What is the best way to track visitors behavior?
Do you use custom made stats software or commercial ones?

Thanks,
Peter

we use some scripts that we wrote ourselves to help track our visitors..

Not sure what is available commerically...

but, we don't do anything super fancy. We set a couple cookies, and create some database entries.. More or less to track what ads are performing the best, and where our orders come from..

I'd also be interested in hearing what other people use..

Thanks

Jay.

Custom scripts is the best and easy solution for me,
I use simple php scripts with cookies to track visitors and
the best source for spending money in ads.

For commercial stats I'm using Urchin and planning to develop a scrip to integrate Urchin with my order form.

If you want use an outsource solution

http://www.advertisingresults.net/

look good.

Originally posted by Simone
Custom scripts is the best and easy solution for me,
I use simple php scripts with cookies to track visitors and
the best source for spending money in ads.

For commercial stats I'm using Urchin and planning to develop a scrip to integrate Urchin with my order form.

If you want use an outsource solution

http://www.advertisingresults.net/

look good.

Any chance I could get a copy of that script ?
Or if you'd prefer to charge, then how much ?

You can email it to fred@midrangeresources.com

What I've done in the past (and what ive done for clients) is to install basic web stats through apache but then a nice cookie/url session bassed script that works with a database.

The script tracks the referer, where the user goes, what link they click to get there and then compiles their total stay time, what page most people last visit, where they come to and how... that way i can see that google brings 2000 hits a day but 1 sale or whatever

You may also want to compile PHP with session support and use it through all your site...... then you can track visitor behavior...

apollo

You shouldn't do that. It is an invasion of privacy. :(

You can use cookies to do what the standard HTTP protocol can't do, but not to monitor visitors' behavior.

But, if you do, make sure you state that clearly on your privacy policy.

A good way to 'stalk' your visitors live, is the control panel of scripts like LiveSupport & HumanClick. :)

microstrategy has some good customer/visitor intelligence gathering software. j/k

webtrends can do a lot of good stuff.. im pretty sure it can handle apache logs

web trends enterprise suite

if you are solo on your server add the apache cookies

tracking dymnaic pages use invisible gif
if there is more than one template for your dynamci pages, change the name of the invisible gif for each page
see how many times that image was requested

blah blah
in the end all that counts are sales, track those with cookies
however not 100% accurate as many dont accept them or delete them prior to the sale

dos centavos

For awesome visitor tracking, see http://www.phpee.com/