thorough understanding of web analytics, from a practitioners point of view, using Google Analytics as the tool of choice. There are lots of details (the book is called Advanced…!), but only when it is necessary. That is, where there is a good business opportunity/insight to be gained from it… What’s new in the 3rd edition? Just in the past 12 months there has been a wealth of announcements from the GA [...]

This a nice (though blatant) attempt from the Small Business Trends website to manipulate social network connections. Essentially, any author who has written a business book this year will obviously want to be on this book awards list. Its a great way for their website to garner a large number of incoming links and mentions on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn et al.

No problem with that. In fact, I wish I had thought of it….!

So while, the winner will be the book with the most votes rather than the best reviews, I am blatantly asking you to vote for me if you liked my work

Germany is an interesting market from a web analytics perspective. The government their is pushing the privacy debate (and the boundaries) on how visitor data can be collected, what constitutes personally identifiable information (PII), and what control the actual visitor has over the whole process of collecting their visit history. I am a strong online privacy advocate, so I welcome the discussion.

For those that are interested e-books (great for copy & pasting code) there is a PDF version of the Google Analytics book – Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics book, purchasable from Wiley.

The second edition of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics started shipping from Amazon last week – almost exactly two years since the first book. Like becoming a father (well not quite), it’s a proud moment and milestone for me. If you want to dive straight in, try one of these: Download sample book content: Intro, Table of Contents, Chapter 1 and the Index (1.88Mb PDF) or Read more about the book or Order from Amazon.com (.co.uk) or Barnes & Noble or buy the PDF ebook or leave me your feedback with a comment, retweet or rating… Here’s what industry movers and shakers think about the second edition: “If you’re looking for a practical, tactical guide in how to implement and think about web marketing optimization, look no further. Brian Clifton spells it out by industry, by job function, by Key Performance Indicator, and more.” —Jim Sterne, Founding Director and [...]