Imparting the latest and most revealing tips and tricks whether you’re creating a startup, new business or you just want to educate yourself on all things data, the Top 25 Analytics Books to Read in 2016 have got you covered. Written by some of the world’s greatest data minds, find out how to capture and read data in order to grow your business and engage your customers. To further your learning check out the Top 25 Social Media Books to Read in 2015.
Web Analytics 2.0
Avinash Kaushik
In his latest book, Avinash Kaushik, author of the leading web analytics blog Occam’s Razor, Analytics Evangelist for Google and Chief Education Officer at Market Motive Inc. shows readers how to transform copious amounts of online data into actionable information to transform your business from faith-based organisation to data driven.
“In a sea of experts and opinions, making career-limiting moves is quite easy. If you understand even the simplest way to use data, you’ll avoid those moves and you might even turbo-charge your career. Go get Web Analytics 2.0 (remember, all author proceeds from the book are donated to charity!).” – Avinash Kaushik
Amazon – $27.81
Web Analytics: an Hour a Day
Avinash Kaushik
Also by Avinash Kaushik is the bestselling Web Analytics: an Hour a Day in which he presents a unique perspective into the opportunities that analytics provides each person in your business, with a handy step-by-step guide to implementing a successful web analytics strategy. The book includes a CD with over 5 hours of audio, a 45 minute video presentation, multiple PowerPoint presentations and other useful analytics resources to further your analytics education.
Amazon – $8.85
Google Analytics
Justin Cutroni
If you’re new to the world of online data and you’ve recently set up Google Analytics for your site or ecommerce store, Google Analytics by Justin Cutroni is a great place to start. This guide shows you how to make the most from Google Analytics, whether you’re new to the tool or have been using it for years and want to learn how to use it to your best advantage.
Amazon – $18.20
Lean Analytics
Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz
By knowing your business and what stage it’s in, you can track and analyse the metrics that matter most to your startup, enabling your organisation to grow. Lean Analytics shows you how to measure and analyse while you grow, so you can validate whether a problem is real, find the right customers, know what to build, how to monetise it and how to promote it. Repeating the processes outlined in Lean Analytics will help you avoid many of the risks inherent in a company’s early-stages.
“You should read Lean Analytics to avoid making all the brutally painful mistakes that the authors made in numerous startup adventures. Data matters. It can help you make better decisions, solve problems and grow your startup, but you have to know how to use it and when to apply it. Lean Analytics will help you with that.” – Ben Yoskovitz
Amazon – $24.51
Search Analytics for Your Site
Conversations with Your Customers
Louis Rosenfeld
Every organisation that has a searchable website is sitting on top of a goldmine of often under-exploited data. Search queries provide real data that shows exactly what users are searching for, i.e. what your customers want. Search Analytics for your Site by Louis Rosenfeld, shows you how to use this information to engage with your customers, improve your content, navigation and search performance.
“If you’ve made your web site searchable, you’re sitting on a goldmine of data: search queries are your customers telling you what they want from you—in their own words. Search analytics to learn will help you understand your audience’s unique wants and needs, and how well you’re meeting them.” – Louis Rosenfeld
Rosenfeld – $22.00
Performance Marketing with Google Analytics
Strategies and Techniques for Maximizing Online ROI
Sebastian Tonkin, Caleb Whitmore & Justin Cutroni
With informative explanations of practical applications, Performance Marketing with Google Analytics features in-depth case studies and examples on search advertising, optimising existing websites, prioritising channels and campaigns and accessing brand health in order to increase revenue. Demonstrating how you can best use Google Analytics to achieve your business goals, this is a great book to read if you’re just getting started, especially with Google’s conversion-oriented tools, such as AdWords, AdSense, Google trends etc.
Digital Marketing Analytics
Making Sense of Consumer Data in a Digital World
Chuck Heann & Ken Burbary
The book that ties digital, social and traditional analytics together in one nifty package. Digital Marketing Analytics takes the authors experiences working with and counselling Fortune 500 companies and presents the information in such a way that readers are sure to come away with the tools and knowledge of how to analyse and develop insights from volumes of digital data.
