Hi Richo!
There are a number of trackers available to help you get an idea of
who is surfing your website. These trackers will record:
-- the user's IP address
-- which ISP they use
-- what country they are located in
-- what operating system they use
-- what browser they are using
-- what page they looked at immediately prior to visiting your page
...or some combination of these.
Big Tracker combines daily and weekly usage statistics, provides you
with the user's full IP address (which can be fed to WHOIS to
determine the user's ISP), browser, OS used, screen resolution and
system language. You can use the same Big Tracker account to monitor
one page or several pages - Big Tracker will tell you which page your
visitor was on, and for how long.
Sign up is fast and free:
Big Tracker
http://www.bigtracker.com
SiteMeter offers many of the same features as Big Tracker, but the
record only reflects the last 100 hits, and the last two digits of the
IP address are not given. If your site is low traffic, SiteMeter may
be just what you need. Additionally, SiteMeter offers a
non-JavaScript option for faster loading. The non-JavaScript option
is fully functional, but it does not record the page referrer.
SiteMeter
http://www.sitemeter.com
Though it keeps only the 20 most recent hits on record, eXtreme
Tracker is remarkably complete. In addition to the same features as
the two trackers noted above, eXtreme Tracker will also tell you what
keywords (if any) your visitors used to find you, as well as what
search engine they used.
eXtreme Tracker
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/
Another method of tracking site visitors, though perhaps less
effective as many people don't accept these, is to set a cookie.
Cookies can be used to save a bit of information on your visitor's
computer, which can be used to identify the visitor later.
Web Monkey offers a cookie tutorial to show you how to do this (I
wouldn't recommend it, however, as many people refuse cookies
altogether, except from known and trusted sites or those which require
cookies to function):
Cookies
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/29/index1a_page7.html
I hope this is helpful to you! If there is any part of my answer
which is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask for clarification.
--Missy |
