Initially all one's efforts go into having a website, but once it is up and running you begin to find you want to know more about the people who visit your site  and what they do and why do they not always buy?! Why did they come to you  in first place? It's not just a matter of knowing how many "hits" your site has  had and in any case "hits" are meaningless as we indicated earlier. You need to  know where they came from, how long they stayed at the page they arrived  on, where they went to afterwards, and so on.

There are many services offering statistical data on your website performance. We are not going to recommend any specific services here, but draw your at tention to the kinds of data you might need to look at.

• Where your visitors came from. This is frequently called "referrer tracking"
• The search phrase they used to find your web page if they came via a search engine
• How long they stayed on the page in question
• Where your visitors went afterwards
• What browser, operating system, and screen resolution they were using

Referrer Tracking

This is to do with where your visitors came from. It is, however, of limited use because most people do not have their own IP address when they browse the  web they are using one of a range supplied by their ISP. Nevertheless some  aspects of it are useful; especially when it shows which search engine or other  website they came from. 

Search Engine Tracking

What you really need to know here is not what keywords your visitors have used in search engines to find your website, but which keyphrases or search  phrases. You should ensure that you have full "keyphrase" or "search phrase"  data.

Visitor Computer Data

This is important because you need to know how many visitors are using old or  alternative browsers which might render your page differently, what screen  resolution and size they are using because this determines how they will see  the page what content is not immediately visible to them for example, be cause they have to scroll to find it. You may then adjust your web design to  meet the needs of your visitors. A good web designer will test your site at various common resolution / screen size combinations, and in browsers such as  Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari. If you can provide him or her with visitor com puter data and tell him or her that will help him or her make the relevant as sessments for you.