I would like to know the different methods/state of the art for
low-medium cost systems that track the success of marketing campaigns
on-line, from the entry of visitors through to their purchase of goods
or other behaviors on the site.

I am starting a number of web sites that will use a variety of methods
for promotion -- search engines, purchased keywords, link shares,
banner ads, and so forth.  I want to track where users came from
(refering url), potentially a marketing campaign that brought them in,
and then identify those campaigns that result in profitable customers
(i.e. those that purchase goods).  I have a series of questions :

1. What are the methods to track visitors through the site ?
2. Which log analyzers/software tools will allow me to cross reference
based on where the visitors came from and the tell me how many clicked
purchase buttons (and which buttons which groups clicked) ?
3. I am on a modest budget, less than $1000 in tools total -- are
there low cost solutions to this problem ?

Dear Misterfine-ga,

Two of the ways you have of tracking the visitors of your websites are
by using software that analyzes your server log files, or by using
hosted services that analyze your website traffic with a programming
code you need to add in each one of the website pages you want to
analyze.

The following are some of the options that are available in the log
analyzer software category. I have included some of the features each
application has(if they tell you how many visitors clicked purchase
buttons or where the visitors came from), for more detailed
information please visit the given links:

NetTracker Professional
(http://www.sane.com/products/NetTracker/pro.html)
Price: $495 "...Use NetTracker Professional to view the individual
clickstream path of each visitor to your Web site, to analyze use of
dynamically generated Web site content, and to measure site response
times and page delivery. NetTracker Professional measures site
"stickiness" via repeat, new and unique visitor behavior analysis. Use
NetTracker Professional to segment your Web site visitors by actions
performed and content viewed as well as to measure the effectiveness
of your banner ad campaigns."

Clicktracks (http://www.clicktracks.com/)
Price: $495
"ClickTracks is a simply unique way of understanding how visitors
interact with your website, whether ecommerce, content or intranet.
It's unique because it's visual and interactive, displaying
information in context with your site. It's powerful because it
permits you to separate your visitors into different groups and
compare their behavior - so you can see the effectiveness of a search
engine or ad campaign, for example. Your actual HTML pages are
displayed overlaid with graphs that visually shows how many people
navigate any link."

Analog (http://www.analog.cx/)
Price: Free
They call themselves the most popular logfile analyser in the world.
"Analog is a program to measure the usage on your web server. It tells
you which pages are most popular, which countries people are visiting
from, which sites they tried to follow broken links from, and all
sorts of other useful information." You can see an example of the
reports this application generates at:
http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/webstats/stats.html

The following are some of the hosted applications that need you to add
a programming code to the pages you want to analyze. As they are
hosted, some of them charge a monthly fee for their service, although
some others offer the service in exchange of placing a banner or ad on
your site. I have included some of the features each application has,
for more detailed information please visit the given links:

Webtrends Live (http://www.netiq.com/products/wtl/default.asp)
Price: $35/month including 50,000 page views and 5 profiles or sites
"Track visitors, new vs. returning visitors, pages viewed, top paths
and more. Analyze a rich wealth of web page data while pages are being
viewed.
Use content groups to find out which group of pages your visitors view
the most often. This can provide you with valuable insight into your
visitors' needs and preferences."

Hitbox Professional (http://www.hitbox.com/)
Price: $44.95/month for up to 50,000 page views per month
"Here's a summary of the highlights:
Comprehensive Traffic Data, E-commerce Tracking, Sources of Customer
Acquisition, Patented Path Tracking, Macromedia Flash Tracking,
Advanced Search Capabilities and Intuitive User Interface"

Freestats.com (http://www.freestats.com/)
Price: Free if you place an advertising banner on your site. Paid
options available from $2.99/month
The free version gives you 7 days of statistics including Page Views,
unique visitors, popular pages, raw logs and top referrers.

You can see demos of each one of the services on the links provided.
For more site statistics options please see the links below under
Search Strategy.

Search Strategy

web log analyzer
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=web+log+analyzer

site statistics
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site+statistics&btnG=Google+Search

I hope you find this information useful,

Jmmjumarti-ga