Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Must Have Resource
Comment: As someone who works in the web industry and deals with web analytics daily, I highly encourage you to add this book to your library. Avinash knows his stuff. Everyone in the analytics's space reads his blog. He sometimes even helps the big guys, like Google, improve their analytics-related products (e.g., Google Analytics).
There's something in this book for everyone. Beginners won't be overwhelmed and seasoned analytic veterans will find places to improve their analytics implementation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read from Cover to Cover
Comment: I waited with anticipation for this book and was not disappointed in the least. It is written in a very candid and informative manner that helps the reader easily digest the ideas. Although I did not take the "hour a day" approach, I feel the book is very easy to read cover to cover and as a reference resource as well. The author does a great job making a topic that can be quite technical very accessible and understandable. I strongly recommend this book for anyone grappling with web analytics and looking for a way to turn the volumes of data points into actionable online business intelligence.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well written as well as the best hands on guide on the subject
Comment: I'm writing this review long after the initial surge of reviews (it IS a long book), which makes it hard to contribute much that's useful to discussion. Many others have explained how thorough and detailed the book is. I agree completely. It is, indeed, the best hands-on guide to the subject I have yet found.
This book balances both the high-level aspects of web analytics -- the philosophy, if you like -- with a huge amount of specific, practical, how-to information. I don't see how it could have been any shorter and still delivered so much.
The aspect of this book which seems to me to have been under-played in other reviews is how readable it is. The subject has been touched on in a few places, but I think it deserves more prominence. I like the language and the style of the book. Avinash's enthusiasm for the subject comes singing out of the pages. He makes the subject seem fun and he sustains that over hundreds of pages. That's a remarkable achievement when you consider the length.
I disagree strongly with the reviewer who suggests that this is padding. I'm puzzled by that. I have a shelf full of business or self-improvement books which try to make themselves readable and accessible by interjecting folksy anecdotes full of people with made up names every few pages. It's a very common approach. The result is often repetitious fluff. This book is very different. There is no padding of that kind: the examples given are all very clearly based on personal experience and are there for good reason. They are informative. They are not simply structural devices.
"Structural devices" brings me to the only aspect of the book which does not really work for me: the 'an hour a day' theme. I believe that might work well in the context of an on-line tutorial series, but in a book it seems a little out of place. Most of the time I wasn't really conscious of this element, but occasionally it popped up and seemed slightly intrusive.
There: I've done it. In an effort not to gush praise, I've found something to quibble with about this book. It was a struggle, believe me. In reality I cannot recommend this book highly enough. One of my colleagues has a copy where most of the pages are thick with highlighter ink. The quality of information is that high.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Useful, friendly, absolutely wonderful web analytics book
Comment: (review by Gradiva Couzin)
How shall I praise this book, let me count the ways!
Do you wonder what people are doing on your website? How they found it? Are people finding what they want or need on your site? If you don't know where to begin, this book will get you there, painlessly. If you've been in analytics for some time already, this book will move you forward to a whole new level, painlessly.
I'm an SEO (search engine optimization) consultant and have worked on the fringes of the web analytics field for several years. This book spoke to me clearly without ever speaking down to me. It was easy to understand without skimping on the serious stuff. Having written a book myself, I know how hard this is to achieve! If I had one criticism, it would only be that Avinash has such high standards and such a clear vision of how web analytics can and should be done, that after you read his book you will not want to tolerate a lazy or cowardly approach from yourself or others - and this might leave you feeling a bit guilty if you aren't up to his standards. If you've been doing this for years and have fallen into a rut, be warned: curves ahead!
The very first 10 minutes of owning this book I was digging into it for help with analyzing a Google Adwords campaign for a client. Next, I read the 3 Layers of So What, a web analytics philosophy that is so simple and clear, so convincing, so totally useful that I am excited to apply it immediately to my own work. Today I wrote a report for a client that included a bunch of stats... After three paragraphs of data reporting, the "Avinash" on my shoulder wrote this line: "What insights can be gained and what site edits are suggested by this data?" Closing the loop and turning raw web data into something meaningful and useful: that's what this book is all about.
All of the acclaim and the 5-star reviews could not be more deserved. And to boot, the author's proceeds are going to very worthy charities. BRAVO and congratulations to a really wonderful author and man!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Comment: The book has been very insightful. I would recommend it to any web design/developer. It teaches you the importance of analytics across an entire company.
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