Whether you're a marketer with development skills or a full-on web developer/analyst, Practical Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for Developers shows you how to implement Google Analytics using Google Tag Manager to jumpstart your web analytics measurement.
There's a reason that so many organizations use Google Analytics. Effective collection of data with Google Analytics can reduce customer acquisition costs, provide priceless feedback on new product initiatives, and offer insights that will grow a customer or client base. So where does Google Tag Manager fit in?
Google Tag Manager allows for unprecedented collaboration between marketing and technical teams, lightning fast updates to your site, and standardization of the most common tags for on-site tracking an
d marketing efforts. To achieve the rich data you're really after to better serve your users' needs, you'll need the tools Google Tag Manager provides for a best-in-class implementation of Google Analytics measurement on your site.
Written by data evangelist and Google Analytics expert Jonathan Weber and the team at LunaMetrics, this book offers foundational knowledge, a collection of practical Google Tag Manager recipes, well-tested best practices, and troubleshooting tips to get your implementation in tip-top condition. It covers topics including:
- Google Analytics implementation via Google Tag Manager
- How to customize Google Analytics for your unique situation
- Using Google Tag Manager to track and analyze interactions across multiple devices and touch points
- How to extract data from Google Analytics and use Google BigQuery to analyze Big Data questions
What You'll Learn
Implementation approaches for Google Analytics, including common pitfalls and troubleshooting strategies.
How to use tools like Google Tag Manager and jQuery to jumpstart your Google Analytics implementation.
How to track metrics beyond page views to other critical user interactions, such as clicks on outbound links or downloads, scrolling and page engagement, usage of AJAX forms, and much more.
How to incorporate additional, customized data into Google Analytics to track individual users or enrich data about their behavior.
Who This Book Is For
Web developers, data analysts, and marketers with a basic familiarity with Google Analytics from an end-user perspective, as well as some knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.
El título y la portada del libro de Jonathan Weber asustan: Practical Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for Developers el primero. El segundo, una imagen azul oscura lisa salvo por un círculo con algo que aterra a los no técnicos: 0 y 1.
Sin embargo, en el interior encontramos todo lo contrario: un manual bastante completo y sencillo para implementar Google Analytics a través de Tag Manager.(...) ¿Lo mejor? que no es hacer por hacer, sino que Weber explica cómo se puede aprovechar cada medición, incluso más allá de la teoría oficial de Google.
The title of the book has both Google Analytics & developer in it because user tracking is best thought of as a software development exercise. The GTM sections are especially useful because most books on this topic focus strictly on GA.
Apologies to the author. This book is really good for what it is. It's honestly exactly what I wanted: a primer with several practical examples, to teach the background, the basics, and the nitty gritty. If you need to understand how GTM and GA works through and through, this is a great book for you! I not only would, but do recommend it. I brought my copy into work and regularly have my team reference it as they work.
The only reason I gave it three stars is because it's not exactly the kind of book that I would add to my best-books-ever shelf. I liked it. But it didn't change my life. (Surprisingly, some programming books have!) That's not what I expected of this book, but that is how ratings work on GoodReads. I should probably go to Amazon and give it a five star rating, because it's deserved.
I love it a lot. Back in 2015 BigQuery export was a paid feature (opened for community edition users in 2019) thus I wish this book would be able to cover that but Weber doesn't seem to be interested in working on the second edition. Still, I would force all co-workers to read it to understand what we are dealing with. Explaining the utm_source to digital planners with years of experience is a fucking nightmare!
For biz owners it is a must as well, along with Clifton's & Kaushik's works on classical approach to GA and site analytics in general.
After finishing this book I have a strong JS aftertaste, for years I was pushing away a need to learn JS...but looks like the time has come
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
It's an interesting book for beginners like me. It has lots of tips and howtos. Almost every chapter starts with a discussion about the general idea, then starts with detailed "how-tos" and examples. At some point it may be repetitive, but just a little. Last Chapters (15 and Appendix) are maybe too superficial, but ok.