Another web stats package?
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Yes and No. Google Analytics deserves its own discussion because in addition to a quality web analytics package, Google offers integration with their AdWords system and some impressive site effectiveness tools, all free-of-charge at the moment.
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Sounds too good to be true?
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One commentator said that Google Analytics may well be the "nearest thing the net has to a virtual site design consultant" (McConnell, 2006). It is certainly true that the 'site overlay' functionality is one of the best ways to examine how users actually consume your website (if you know how to make use of this information). This impressive user-path information, in combination with the product's AdWords integration, trend analysis, campaign tracking and general statistical analysis, means that Google Analytics should be a part of any significant website's 'effectiveness toolkit'.
There are of course some warnings! In addition to all of our other caveats on web statistics, there are three points to note with Google Analytics.
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Issue 1 — Website performance overhead
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The first issue is really more of the 'price' for all of the great information Google collects for you. To use Google Analytics, every page in your website must contain a piece of code that calls the Google application every time a visitor lands on one of your web pages. This load is small, but multiplied by every single page load, it is actually a significant overhead that does marginally reduce the speed and performance of your website. In most cases, this is an acceptable price for the resulting data, but you should be aware that it exists.
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Issue 2 — Understating of some results
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The second issue is connected to the first by the technical nature of Google Analytics. The code placed into your website is not activated by visitors whose browsers have elected not to allow JavaScript routines to run. The number of 'general visitors' where this is the case is somewhere around ten percent, but varies significantly in certain visitor demographics making statistical adjustment for this factor complicated. Since most statistics should be used as indicative rather than absolute this is again simply something that you should be aware of in your analysis.
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Issue 3 — Public networks only
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Unlike packages that analyse your web server logs, Google Analytics sits outside any security firewall or intenal network. This is an issue if you are looking for site analysis of corporate intranets or other protected installations or private networks. In this case, you can buy and install the underlying Urchin software - a little more complicated (and of course no longer free).
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How to use Google Analytics?
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Full of user-friendly charts and graphs, Google Analytics can immerse you for hours exploring it's 'wonders'. However just as we have been discussing in this 'effectiveness' section, objective results should be used to measure pre-determined metrics that are useful for your website and assist you in improving the success of your website.
Some features to consider ... The integration into Google AdWords and the related campaign management if your website strategy includes the use of AdWords. The website overlay to look at visitor use patterns and examine the effectiveness of your website structure and information model. Other metrics may be available in other 'server log' statistical packages and Google Analytics can provide a 'checking mechanism' if you questioning other metrics.
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Where to find more?
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All in all, Google Analytics is a great service and a worthy addition to any web publisher's tool kit – to use Google Analytics and find out more, go to Google's entry point ... http://www.google.com/analytics/
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