This is the best hands-on guide to web analytics and the importance of analytics to any on-line marketing project I have yet found.
The book balances both the high-level aspects of web analytics -- the philosophy, if you like -- with a huge amount of specific, practical, how-to information. It may seem like a big book, but I don't see how it could have been any shorter and still delivered so much.
Fortunately, it's an extremely readable book. I like the language and the style of the book. Avinash's enthusiasm for the subject comes singing out of the pages. He makes the subject seem fun and he sustains that over hundreds of pages. That's a remarkable achievement when you consider the length.
I have a shelf full of business or self-improvement books which try to make themselves readable and accessible by interjecting folksy anecdotes full of people with made up names every few pages. It's a very common approach. The result is often repetitious fluff. This book is very different. There is no padding of that kind: the examples given are all very clearly based on personal experience and are there for good reason. They are informative. They are not simply structural devices.
The language itself is also distinctive and entertaining. I believe that Avinash grew up listening to the BBC World Service. Although it's an American book, there are notes in the language which echoe a different world in a way which I find refreshing.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. One of my colleagues has a copy where most of the pages are thick with highlighter ink. The quality of information is that high. It really is that good. If you can buy only one book on the subject, this is the one to get.