Amazon – $27.85
Web Analytics Demystified
A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business
Eric Peterson
Learn how to leverage your web traffic data to improve your website. Making data actionable and turning information into insight, Web Analytics Demystified focuses on the data, tools and metrics that are available in almost all analytics packages. Peterson shows you which reports you need to look at in order to run your online business successfully.
Data Smart
Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight
John W Foreman
Data science to those in the know, isn’t actually magic, like it sometimes seems to the untrained eye. In a world where seemingly meaningless data is able to be transformed into valuable business insights that drive company decision, how does one become a data scientist? Data Smart by author and data scientist, John Foreman explains how data science is little more than using simple steps to process raw data into actionable insights within the familiar environment of a spreadsheet.
Amazon – $27.48
Social Media Analytics
Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting and Using Metrics
Marshall Sponder
Unlike the majority of these books, Social Media Analytics shows readers how to transform their social analytics into valuable business insights. Within the book, Sponder explains how to choose the best social media platforms to achieve your business goals, set up the right processes to achieve them, extract the hidden messages for all of your collected data and quantify your results and determine ROI.
Amazon – $16.00
Google Analytics Integrations
Daniel Waisberg
Author Daniel Waisberg shows readers how to gain a more meaningful and complete view of customers to drive growth opportunities by explaining how to avoid common hurdles and use Google Analytics to turn the powerful data collection and analysis tool into a central marketing analysis platform for your business.
“With Google Analytics Integrations you will get a step closer to making your data meaningful and actionable by adding valuable connections to your Web Analytics data” – Daniel Waisberg
Amazon – $21.78
You Should Test That
Conversion Optimization for More Leads, Sales and Profit or The Art and Science of Optimized Marketing
Chris Goward
Part science and part art, You Should Test That, shows you how to convert website visitors into customers through conversion optimisation. In the book, Goward explains how to create an optimisation strategy to support your business using the correct analytics tools, creating quality testing ideas, running online experiments and making adjustments that produce results.
“Most companies make decisions about their websites and mobile experiences based on conformity, fear of the big boss, intuition, habit and so on. The result is that websites don’t accomplish all they could. I’ve found a better way to optimize experiences and produce outsize revenue gains.
Conversion optimization is often the most profitable strategy for smart companies. And this book shows you how to do it.” – Chris Goward
Amazon – $23.90
Successful Analytics
Gain Business Insights by Managing Google Analytics
Brian Clifton
Written for managers and aspiring managers that are struggling to make headway with planning and building a digital strategy for their business, Successful Analytics, shows you how to sift through the sheer volume of data recorded in Google Analytics to find the truly useful and actionable data, translate it and gain clear insights for your organisation. Clifton aims to put you in the control seat by providing a perspective of the entire process of building a data-driven environment using Google Analytics.
“Successful Analytics is a natural progression for those analysts who are familiar with the day-to-day process of working with Google Analytics. That is, they have been doing their work for a few years now, but are struggling to get buy-in from senior management to invest in their team, or become a senior data manager themselves. Similarly it is aimed at senior managers and executives who have responsibility for data. The book is a guide for them to know what to invest in, what is important, how to scale and what they can expect in return.” – Brian Clifton
20% off for IMWT readers (for a limited time) – $29.99
Social Media Metrics Secrets
John Lovett
Tapping into his years of training, John Lovett reveals all his secret tips and tricks on how to analyse and measure the effects of social media and gauge the success of your campaigns. Using mini case studies to explain how to better manage social operations with process and technology through applying key performance indicators, Social Media Metrics Secrets offers invaluable advice on analysing and measuring the effects of social media.
