Acknowledgments

This book would not have ever happened if not for the efforts of all of my contributors, colleagues, and friends in the web measurement industry: people like Bryan Eisenberg, Jim Novo, and Jim Sterne, who are always happy to provide guidance; Jim MacIntyre, Jeff Seacrist, Bob Page, and Brett Hurt for technical assistance; and Jason Burby and Dylan Lewis for ongoing support.

My extreme gratitude goes out to each of the vendors who provided screenshots and information for the book, including Jane Palocci at Coremetrics, John Mellor at Omniture, Corey Gault at WebTrends, Brett Crosby at Urchin, Erik Brat at WebSideStory, Jay Rudman at OpinionLab, Roger Benyon and Tom Cherry at Usability Sciences, and, of course, all of my contributors. Thanks is also due to the CEOs and VPs of marketing at many of the vendors, including Jeff Lunsford, Joe Davis, Greg Drew, Jim MacIntyre, Josh James, John Marshall, Jim Rose, and Ram Srinivasan for letting their people take the time to contribute content and ideas.

Tremendous credit goes to Andrew Odewahn, my editor at O'Reilly Media, for being patient and understanding and for his enthusiasm about this work.

Thanks to Tim O'Reilly and Rael Dornfest for taking a chance on a book about web measurement in the first place.

Special thanks to Ross Jenkins, Ian Houston, Terry Lund, and Josh Manion for taking the time to provide excellent technical reviews of the book. Trust me, the information quality of this entire book is better for the time these four gentlemen spent.

Thanks to JupiterResearch and David Schatsky for being open to the idea of my writing a book about web measurement.

Both Dr. Stephen Turner and Ian Houston have my eternal gratitude for taking the time to write the "build your own" hacks, which turned out to be more work than any of us imagined, but have provided, in my opinion, a handful of the most valuable hacks in this book. Thanks to Dr. Turner, the original "web site measurement hacker," for providing the foreword to this book.

Thanks to Amity, my best friend and most ardent supporter, for helping me create an environment where writing was possible and encouraging me whenever I became lazy or uninspired.

Finally, thanks to Chloe Michelle Peterson, who from age 18 months to 22 months was so sweet and understanding that "daddy had to write."