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I’m sure everyone has their favourite resources for the areas they work in, but sometimes it’s hard to find new ones that you know you can trust. The lists below are the websites or people I read and use most often. I’ve also included a link to a post on each site so that you can quickly see what they are like and decide whether to bookmark them straight away.
Try this post for starters: Mobile-friendly sites turn visitors into customers
On his blog, titled Occam’s Razor, Avinash Kaushik writes very long and detailed posts about a wide range of web analytics situations which relate to digital marketing. From in-depth multi-channel analysis, to legalities of tracking, to tips for measuring different aspects of marketing. If you can handle a long read I highly recommend keeping up with this blog.
Understanding the mindset that Avinash is coming from is going to benefit you, even if you can’t reach the level of detailed analysis that he explores.
Great place to start: Beginner’s Guide To Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps To Love & Success
Get started with this blog post: Building Super Advanced Keyword Performance Dashboard in Google Analytics & Excel
The blog is updated less regularly than the others, but it will always be a strong source of reliable information and tips about web analtyics.
Here’s a good post to read on this site: What is the future direction of analytics?
This is Brian’s latest book and for those of you who have read Advanced Web Metrics, this is not the forth version; this is something different. Rather than just focusing on how to analyse and measure data, this book helps you to understand the process from start to finish giving you a much more rounded experience.
It’s hard to pick just one blog post for you to start with on here, but give this one by Daniel a go to see how well explained it is: Google Analytics Content Experiments – A Guide To Creating A/B Tests
Like Avinash, Brian and Daniel, Justin Cutroni is one of the world’s most respected web analysts. He is an Analytics Advocate at Google so gets early access to new features to help develop them and then he makes sure knowledge gets shared with the likes of you and I.
The posts are always clear and helpful, usually coming in the form of guides to help you use features within Google Analytics.
Check out the first of his question an answer posts where he takes questions from anyone on Google+ and puts together comprehensive answers: Analytics Questions & Answers: Volume 1
Try not to get stuck in a loop of resources posts, but here’s a good one from 2011 that they put together: 50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics
I couldn’t miss Annie off my list, despite there not being just one blog to find all her analytics tips in. She is a wealth of actionable information about analytics and excel, putting the two together to analyse and improve SEO results. I’ve seen fantastic posts from Annie about Regex on BlueGlass (one of my most visited resources), pivot tables on Search Engine Land and more recently excel wizardry on Seer Interactive.
Have a look over this post: 4 Google Analytics Features You Probably Haven’t Used
These three sites are all platforms where Google Analytics Dashboards, Custom Reports and other cool things are shared. I don’t think any of them are well known yet and I think they all have great potential. If you want to use dashboards and custom reports but don’t have the knowledge or time to build them then I highly recommend you check these sites out and see what you can use. Your dream dashboard could be just three clicks away!
So that’s my lot – what else do you read?
This list only has ten items so will never be complete. I’d love to know what other analytics resources you rely on or enjoy, so please put them in the comments section below.
And please don’t be offended if I’ve missed something off, I haven’t managed to read the whole Internet just yet ;)
Image Source
Writing on a white laptop via BigStock
