Practical Web Traffic Analysis review

At first glance, you may think Practical Web Traffic Analysis (another title in the 'Tools of the Trade' imprint) is anything but essential. This poor first impression is mainly due to size: 171 pages with widely spaced paragraphs and numerous screenshots, diagrams and graphs. However, a closer look reveals that the information flows thick and fast, with little padding, and the presentation means you absorb it efficiently. Plus, an accompanying website at www.glasshaus.com has downloads, reports of errata and an Access 200-based log file viewer coded especially for hands-on use with the book.

The book, subtitled 'Standards, Privacy, Techniques, Results', is targeted at the web professional who already has commercial site-creation experience and a decent knowledge of scripting, server log files and so on. It's certainly not for the beginner, but neither is it for the seasoned coder - this book sits within the intermediate zone.

Having said that, all but the most war-weary web administrators will come away with something positive, in large part thanks to the real-world nature of the case-study chapters, featuring the traffic-analysis strategies, methodologies and technicalities of BBC News Online and eBay. This is because one author is an expert in Internet data analysis at the BBC, and another led the team that implemented the first web-analytics system at eBay.

The latter is perhaps the most educational, with eBay seeing billions of page views every month, but with similar traffic-analysis requirements to smaller-scale operations. The eBay chapter dissects the design needs of its system into five high-level requirements: key process completion rate measurement, marketing effectiveness measurement, search/browsing techniques measurement, technographic data gathering and anonymous visitor data gathering.

What I like best about this book, though, are the words of wisdom dotted throughout the text - examples like 'Applying standards and employing auditors is not a replacement for proper intelligent interrogation of the data being presented,' and 'We have learned that most web metrics, including page impressions, are extremely context sensitive.'

From the comparative overview of analysis methodologies at the beginning to the overview of business logic architecture at the end, there's precious little that doesn't enrich your knowledge of the subject and therefore your understanding of who visits the website(s) you maintain.

Author: Davey Winder