Web analytics essentials are our weekly round-up of advice and developments in software tools to help you get the most from your investment in web analytics. Do let us know any developments that you think we're missing by tweeting @SMARTinsights. Sign-up to our enewsletter if you'd like a reminder through the updates each Friday.

Our recommendations on Site Design and Web Analytics best practice for week starting 30th August 2010

Google Analytics Intelligence update Value: [rating=4] Commentary: I have updated my step-by-step guide to using the custom intelligence feature to summarise the new features added. Implication: Never find the time to go into Google Analytics to check changes to your digital camapaigns or site's performance? The custom alerts feature of Intelligence will automatically remind you of significant changes. New Google Analytics Weighted…

My tip for the best book to help you with your marketing in 2010 isn't one of mine, or one on social media, although recommendations on this will follow soon since I have had a lot of questions about the best book on social media recently. Instead, my recommended book is on marketing analytics. Please recommend the books which you think will help marketers most across the whole of marketing to the comments. TIA! The main audience for this book is arguably for web analytics specialists who will probably have already devoured the book and enjoyed the great chapter on careers advice. But I think there are gems for all involved in marketing in this book which will help you get the most out of your traditional or online marketing in 2010. In fact, I think the book's title is much narrower than the content which covers many aspects of customer insight…

The pace of development of new software to help digital marketers measure, manage and improve through 2009 has been incredible. There has also been no shortage of statistics about how consumer search and socialise online. This page shows the most popular types of software and statistics according to the "voice of the crowd" - that's use you - I have featured these tools and software in my Twitter - partly to be useful and partly just so I can remember the developments without doing a full blog post. This top 10 list is ordered according to how many people have clicked through from Twitter to my directory created with Mediwiki - you can also view the full list of software tools and statistics for digital marketers. Social Media Usage Statistics…

Miles Bennett, CEO of web analytics consultancy Numberminds is a web analytics specialist who helps companies improve their reporting and analysis capabilities so they can get better results from their web marketing. They has helped many of the UK and European retail financial services sites set up and get value from their web analytics solutions. These brands include Unilever, Barclaycard, Barclays Bank, Mint Credit Card, Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Abbey.com, Lombard Direct, Ulster Bank and Coutts. I've known Miles for a few years now and he is a regular speaker and acquaintance from the London Marketing Optimization Summits (www.emetrics.org and www.searchenginestrategies.com).  Since he sees many of the barriers and problems companies face in implementing web analytics he's in a great position to advise on how to avoid these problems by getting web analytics implementations right first time. Q1. Looking at the big picture of digital marketing reporting and performance improvement, what…

I love the expression Cult of Analytics! Two reasons. First, it's a great name for a book. The book in question is from Steve Jackson which is in the Elsevier E-marketing Essentials series for which I'm editor. In a future post, I'll explain the techniques I've found useful from the book, in particular, the REAN framework which I have succesfully applied in some recent consulting projects. [amazon-product]1856176118[/amazon-product] [amazon-product region="us"]1856176118[/amazon-product] Second, it highlights the difference between companies that are successful in their digital marketing and those that lag behind. This post highlights how Amazon has successfully applied the principle of developing a "Cult of Analytics" to drive its success.

Amazon's Culture of Metrics

The expression "Cult of Analytics" highlights one of the reasons behind Amazon's success - the culture that their CEO Jeff Bezos has instilled, almost from Day 1. In Amazonia:Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut, an excellent book charting Amazon's early growth from…

Avinash Kaushik is well known to web analytics aficionados as Google's analytics evangelist, for his book "Web Analytics An Hour a Day" and his Occam's Razor Blog, but I think his insights can help anyone involved aiming to improve their results from their web business - hence this post 'web business optimisation'. So I was delighted that he agreed to this interview for "E-marketing Essentials". In a wide-ranging interview we cover everything from trends in analytics to practical tips to measure and improve online customer engagement and retention. This is a wide-ranging interview covering issues from future trends in web analytics to practical tops such as the best way to measure engagment and retention. There are also some links to useful tools including the new survey tool the "€œwhere to start with test and learn"€ tips are great too. Enjoy!

Background - Avinash…

We have all seen the dramatic improvement in the capabilities of web analytics tools over the last few years, but how should organisations configure their web analytics tools and processes to drive the best insights? In this E-marketing Essentials interview I talk to Gary Angel, a web analytics consultant with extensive experience of web analytics implementation best practice for many organisations. Gary Angel is President and CTO of Semphonic, a a US-based consultancy that specialises in improving web analytics implementations to help companies drive results online. Semphonic's team of analysts provide recommendations on web analytics implementations for the likes of American Express and O'Reilly. Read Gary's blog for more of his insights on web analytics best practice. Q1. What are the major challenges in deploying web analytics in 2008 as you…

In this E-marketing Essentials interview I ask web analytics expert Neil Mason for his thoughts on how we should assess social media sites and site channels. Many are talking today about Web 2.0 initiatives, but how do you monitor and improve their effectiveness. Neil Mason, director and consultant at consumer analytics company Applied Insights is well regarded as a leading commentator on web analytics through his Analysing Customer data column on Clickz, and his work for the Web Analytics Association. I have known Neil as a fellow web consultant for several years from when we have been speaking at conferences from E-consultancy and E-metrics. We haven't had a chance to catch-up FTF for a while, but I was keen to interview him by email get an update on using web analytics to assess customer participation Web 2.0 sites. Q1. For me, community, participation…