Fortunately, Web technology has evolved to the point where you now have a great set of low-cost, and even free, choices for collecting information on your traffic. Generally, the data-collection options fall into two classes: third-party Web services and log-analysis products.
With the Web-service approach, you embed special HTML code into your page referencing a Web-statistics site such as a banner-ad exchange or access counter. Many ad exchanges, such as LinkExchange.com, offer traffic analysis as part of their service offerings, because they need to track many of the same statistics about the number of times a page -- and thus an ad -- was seen. Access-counter services, such as HitBox.com and Site Tracker, provide no-cost services in exchange for a graphic on your page that refers back to their services, giving them a free ad on your page. These services also offer premium paid services that don't require you to display their ads. (For more choices in third-party Web services, conduct a search for "access counters" or "banner exchanges," and don't forget the quotation marks.)
Using these traffic services is nearly effortless. Once you've put the required HTML code on your pages, the service will begin to collect the data. Most services update your statistics at least daily, so you'll get quick feedback on what's happening at your site. To view your statistics, simply visit the service's Web site and log in to your account. Most services provide a wide variety of reports in both graphical and tabular format; some provide the data in downloadable form so you can do further analysis with a program such as Microsoft Excel.
The downside of these services is they collect only the most basic statistics: visits and page views. The privacy of your visitors is also a concern; you're telling some third party about the comings and goings of all the users on your site. Advertising networks such as DoubleClick have described plans to track users with personally identifiable data. This has led many users to block the cookies used to track them, which greatly reduces the accuracy of Web-traffic services.
16%
7%