“Social Media Metrics Secrets not only defines the counting metrics and the ones that create business value, but also provides a framework that has been proven by organizations across the globe to help quantify success of social media marketing.” – John Lovett
Amazon – $17.72
Internet Marketing: Start to Finish
Drive Measurable, Repeatable Online Sales with Search Marketing, Usability, CRM and Analytics
Catherine Juon, Dunrie Greiling & Catherine Buerkle
This book is a great place to start if you’re just beginning to walk the path of internet marketing in general or you’re looking for a clear overview of the subject in its entirety, rather than just a better understanding of analytics. Showing you how to strategically and systematically attract profitable customers through internet marketing, Internet Marketing: Start to Finish shows you how to avoid dangerous data, track customers throughout the entire relationship and translate your performance into board-room ready reports.
“Internet marketing can be a confusion of conflicting advice from specialists in each silo (SEO, UX, PPC, Social, brand marketing…). Our book reflects our generalist program-level approach, an approach honed over several years of successful work with clients ranging from small, local businesses to national franchises. Oh and we have some success stories and some things-gone-awry stories too.” – Dunrie Greiling
Amazon – $23.78
Thingalytics
Smart Big Data Analytics for the Internet of Things
John Bates
In this book, Dr John Bates explains how the alchemy of real-time analytics and smart algorithms turns fast Big Data into actionable gold nuggets. Illustrated with real-life case studies from organisations including Coca-Cola, Greyhound Bus and Medtronic, Thingalytics delves into analytics and algorithms to show readers how to seize business opportunities.
Amazon – $12.99
Cult of Analytics
Driving Online Marketing Strategies Using Web Analytics
Steve Jackson
Understanding how your content is used by your customers is essential if you want to get the true value from your online content. Whether you’re new to web analytics or you already work in the field, Cult of Analytics will provide you with the tools and insights you need to work with web analytics and online search optimisation. With examples from numerous companies from small businesses to large consumer sites, including Amazon, this book demonstrates how to transform the way your business works for the better.
Marketing Analytics
Data-Driven Techniques with Microsoft Excel
Wayne Winston
In Marketing Analytics, author Wayne Winston shows tech-savvy marketers and data analysts how to solve real-world business problems using Microsoft Excel. This expert book offers the perfect solution for those looking for a cheaper and more effective way to understand customers and improve results using data-driven business analytics.
“Marketing Analytics gives you a practical, Excel based, ready to use knowledge of key marketing analytics topics, unlike many other books that are geared towards the PH.D analyst.” – Wayne Winston
Amazon – $24.39
Actionable Web Analytics
Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions
Jason Burby
Actionable Web Analytics is about the why rather than just the how of digital analytics. Helping marketers to understand how to better leverage insights rather than simply masses of data, Jason Burby explains how to shift business attitudes in order to create a ‘culture of analysis’ inside your organisation with a proven framework for shifting the thinking of digital teams.
Amazon – $21.73
Naked Statistics
Stripping the Dread from the Data
Charles Wheelan
This is the book for those who slept through Stats 101, Wheelan clarifies key concepts including inference, correlation and regression analysis to show us how creative researchers are exploiting data from natural experiments. Naked Statistics is not just another book on data or even web analytics but a book covering everything from batting averages, political polls to how Netflix knows which movies you’ll enjoy.
“Most stats books start with the math, leaving the reader confused and frustrated. Naked Statistics is about the intuition–how statistics can unlock the power of data to do cool, interesting, and relevant things.” – Charles Wheelan
Amazon – $8.70
Web Analytics Action Hero
Using Analysis to Gain Insight and Optimize Your Business
Brent Dykes
Dykes believes that companies need more than just web analysts and data-smart marketers to be successful – they need action heroes. That’s where Web Analytics Action Hero comes in, teaching web analysts how to become action heroes by transforming analysis insights into action that will generate substantial returns for your company.
“This book is for anyone who wants to be more effective and efficient as an analyst. It provides a useful framework for turning insights into action, which is critical if you want to be successful with analytics.” – Brent Dykes
Amazon – $30.06
Predictive Analytics
Revised and Updated: The power to predict who will click, buy, lie or die
Eric Siegel
Covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques, Predictive Analytics, is for lay readers and experts alike. Siegel explains how predictive analytics works and how it affects everyone, every day. Predicting human behaviour combats risk, streamlines manufacturing, fights spam, wins elections, optimises social networks and boosts sales. Predictive Analytics reveals the power and perils of prediction.
