No matter which page I read in this book, I always felt like I was a student in the area of web site statistics and had been afforded the privilege of speaking one on one with someone who really knows their stuff. Unlike other Hacks books I've read, in this text, all the sections flow together, redefining "Hack" as sub-topics of the current sections primary focus. Although you are expected to have a basic understanding of the underlying technology, the author writes in a very easy to follow, natural language fashion that neither dumbs the topics down nor makes the reader skip ahead passed fluff. In fact, there is a refreshing lack of sidebar or call-out sections, author's useless opinion about the weather in Albuquerque, or paragraphs dedicated to promoting some commercial product. Which leads me to another positive point about this book; any topic presented that requires a third party application to demonstrate with - uses freeware products readily available and without hitches.
After spending a few pages explaining what networking traffic tools are appropriate for web site visit tracking and which are appropriate for internal network traffic monitoring, the reader is then introduced to what is / is not appropriate data to monitor, and why. Once a foundation has been laid, time is spent reviewing the different mechanism of gathering usage statistics from your web site, including the web server's intrinsic logging, cookies, Macromedia Flash Local Shared Objects, RSS, JavaScript page tags, and Web Bugs. This book considers the last two to be the primary data gathering engine and are well covered, from general flow and browser trends, to implementing the code and ensuring you have a good privacy policy posted. The bulk of the book is then dedicated in showing you how you you can implement these tools into your web site, RSS feed, and emails to best gather real-time user environmental settings, dynamically display information or reconfigure your presentation based on said settings, and learn if parts of your presentation need to be reworked.
There is no end of good information in this book for anyone who wishes to learn the basics & intermediates of web site usage measurements. An abundance of code examples and plain-English presentation ensure that you understand the material and are never lost due to overly complicated presentations of concepts, or put-off by over simplifications. The author has brought an abundance of real-world experience into this text and it shows.