Scalability. Pick software that handles quickly expanding sites; busy Web sites can generate gigabytes of traffic reports each day. "Most vendors' software can't handle the volume," says Dan Vesset, a senior analyst at IDC. "That's the biggest reason why businesses change software vendors." Case in point: ABC Distribution switched from WebTrends to WebSideStory 15 months ago because WebTrends couldn't handle the 6GB of data generated each day by the online gift catalog's more than 100,000 visitors. WebTrends has since released software designed for high-traffic sites.

Available reports. There are hundreds of reports that measure different types of activities to choose from. Some show the amount of time a user spends on each Web page; others show the paths users take to navigate your site; and still others note how much time a user spends with offline applications, such as Microsoft Word, before returning to the Web. You won't need 80 percent of the available reports, but the ones you pick can be crucial. It all depends on your business and the context in which the numbers are read. For example, a report that shows that users spend an average of 20 minutes per visit sounds wonderful--unless you also look at the paths they take in navigating your site. You might find that they spend so much time not because they love your site, but because they keep getting lost.

Customization. Static monthly reports can take you only so far. Consider those that let you customize online reports and easily integrate data into other applications, such as eCRM programs.

Price. Dust off your wallet. Typical of software in its class, NetGenesis 5.0 will cost enterprises about $160,000, which includes approximately $60,000 for NetGenesis consultants to spend six weeks analyzing your business and deploying the product. WebTrends Enterprise Reporting Server, a browser-based program that exemplifies the middle tier of Web-traffic products, starts at $4,100 for one server. The average customer eventually spends about $30,000, says the company. Hosted solutions, such as those from WebSideStory, will vary in cost, depending on the volume of traffic analyzed. But expect to pay $2,000 to $5,000 per month.

Platform. This isn't the headache it was 18 months ago. Previously, some tools were available only for Windows NT, requiring Herculean efforts by larger Web site hosts to port data over to Unix-based servers. Now, in their efforts to attract larger enterprises, vendors have released Unix-compatible applications. Not many Linux tools are yet available, however. Web server support is often not an issue either. Most traffic tools now support the usual suspects, including Apache, Microsoft IIS, and Netscape Enterprise.

Glossary of Web-analysis terms Crawlers: Also called spiders or bots (short for robots), these programs automatically visit Web sites, read pages, and collect information. Used often in search engines, crawlers can artificially inflate the number of page visits for a particular site up to 30 percent. The better traffic-analysis tools filter such visits out when creating traffic reports. Page Views: The number of times a Web page is opened, typically measured per person. Page-view statistics often do not include the specifics for frames within those pages. Also, the page-view count generally does not distinguish between unique and repeat visitors. Paths: The navigation routes visitors take on a site--a particularly useful measurement of how difficult a site is to maneuver and the popularity of specific pages. Reach: The portion, usually given as a percentage, of a target audience (e.g., 18- to 34-year-old males, or small businesses) that has opened a particular page or site. Referrers: URLs denoting the portals or Web sites through which another site is reached. Retention: The measurement of unique users who return to the same site or page over a given time. PC Data Online, for example, measures it as "the percentage of a site's traffic during the previous month that also came back during the current month." Unique Users: Individuals, often identified through the use of cookies, IP addresses, or passwords, who visit a site. Compare with visitors, below. Visitors: Number of persons who visit a site. An individual who visits a site three times in one day is typically counted as three visitors.

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