Avinash Kaushik, the leading voice in the field of Web Analytics and the Analytics Evangelist for Google wrote a great post for any web analytics beginner. A solid outline for success that even the most advanced web analysis people in the industry should read to shake the rust and dust off.
Here are this steps, according to Avinash:
Step #1: Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness.
Step #2: How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report.
Step #3: How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency.
Step #4: What …

Google AdWords can import conversions from Google Analytics, which is a very good thing. But if you are an old customer and you already have a conversion code on your “thank you” page, and now you’re going to import conversions from Analytics, you’ll have twice that number of conversions: 1 from your old code in thank you page, 1 from your goal in analytics (if the goal is on the same thank you page). You may  triple your numbers if you are an online shop and decide to import also …

Charles Nicholls, conversion & analytics expert, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy, a conversion and cart-abandonment-recovery firm, started a detailed analysis of the Top 10 converting websites–which on average convert 23 percent of their visitors in the same session–and how they approach everything from merchandising to remarketing to identifying more visitors.
Here’s the list of the Top 10 converting websites, showing their rank, company name, industry sector and average six-month conversion rate.

Schwan’s, Food, 41.7 percent
ProFlowers, Flowers and gifts, 26.5 percent
Vitacost.com, Health and nutrition, 24.0 percent
Woman Within, Catalog /clothing, 22.4 percent
Blair, …

Google released a guide on five tools that could help you converting clicks into profits. Tools covered in this guide are:

Google Insight for Search
AdWords Conversion Tracking
Conversion Optimizer
Google Analytics
Website Optimizer

You get 25 useful pages that will help you increase your online profits by tracking results and driving competitive improvements. Full guide (14 languages available) can be downloaded from here.

“Our customers are telling us that they are facing a tough year and are cautious, particularly for borrowing, but that their appetite for searching on line for the best deals is stronger than ever before.” Peter Plumb, moneysupermarket.com
Seems to be a new trend in eCommerce, which suggest that showing the prices for a competing site is something that consumers want and that can be beneficial for etailers. People will check anyway for prices on different websites, so why not saving their time and keeping them on our website by showing …

Google Analytics represents a must-have tool for every eCommerce website. For online shops it is highly recommended to implement also the eCommerce tracking module, which is not activated by default in the basic version of Google Analytics.
What will bring this module for you? It will record the online transactions and will link revenues to visitors, content and traffic sources, helping you making decisions related to the marketing campaigns and the website in order to reduce the abandon rate and increase conversions.
Check this short clip to get familiar with the GA …

“Email Marketing Metrics Report” – 2009 from MailerMailer represents a must-read publication for people interested in email marketing.  The 38-page report is filled with charts, tips and data that provides businesses with relevant information to help them adjust their email marketing strategy to cater to their audience’s changing needs. Here are the main findings for this report:

Email marketing open rates by industry and list size