Finding ways to quantify the impact of investment on-line has become a real challenge for management. A dollar spent on line is a dollar not available to be spent elsewhere, so the need for a quantitative base from which to compare apples and apples is substantial, and it keeps the beanies happy.

Google Analytics is a set of free tools that can be used to ferret out the information needed to optimise any site. Currently with 130+ standard reports, and lots of opportunity to customise your own reports, the tools are of enormous value to anyone running a site. Forget all the expensive optimisation consultants, just pay a web savvy student a bit to dig around and come up with opportunities to get more out of your web ecosystem, the site, bloggs, Twitter, Digg, Tumbir, Linkedin, and so on.  

Here are some lessons put out by the experts.;

    1. This series of videos by Appsumo  offers lots of tips in a very easy to understand manner.
    2. Social Media Examiner, perhaps the best site for gathering information on social media has this  interview with Google’s Avinash Kaushik on the use of Google analytics in quantifying activity on the web, and is a must watch for beginners to pros.
    3. Avinish’s blog provides a beginners guide to web analytics, 10 easy things to do to assess the effectiveness of a website, but that is only the beginning of the insight that can be gained from his blog, another must read.
    4. And just in case you want more….

Point is, the tools for measurement are now there, Google has an enterprise quality set for free, so there is absolutely no excuse for not using them.