Despite the lack of certainty in Web traffic numbers, analyzing your traffic can be invaluable. For example, do you want to know why your customers abandon their virtual shopping carts before hitting the checkout line? Look at the page-navigation statistics. Can't understand why visitors never make it to the fourth page of your online catalog? See how much time they're forced to spend on the first three pages. Sensing a dramatic shift in the demographics of your visitors? Analysis tools can show you which Web sites they visited before coming to you.
Broadly speaking, you have three ways to go about measuring and analyzing Web traffic. You can install traffic-analysis software, such as that sold by NetGenesis, WebTrends, and Accrue Software, on your own servers (regardless of whether you host your own site or use an ISP for that purpose). You can outsource this task to a service provider, such as WebSideStory, that specializes in traffic reporting. Or you can subscribe to an independent tracking service, such as Nielsen/NetRatings, or Media Metrix.
Most recently, traffic-analysis vendors have been offering a mishmash of products to attract a broader audience. For example, in March 2001, WebSideStory began selling its first packaged software, an analytical tool called HitBox DataWise, while software developer WebTrends now offers a hosted service called WebTrends Live.
Each product has its pros and cons. WebSideStory's HitBox Enterprise, for instance, is very customizable and good at tracking larger historical Web trends, but requires labor-intensive steps in tracking traffic minutia, such as a specific page's ebb and flow of visitors over several weeks. (Such trends are easier to track using WebSideStory's recent release, DataWise.) And PC Data Online captures useful details about Web usage--for example, repeated visits to the same site--but it generates such details by collecting data from only a sample of consumer-oriented Web users. While the consumer sample is vast--120,000 and growing by 3,000 a month--specialized sites such as FansOnly.com's Notre Dame souvenir shop are likely underrepresented.
