Let’s say that you fit into one (or perhaps more) of the following categories:
• You work at a sophisticated ecommerce company—say you are a new employee at Amazon.com—and you know your employer is very analytical, but you aren’t.
• You are a manager at a company with some ecommerce capabilities, and you have a nagging feeling that your firm could be better at analytics, but you don’t know how to go about it.
• You have an analytics-oriented job, but you need to learn more about ecommerce analytics.
• You work at a brick-and-mortar retailer that has dabbled in ecommerce, but you and your colleagues know you need to get more serious about it.
• You want to start a new ecommerce company.
• You are a student and want a job in ecommerce.
If you resemble any of these people, this book is the answer to your prayers. It is the one-stop shopping destination for everything you need to know about ecommerce analytics. It will provide a short refresher course on statistics. (Perhaps you did not fully engage with your statistics class in college.) It will give you enough content on retail and selling stuff online to get you by in most meetings. It will help you through difficult and esoteric topics like customer behavioral flow analysis, customer lifetime value, abandoned shopping carts, and virtually anything else you will encounter in this field.
As I read this book, I was surprised at how thorough it was and how clearly Phillips presents the key concepts. I was a bit amazed at the breadth of topics represented and that a young guy like Phillips has accumulated the analytical wisdom of the ages in topics like exploratory data analysis and communicating effectively about analytics. But I was truly shocked to read early in the first chapter that this is the only book on ecommerce analytics. Given the importance of ecommerce to the economy and the importance of analytics to ecommerce, I couldn’t believe that there are no other books on the topic. But I skeptically undertook a cursory search on “ecommerce analytics books” and found nothing in the category. There are books on digital analytics (Phillips himself has written a couple of good ones), specific topics like conversion, and tools that are related to digital and ecommerce analytics (Google Analytics, for example), but literally nothing directly targeted at ecommerce analytics.
So if you have an interest in ecommerce analytics, it’s a no-brainer to buy and read the book. If you are reading this foreword in Amazon’s “Look inside” preview mode, go directly to the shopping cart and buy it. If you have actually found this book in a physical bookstore (though they should probably refuse to carry it since it threatens their business), take it up to the cash register and get out your wallet. I don’t know how much they will sell this thing for, but do you value your career? Do you want a promotion? You should not only buy the book but also send Judah Phillips 10% of your total compensation as a tribute.
You should also stop reading this foreword and get to the real content. But first, one more request. If you’re like many people, your primary interest in this book is in the “hard” advice on ecommerce analytics—statistical methods, techniques for getting data, specific key performance indicators to employ, and so forth. These are certainly important and valuable, and attending to them here makes perfect sense.
However, the book is also replete with “softer” advice that will make you a much better ecommerce analyst. There is, for example, the general philosophy of “getting close to your data” by observing distributions and outliers. There is the focus on telling a good story about your data. Phillips also maintains a strong focus on understanding what your organization wants from analytics and on making analytical results as digestible as possible. These types of wise perspectives and suggestions are just as valuable as any method or tool prescription.
So buy and read this book—every page of it. Take its recommendations to heart. If you want to be successful at ecommerce, you need a heavy dose of analytics. And if you want to be successful at ecommerce analytics, you need a heavy dose of this fine book.
— Thomas H. Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology at Babson College; Research Fellow, MIT Center for Digital Business; Cofounder, International Institute for Analytics; Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics