What is Web Analytics?

Google Analytics is marketed as being free and easy. Free it is, but with the depth of available information, analyzing your reports is not as simple as just looking at the colorful graphs. Before beginning to analyze your reports, you need to have the right expectations about what web analytics is meant to do and how you should go about it. Many troubles can be avoided by setting the right expectations and establishing an understanding of how Google Analytics works.

These articles provide important information about web analytics practices and some basics about Google Analytics in particular. For beginners, this is a web analytics boot camp. For experienced analysts, this is an important reminder of where we need to focus.

• Definitions: Understand what all the terms mean in Google Analytics
• How GA Gets Data: What data GA stores and how
• How GA Works: Technically, what GA is doing to get all of this data.
• Limits of Web Analysis: Set accurate expectations for how web analytics can be used and what its limitations are
• Ask the Right Questions: If you're not asking the right questions, you're playing, not analyzing.
• Real-Time Reporting and Google Analytics: Real-time reporting may just be a marketing pitch.
• Understanding Cookies: How Google Analytics uses them to make sense of visits