We are clearly well past the innocent "golden age" of the 
Internet - Darwinian economics have become the order of the day 
today. Any company worth their salt must maintain a web site as 
an information resource and/or to generate incremental ecommerce 
revenue. Qualified traffic is the name of the game, as it's the 
oxygen that keeps a good ecommerce web site thriving. 
Consequently, it's very important to have an understanding of 
your web site traffic or visitor activity; i.e. baseline 
information that includes the number of visitors during specific 
time periods, originating location (domain), where the visitors 
went on a site and how long they stayed on specific sections or 
pages of a web site. The de facto industry standard traffic 
analysis tool application is Web Trends, manufactured/supported 
by netiQ, Inc., which we will focus on in this article.


FUNDAMENTALS AND JARGON WATCH 

All traffic analysis tools rely primarily upon information 
that is extracted from log files; i.e. files that are 
maintained on your server which show where a visitor came 
from, what keyword(s) they used to find your site (if 
applicable), what Operating System and Browser versions they 
are using, etc. There are literally hundreds of excellent log 
file analysis tools that can be located via CNet's Download.com 
or TuCows - both sites are excellent resources for software and 
information.  

It's critical in today's bottom line business environment to 
have the ability to analyze web traffic (visitors) and patterns 
and then integrate this knowledge with your overall business 
processes - what do you pay for traffic, is it converting 
(people are buying your goods and services), how long are 
people staying on specific sections or pages of your web site, 
what marketing expenditures are working and which aren't!  

You know your entering the reality distortion field (we 
marketing types need to justify our fees & services) and 
need to raise your jargon filters to stun level when you 
here and/or see these keywords; i.e. clickstream traffic 
(fancy way of saying traffic or visitors delivered via mouse 
clicks to your web site), ebusiness solutions (meaning - 
selling your products/services via an ecommerce site) or my 
all-time personal favorite, "ebusiness intelligence" (what's 
ebusiness and what determines if it's "intelligent"). 


TRAFFIC COUNTER APPLICATIONS 

First and foremost, do you really need a comprehensive product 
like Web Trends (more on the different applications later) or 
can you get by with a click (traffic) counter application like 
the Hit Box? The latter company provides a free plain vanilla 
traffic counter which can be easily set up in minutes via your 
web site. Hit Box is a great product and used by hundreds of 
thousands of web sites, so it may be sufficient for your 
business, if you just want very basic info ("Page Views and 
Daily Unique Visitors) and don't mind advertising for another 
company via your web site.  

But, there are some downsides to utilizing Hit Box, you must 
install their "button" on your Index (home) page and it only 
provides you with basic traffic information (how much per day 
with a forecast based on these numbers). You can upgrade to 
their HitBox Professional which is very similar to Web Trends 
basic application ("Web Trends Log Analyzer") - but, you have 
to pay for this service on a traffic basis which can get 
expensive, depending on your overall traffic.  


WEB TRENDS APPLICATIONS AND INTERFACE 

Web Trends (the company) was acquired by netiQ, Inc. the 
parent company about 18 months ago due to their strong market 
leadership position with web traffic analysis software. Like 
many good web-focused software companies, netiQ enables you to 
download all of their apps for a 30 day trial period. Estimates 
range from 60-80% market share for one of their three primary 
products; i.e. "Web Trends Log Analyzer," their baseline $500 
USD application which is a good solution for most web sites 
that have a single domain or under 25 in total; "Web Trends 
Analysis Suite" (SRP $2.5K USD), which incorporates the 
functionality of the Log Analyzer product and adds more 
features for managing bandwidth usage (interior and external), 
monitoring and alerting an IT Manager or Department for server 
related problems and handles up to 100 domains (sites); the 
"Web Trends Intelligence Suite" is their top of the line 
product (pricing varies depending on bundled services) geared 
for enterprise customers, it includes integration and training 
services for integrating the application with Online Analytics 
Processing Tools ("OLAP" yes another ebiz acronym) or other 
types of reporting tools. 

We've been using and recommending Web Trends to clients for 
years primarily because of its interface and functionality. 
It's a browser-enabled app, meaning anyone with a browser 
(IE or Netscape) can view reports and data. The reports are 
presented in a straightforward manner that includes basic pie 
chart or bar types of graphics - you can easily tell at a 
glance what your visitor traffic was for a given period, 
where they came from, what pages they visited and how long 
they stayed on specific pages. You don't need to be a 
technologist or a marketing geek to use this application - 
see below for practical tips. 


PRACTICAL USAGE 

So what do you want to measure and what type of custom reports 
do you want to run once you get the software installed? You 
will want to measure how much traffic (visitors) is coming to 
your web site per day, week, month, where they are coming from 
(country of origin), and where visitors going on your web site; 
i.e. home page, internal pages and of these what specific pages; 
i.e. About Us Products, Services your Shopping Cart, etc.  Pay 
careful attention to usage times, how long people are staying 
on specific pages; too long may indicate they can't figure out 
your content, or your content is so good its meaningful and 
educational. For example, if your "White Paper Resource" 
section is the most frequently visited and the visitor 
sessions (time elements) are long (2-4 minutes) then this 
means your content is being well received. But, if everyone 
is just reading your White Papers but not filling out your 
response forms then you may need to alter some aspects of your 
business processes and how you communicate them via your web 
site. 

Web Trends compliments ongoing advertising campaigns and 
processes - it lets you capture critical ROI ("Return on 
Investment") information by giving you an accurate picture 
of traffic and usage patterns that should correlate with 
what your ad agency or marketing partner is telling you or 
confirming with their own reports. For example: If your 
deploying an opt-in e-mail campaign and bringing people to 
a specific "landing page" (specific page where people are 
directed to that may include an "offer") you need to carefully 
monitor if people are clicking through to the page and how 
long they are staying and/or going to your shopping cart to 
purchase a product or a registration fulfillment page. If the 
session times (how long they stay on a page) are short and 
people aren't filling out a form or converting (purchasing 
or taking a specific action) then you clearly have some work 
to do on your web site content and or business processes.