Google Analytics (GA) for beginners

The first thing you notice when you start using GA,is the amount of options that you can choose from, and that its difficult to figure out which tools that are useful for your website.
There are several sites that is created with the intention of getting noobs to understand GA and I would highly recommend having a look at the links below in the order they are placed. I know they are all Google sites, but they will give you some really good hands-on learning, especially the Google Conversion University which have video tutorials for the majority of the options in GA.

Google Analytics training guide
A very step-by-step guide for beginners (PDF download).

Google Conversion University
A great video guide for beginners, especially if you are interested in learning more about Adwords as well.

Google Analytics help site
A bit more specific site, with a more precise information on certain subjects.

If your reason for learning GA is for commercial aspects, the combination with Google Adwords is highly recommended, because the two systems are designed to work together and if you are looking to start a cost-per-click (cpc) campaign; analytics will be necessary to see who is visiting the website, bounce rate, completed goals and if the money spent on cpc becomes profitable or if the keywords you are using isn’t applicable for the product/service your are trying to sell.

I’m a student of Marketing and the main benefit from my perspective is how cheap, efficient and powerful GA is when it comes to customer research, and how it can be used to see trends in consumer patterns that a survey, focus group or interviews wouldn’t be able to determined, for a fragment of the costs.
It’s simply astonishing, so if you want to get a fundamental understanding of digital marketing, a firm knowledge of Google Analytics is highly recommended.