The book is out: Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking, Reporting, and Analyzing for Data-Driven Insights.
His philosophy is that you should focus on three different but equally important tasks; A) Collecting Data, B) Reporting on Data and C) Deriving insight from Data. Dependant ones vantage point, one or more of the chapters will be in focus. He has divided the book into three parts to reflect these broad tasks.
Part 1, “Advanced Web Analytics Installation,” consists of Chapters 1 through 5. The focus is on data collection. True competitive advantage in web marketing comes from collecting the right data, but also, and no less important, from configuring your web analytics tool in such a way that you can derive insight from the data. Part 1 features detailed code examples that webmasters or developers can apply directly. Marketing people and executives will learn the opportunities they can demand from this tool. He also shows you how to add reporting dimensions to the predefined report structures for fantastic filtering and segmentation opportunities.
Part 2, “Utilizing an Enterprise Web Analytics Platform,” encompasses Chapters 6 through 10, where he focuses on reports. Creating reports is an easy feat, but remember that reports are never better than the data you collect. You need an exceedingly good understanding of how to work with your data. Part 2 is less technical than the first part. In it he teaches you to use your reporting toolbox to provide targeted answers to specific questions, such as “How much revenue did we make from first-time organic search visitors from Canada last week?” For this and many other questions you’ll encounter there is no standard report, but you will know how to get this answer and hundreds of others when you’re through with this section.
Part 3, “Actionable Insights,” encompasses Chapters 11 through 13 and focuses on how to take action on your data to optimize your web property. Having gone through the effort of implementing the data collection and reporting strategies in Parts 1 and 2, you will have gained enough insight to start an optimization process. Part 3 introduces you to optimization using a set of actionable insights. This is merely an appetizer, and the handful of optimizations he presents are not, by any means, the only ones you can pursue. But the ideas and attitude behind them can most definitely be copied and carry you down other optimization avenues. Think of this section as an idea catalog. One of the most important questions he tackles in this section is paid search optimization.