Book review: Web Analytics – An Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik

The Synopsis and Why marketers should read this

Authored by the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google Avinash Kaushik (AK from here on), “Web Analytics: An hour a day” is a detailed, useful guide on the essentials of Web analytics. Written in 2007, the book still remains very current in today’s context even though things move very quickly in the digital world. Many common mistakes he outlined are still rampant in today’s business world and his best practices still not common practice at all. For professional marketers who want to identify meaningful insights to build and execute a successful digital marketing campaign, and then measure those campaigns to derive learnings for the future, this book will help you get to the nuts and bolts of the web analytics and put those learnings into practice.

The strategic mindset and approach to web analytics

AK started the book by emphasizing that traditional web analytics is no longer relevant, and metrics such as “page views, hits, top exit pages, time on page” should be viewed with a grain of salt because they say very little about the success or performance of a site, or even worse lead the decision makers down the wrong path. Same as the number of followers on Twitter or the number of Likes on Facebook, according to him, “all stink worse than Amorphophallus Titanum”.

This was a great “aha” moment for me because many times people use time spent on a website as an indicator of how “engaged” a visitor is, while longer time on a website or many navigations around might mean that the visitor is not able to find the information he or she wants easily (more an indicator of how “frustrated” a visitor is!).

Instead of using these Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), it is advised by AK to focus on Key Insights Analysis (KIA) because these metrics allow the business to derive “actionable” insights from the web that will actually turn into business results.

He then advocates for the “metrics that matter”: Click Density Analysis (where are visitors clicking and are they clicking on where we want them to click), Visitor Primary Purpose (why visitors come to our site), Task Completion rate (not only conversion, but also if visitors found what they want on the site). These metrics move the focus from purely quantitative data to include qualitative data: not just the What but the Why of analytics. Most of the analytics tools can only give you the What but will not give you the Why, and knowing the patterns of the visits without understanding why the visitors do what they do could potentially lead to making the wrong decisions or addressing the wrong issues.

Build a strong analytics organization and system

What makes this book stand out to me and different from other how-to guidebook was that it not only focuses on the tools and technicalities of learning analytics, but also provides very business-savvy advice for managers on how to build the culture and system that would support an analytics- friendly organization. The author suggests following the “10/90 rule” which dictates that only 10% of companies’ analytics budget should be spent on the tools, while 90% of the budget should be dedicated to the people using those tools. What this means, again, is that the Why analysis behind the numbers and metrics are the key to the analytics game, and people are critical in that process of unlocking such valuable information.

He also outlined qualities to look for that would help companies identify great web analysts, who are not only masters of the tools but also customer-centric marketers who are comfortable in the qualitative world of customer observations and customer behaviours and can link the customers’ requirements to the technical aspects of the web.

The techniques

For a non-technical marketer, this portion of the book presented the most challenge for me and caused me the most procrastination. I thought I would not be able to grasp the technical details behind the analytics. After a lot of delaying, I finally decided to roll up my sleeves and started working on it. I wouldn’t say it is easy, but thanks to the approachable language and always linking the technology back to the business objectives and the Why behind consumer behaviors, AK brought senses to the technology and made it more marketer-friendly. So for the marketers out there who are stepping up to the game of digital marketing analytics or are managing a team of marketing analysts who provide you insights about what’s working and not working in your digital strategy, this book would give you that much needed foundation to understand the critical knowledge while having conversations with your team.

One highlight in this part of the book that makes AK’s work even more relevant for marketers is competitive intelligence. This again was another “aha” moment for me since I had a misconception that digital analytics is very much focused on your own data and your own customers’ behaviors. AK shows you how to look at share of visits that you have compared to your competitors in the industry, upstream and downstream traffic against competition (where your customers are from and where they are going next) and your source of traffic to sites compared to your competitors. Since this book (published in 2007), AK has updated competitive intelligence practice with more tools on his blog Occam’s Razor (a must read for marketers in this digital age). He has added other metrics/ tools that are now available such as comparing number of unique visits, visitor profiles, audience interests, search/keyword competitive performance, display advertising opportunity analysis and even social strategy effectiveness analysis and many more (Check it out here http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/competitive-intelligence-analysis-tools-metrics-reports-techniques/#traffic). Depending on your business’ objectives and strategies, these tools would give you that critical insights into your performance against your competitors and let you know where you need to “up your game” to win in the digital space.

Looking ahead

Since this book, AK has published Web Analytics 2.0 in 2009 with more updated content, and constantly writes on his blog. For those who have read and learnt the strategic thinking and approach and the basics of web analytics from this book, it would be a great advanced source of further learning. This book in itself is by no means a one time reading, it is meant to learnt from continuously, an hour everyday (just as its title suggests!).

So bring this book along to your favourite coffee shop on a Sunday and have fun learning!