An essential tool for any website, web analytics can help drive your site in the right direction. Empowering you to target traffic on the site and gain a clearer understanding where your website traffic is going and how they behave.
There are many different web analytics solutions available, there are both free analytic tools such as Analog, AWStats, Webalizer and Google analytics and more advanced and in-depth paid / subscription tools like Hitslink.
Google analytics (previously Urchin) do provide a high quality free service, with a quick, clean user interface and clearly displayed default and customized reporting. Google analytics also provide free conversion tracking tools for paid search campaigns.
Moving away from the free analytics tools, there are many web stats packages available that provide a very high quality reporting system with detailed information enabling you to measure a wide variety of online activities such as paid search campaigns, email campaigns and display advertising.
Paying for a web analytics solution will also guarantee you're fully supported with any possible issues. Generally analytics support will be done via email, though most providers are more than happy (and can support) phone support.
In an effort to help you choose the best web stats / analytics package for your website we have provided a brief overview and link to some of the packages we rate highly at www.addme.com.
As we have demonstrated website analytics platforms are very wide and varied when it comes to the tools they provide, most importantly the reporting capabilities within the solution. Take your time and review these carefully as a good analytics package can dramatically affect your website promotion activities.