Visitor Tracking
Doing e-commerce on the web without a good visitor tracking system is like managing a gallery blindfolded. You can't recognize who is coming in and out of your gallery, nor effectively count them. If somebody shows an interest for a painting, you won't know it. And worse - if somebody runs off with the cash register, or one of your priceless paintings, you won't know who did it.
When managing a web site, you must ask yourself the following questions:
- What type of client is coming to my web site?
- What products or services attract them?
- Who is referring me business
- Do my visitors buy on their first,second, or seventh visit?
- What is my return on investment on different advertising vehicles?
- Are visitors defrauding me? (see click fraud section)
For the answer to any and all of these questions, you need a good web analytics program. For small ecommerce sites with small budgets, you should at least deploy a robust web log analyzer. These are provided free of charge or for a minimal fee by most ISP hosting companies. Become familiar with its reports, and consult them frequently. If you do your own hosting, a good starting point would be the open source product Log Analyzer
.For any site engaged in pay-per-click advertising and spending more than $500 a month on advertising, we strongly recommend an industrial- strength web analytics program.
There are numerous great products on the market. A relatively complete here. listing of the top commercial products can be found here. We recommend ClickTracks Pro for its ease-of-use, great visual interface, insightful reports and affordable price point. (try flash-based demo)