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There are basically three ways that computers can track visitors:

1. IP addresses
2. Membership numbers
3. Cookies

Let's talk about cookies first. Why? Because if you are using them you probably do not need to read this article... unless of course you hired a webmaster to set up a website and s/he installed a cookie maker on it for you.

When a visitor first arrives at a website that utilizes cookies, a "cookie" is placed on the visitor's computer (more acurrately, it is place in their "web browser"). The cookie uses an ID number to identify you as a visitor at that website. This way, the website owner can keep track of how often you visit their site. Theoretically, this means that all you have to do in order to see how many unique visitors you have, is to look at the number of unique cookie numbers, right? Well, this only works to a point. You see, some people disable cookies on their computers while others clean the cookies out of their machines on a regular basis (which means your website would assign them a new number). There also may be more than one person using a particular computer (i.e.. libraries, schools, labs, etc.). As you can see, cookies really do not allow you to accurately track your visitors.

What about Membership numbers? Well, you can insist that people log onto your site. If they do, you've got it made. But let's be realistic. Unless you have an exclusive, password protected, paid-for site, only somewhere between 0% and 5% of people are going to even bother with you. For most online businesses, this is not a feasible way of tracking visitors.

Finally, there are IP addresses. This is what your website logs will provide you with and what most good counters you see on websites use to track their numbers. It is the most readily available way of tracking visitors, so you need to understand how IP addresses works. Each time someone connects to the web, they receive a different IP address. This is because ISP's (Internet Service Provider's) are assigned a limited number of IP addresses. So when someone connects online, the ISP assigns them a number. When the same someone disconnects, that number becomes available to be assigned to the next person connecting online.

For example, when John connects online, he is automatically given an IP address. John surfs for about 30 minutes and then disconnects. The IP address that John had is now available for reassignment. So now, when Mary connects online, she is given John's old IP address. Five minutes later, John decides to connect online again. He is given a totally new IP address.

So John could dial-in three different times and receive three different IP addresses. Each time he comes back to your site, he looks like a different visitor. To confuse things even more, by some magical coincidence Mary just happens to visit your site... and you think she is John! Wow!

I'm telling you this because it is useful to know what's really happening behind the scenes. And don't worry, there's no point in working up a sweat over this. Like I said before, there is no perfect way to track unique visitors! Have you ever noticed how web stat software says "user sessions" instead of "unique visitors"? Well, they do this because, as I've shown, you can have 1 visitor come back to your site multiple times in a month and look like a different visitor each time. This is why they are recorded as "user sessions". With that said, IPs are most commonly used to track visitors because they are the most accurate.

If you want to have a successful site, you need to be able to properly utilize your website logs. Without them, you have no true way of tracking your users. I explain how to do this in detail in my Insider Secrets Course.You'll learn how to track your users by their IP addresses as well as how you can have an accurate counter on your website.

The next thing I want to do is clarify the difference between hits, page views, and unique visitors. Hang in here with me! This is mega important! I've seen people (sites) bragging that they receive a million hits each week, or something to that affect. Now, on the surface it might seem that hits = visitors. But NO! This is not so!

A hit means that the web browser has loaded in a unique piece of information, such as an image or a webpage. So, let's say you have this (totally against my advice!) page that has 20 photos (jpegs)... 20 cute little buttons pointing the way to various articles... a control panel with 10 more cute little buttons and bars ... some text... a logo (gif)... some fancy text (gif)... and two affiliate banners. Whoa! Did you know that in order to load this information, the visitor's browser will have to make over 55 hits ... maybe more?

So, in this example one visitor, looking at only one page has resulted in 55+ hits! Basically, the number of hits a site receives is just that... a number! As you can see, if the visitor goes to every page on your site, you will receive a lot of hits!

What about page views? Well, page views are way more useful. For example if you are giving visitors a choice of 5 articles and they go to one article (page view) a hundred times more than they go to the other four articles, you should get some ideas about what your visitors are interested in. Basically, a page view tells you how many times a particular web page was accessed. One visitor could visit just one page on your site and then leave (oh dear!), or they could go through and read every single page.

Page views also allow you to get useful information about the way visitors are accessing your pages. For example, if you expect your visitors to go from page one to page two to page three ... and instead they are starting on page one and skipping to page three, you might wonder why? And if it is important, you might do something about it!

Finally, let's talk about unique visitors. We've already discussed the John and Mary problem, so you know that the stats are not perfect. However, until there is a perfect method of identifying unique visitors, we'll just have to take the visitor numbers at face value ... unique IP address = unique visitor.

So what you see here is that one visitor (unique IP address) will normally visit one or more pages (page views) resulting in anywhere from dozens to thousands of hits.

I had a funny thing happen the other day - something that really drives home the importance of knowing the definitions we have just been discussing! A customer phoned up all excited about the increase in traffic at his site. When I looked at his stats, showing the number of unique visitors vs. the number of page views vs. the number of hits ... it turned out that a large percentage of his traffic increase was due to a "ping" service he had signed up for. The ping service sends a robot over to his site once every hour to make sure everything is up and running. It reports to him via email if there is a problem with his site. So in one week, the ping service accounted for 24 x 7 = 168 page views ... and tens of thousands of hits ... but in reality there was only one unique visitor!

Now, the good news for my customer was that he actually did have an increase in his website traffic ... but it wasn't nearly of the magnitude he originally thought!

While I was talking to him I also took a look at the paths his visitors were taking through his site. In his case, it turned out that his visitors weren't taking a path ... at all. They were bailing out after the 2nd page. As a short term solution I suggested he put everything into one long sales letter as a way of keeping people from leaving. The second step was to take a good hard look at the copy near the end of the 2nd page to try and figure out why people were leaving at that point.

Within a week, my customer had increased sales significantly. All this from paying attention to his website stats!

• who your visitor is (their IP address)
• the date and time of their visit
• where they came from (i.e. who referred them)
• if they came from a Search Engine and what were they searching for
• how long they stayed
• the path they followed
• how many bytes of information were transferred
• and more

• where your visitors are coming from
• which of your advertising, marketing and promotion tactics are paying off for you
• how long your visitors are staying
• which pages in particular your visitors are interested in
• whether or not your visitors are following the "path" you thought you were leading them down
• which of your linking partners are paying off for you
• which of the Search Engines are bringing you visitors
• what visitors are searching for in the Search Engines
• what error messages and pages your visitors are getting (are they looking for a page you took off your website a week ago?)
• what browsers people are using. For example,if 80% of your visitors use Netscape 4.x and you haven't taken a look at your site on Netscape 4.x ... you won't know what they are seeing.
• what operating systems people are using (Windows95, Windows98, Mac)
• which of your pages are the most popular. If you thought the marketing section was going to be the big hit, and it turns out the contest page is the biggest draw, you might want to revise what you have on your contest page to encourage more sales.
• what are the most popular days and hours at your site. Do you receive a huge surge in traffic starting minutes after your ezine is delivered?
• what page(s) are your visitors clicking out from. Do you need to redo these pages to keep your visitors at your site?

WebTrends Log Analyzer is another very popular program. It is NOT free but in my opinion, it is by far the best and we have tried them all. You can get it as a stand alone analyzer or in conjunction with a package of other tools. This program is capable of analyzing huge amounts of data very quickly. It can also put out giant numbers of reports, charts and graphs which can be customized in every way imaginable - including the level of information, color, and report formats (i.e. Word document, spreadsheet, HTML document, or text file).