Practical Web Analytics for User Experience

by Michael Beasley

Practical Web Analytics for User Experience teaches you how to use web analytics to help answer the complicated questions facing UX professionals. Within this book, you'll find a quantitative approach for measuring a website's effectiveness and the methods for posing and answering specific questions about how users navigate a website. The book is organized according to the concerns UX practitioners face. Chapters are devoted to traffic, clickpath, and content use analysis, measuring the effectiveness of design changes, including A/B testing, building user profiles based on search habits, supporting usability test findings with reporting, and more. This is the must-have resource you need to start capitalizing on web analytics and analyze websites effectively.

Discover concrete information on how web analytics data support user research and user-centered design
Learn how to frame questions in a way that lets you navigate through massive amounts of data to get the answer you need
Learn how to gather information for personas, verify behavior found in usability testing, support heuristic evaluation with data, analyze keyword data, and understand how to communicate these findings with business stakeholders

Genres: Design, Nonfiction

251 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Tomasz Tomaszewski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Książka po prostu opisuje kolejne funkcje Google Analytics. Dla kogoś kto choć trochę korzystał z Google Analytics - kompletnie nic ciekawego. Nie polecam.

[Julia Kulgavchuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good primer on using web analytics in user experience design work. It’s better than a primer. For all the topics covered, the keynotes are purpose and communication. This is what makes the book valuable for designers who are already experienced in web analytics.

Whatever metric, report or method Beasley describes, he talks about its value for UX design work or a lack of such (e.g. in the case of engagement goals related to path depth and time on page). He mentions the limitations and gives examples of the situations when you would and wouldn’t want to use a certain metric, report or method.

Indeed there’re all the arguments for why it’s a good idea to use certain analytics features in design work. This is useful for both beginners and pros. When you are used to working in a certain way, you don’t necessarily reflect on it every time and kind of forget why it was a good idea in the first place, what it helps to achieve. So when you’re asked to articulate its value, you might get a bit perplexed. This text is a good reminder. It can be helpful for communicating analytics work to non-specialist, building good arguments for your team or a client.

I’d recommend this 2013 book over the one by Luke Hay, Researching UX: Analytics (2017). Beasley’s book is more comprehensive. Technology have changed since 2013, but the principles stay, and Beasley is way better at articulating them.

[Iwona Leszczyńska · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you have never before had an occasion working with GA and you want to begin with understanding terms like SEO, PM or UX, it will be book for you. If you have used GA before it will refresh you only some basic key facts in web analytics. Basically, this book lists and describs most of GA components.

[Kay Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Beasley's books begins with a question: "What can you measure on a Web site that can constitute a conversion goal?" The book discusses how to analyze visitors, keywords, click paths, and log files and measure success through conversion rates. The book discusses how to tag your pages to reach conversion goals.

[Ahmad Abugosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's ok for someone just learning about Analytics, but it reads more like a reference or university text book. I work in this industry and I found it boring, so imagine how boring it would be for someone just learning about the concept. Then again maybe this book was just not meant for me.