“Fully accessible to all readers, the book is a comprehensive introduction and industry overview packed with case study examples that delves deep on key hot topics – so much so that it is even of great interest to many experts, despite its status as a non-technical intro for laypeople.” – Eric Siegel
Amazon – $16.53
Data Just Right
Introduction to Large-Scale Data & Analytics
Michael Manoochehri
Providing real-world case studies and examples, practical code and detailed solutions to common problems, Data Just Right provides practical solutions for those with limited resources and time. Drawing from his extensive experience as a former Google engineer and data hacker, Manoochehri shows you how to focus on creating applications rather than infrastructure in order to drive the most value.
“I wrote Data Just Right for people who are looking for practical solutions to their data challenges, but who are limited by resource constraints. One of the trends in large-scale analytics is that anyone can access tools that only a few years ago were available exclusively to a handful of tech companies. In reality, many of these tools are innovative, rapidly evolving, and don’t always fit together seamlessly. Data Just Right aims to show readers how to build systems that put the parts together in effective ways. The book tries to teach readers how to solve data and analytics problems in ways that are affordable, accessible, and above all practical.” – Michael Manoochehri
Amazon – $20.20
Connect
How to Use Data and Experience Marketing to Create Lifetime Customers
Lars Birkholm Petersen, Ron Person & Christopher Nash
Written by a smart team of marketing experts serving Fortune 500 companies, Connect provides marketers with insight and perspective to engage with customers at touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle. Discover the processes and technology used to allow marketers to stay relevant and link digital goals and metrics to business objectives for a more relevant strategy.
“You should read Connect because it’s practical and will take you through step by step how to use analytics and personalization, learned from the field with hundreds of customer implementations, to create the most relevant real time experience for your customers.” – Lars Petersen
“Marketers worldwide are at a turning point that is separating winners and losers in every industry. The foreshadow of this great turnover was Amazon vs. Borders, and Netflix vs. Blockbuster. More recently we’ve seen the changes wrought by Uber and AirBnB. Now that same turnover is facing every marketing organization.
It’s clear that the winners in these battles create great customer experiences at every touchpoint. To do that it is critical that organizations create a strategy where the organization knows each individual customer and can give that customer a great experience at every touchpoint. Marketers, and in fact everyone in a winning organization, must realize that every customer touchpoint is becoming a win-lose point in the customer lifecycle.
After assessing more than 2,000 marketing organizations we’ve identified a clear Customer Experience Maturity Model that shows how the 85.4% of marketing organizations at the bottom of the maturity scale can mature to the level of Amazon and Netflix. It’s a well-defined step-by-step process that the winners in every industry segment have followed.
If you are in marketing, IT or strategy, you must read this book to learn your organization’s maturity level and see the strategy that will make you a winner.” – Ron Person
Amazon – $18.86
Google Analytics Demystified
A Hands-On Approach
Joel Davis
Understand how to use Google Analytics and how to apply your data to your own business needs. Google Analytics Demystified shows readers how to obtain the correct data needed to gain insights to improve your customers’ online experience. Providing you with a free website to advance your learning, you will be able to get hands-on experience to better manage your own digital property.
“In a data driven world, those that understand not only what data “says” but are also able to see what data “means” have the greatest likelihood of success. Google Analytics Demystified was written to address both needs. The book takes you on a step by step journey, explaining the types of data Google Analytics offers and the different ways in which this data can be manipulated. The book’s priority, however, is to help Google Analytics users develop the skills necessary to draw meaning from data – to understand how to use this information to make better, more successful decisions. At the end of the day, I think the book only has value if those using it are able to better understand how to use Google Analytics data to move their business forward. That’s why the book provides more than just descriptions of how to access Google Analytics data. The case studies, free downloadable website, chapter review questions, and hands-on exercises are all designed to facilitate the learning process.” – Joel Davis
Amazon – $35.55
