Learning Resources for Public Sector Web Analysts
On this page I’ve pulled together all of the resources mentioned in my web analytics guide, organized by topic.
You’ll find blog posts, guides, templates, and (as they say in infomercials) much, much more!
Web Analytics 101
How It Works:
- All Web Analytics Tools Are the Same (When It Comes to Data Capture)
- How Does Google Analytics Work?
- Google Analytics Tracking Code Overview (this one’s a little technical)
Setting Up Google Analytics:
- Google Analytics Academy
- Setting Up Google Analytics: Ultimate Guide To Start Measuring Success
- Google Analytics 101: How To Configure Google Analytics To Get Actionable Data
- Google Analytics 102: How To Set Up Goals, Segments & Events in Google Analytics
- Google Analytics Health Check: Is Your Configuration Broken?
- 25 Google Analytics Tips To Cut Your Mistakes In Half
Creating a Performance Framework
Performance Frameworks:
- Digital Marketing and Measurement Model by Avinash Kaushik
- U.K. Government Digital Service Performance Framework
- Using data to improve your service: an introduction
- Setting up a performance framework for the UK Parliament website
Audience Personas:
- How to Create Audience Personas
- The Complete, Actionable Guide to Marketing Personas
- How To Create Customer Personas With Actual, Real Life Data
- Accelerate Content Marketing Effectiveness with the Power of Buyer Persona Stories
- Up Close & Persona’s online Buyer Persona tool
- 7 Criteria to Ensure You’re Doing the Right Things for Buyer Personas
- The Gap. Can You Fill It? Three Ways You Can
- What is a Buyer Persona? Why the Original Definition Still Matters to B2B
Educate Your Clients
- Rebel! Refuse Report Requests. Only Answer Business Questions, FTW.
- Data Puke vs. Actionable Data
- Six Rules For Creating A Data Driven Boss!
- Bulletproof Business Requirements
- Is Your Company Creating Reporting Squirrels or Analysis Ninjas?
- The “K” in “KPI” is NOT for “1,000”
- How To Excite People About Web Analytics: Five Tips
- Lack Management Support or Buy-in? Embarrass Them!
- The Difference Between Web Reporting And Web Analysis
- Seven Steps to Creating a Data Driven Decision Making Culture
- Empowering Analysis Ninjas? 12 Signs to Identify A Data Driven Culture
Qualitative Research:
Strategy:
Conversion Optimization:
User Research:
- U.K. GDS User Research Manual
- User research blog posts on U.K. GDS
- Helping government find user needs with analytics
- User Experience Testing: A Conversion-Focused Guide
- When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods
Heuristic Analysis:
- How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation (classic article by Jakob Nielsen – from 1995!)
- Heuristic Evaluations and Expert Reviews
- Heuristic Evaluation: How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation
- Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics
- Ben Shneiderman’s ‘Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design
Qualitative Surveys:
Data Storytelling
Strategy:
- The Extreme Presentation Method website describes their excellent 10-step process
- How to Avoid the 5 Most Common Data Visualization Mistakes!
- Convert Complex Data Into Simple Logical Stories
- Github D3 gallery and DataVisualization.ch provide summaries (and examples) of dozens of chart types
Data Visualization:
- Government of Canada’s page on data visualization
- Government of Alberta data visualizations
- Statistics Canada’s data visualization products
- US public data – visualization builder
- US Census Bureau data visualization gallery
- US Federal Reserve data visualizations
- USDA data visualizations
- US FTC data visualizations
- Digital.gov data visualization articles
- US Digital.gov articles tagged data visualization
- Government of India’s data visualizations
- Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation data visualizations
- Pew Research Center Data Visualizations
- 85 Incredible Data Visualization Examples
Checklists/Guides:
- Data Visualization Checklist
- 25 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Data Visualization Design
- 5 Ways to Improve Data Visualization
Glossary/Visual-Picker:
- Data Viz Project is an amazing tool to help you find the best visual for your presentation. The site explains 154 visual display types, with a handful of examples of each type
- From Data to Viz helps you choose the right visual based on the type of data (I personally find this one a little confusing)
- Data Viz Catalogue provides simple descriptions of dozens of chart types
- ExcelCharts – Classification of Chart Types – Excel-oriented charts
- Extreme Presentations – Choosing a Good Chart
- The Graphic Continuum
Galleries/Exemplars:
Templates:
- Juice Analytics’ Chart Chooser – great tool for deciding which type of chart to use and download a template
Tools:
- Tableau (online data visualization tool)
- Piktochart (online data visualization tool)
- Visme.co (online data visualization tool)
- Datamatic (online data visualization tool)
- Canva (online design tool)
- Google Charts (exactly what it says!)
- Datawrapper (online data visualization tool)
- Google Data Studio: Ultimate Guide To Visualizing Data In A Valuable Way
- Sankeymatic (a free online tool for making Sankey diagrams)
- Venngage (online infographic maker)
Blogs:
