I’ve mentioned Google Analytics in a number of earlier posts. The principle is simple: detailed statistics about visits and visitors to web pages: how many, from whereabouts, even whether access is by smartphone or from a PC – and far more besides.

As more and more service move to the web, tools like this become critical to answer questions like:

• Are you spending a lot of time maintaining web pages that are never used?
• Was a publicity campaign aimed at driving traffic to particular places on the website actually effective?
• Are people continually searching for things you don’t have?
• Is it worth taking the time to develop a version of a page optimised for smartphones or tablets?

Talis run regular webinars on Google Analytics for those who want to understand a bit more about it. This is of particular benefit to customers using Prism 3 or Engage but is equally useful for anyone with more general responsibility for library web presence.

As I write, the next course is 9th March. You can see a list of such courses here. There is also a (brief) course overview available on the website.