If your Website is hosted by an effective ISP you should have access to reams of information about who looked at your Web pages, when they viewed them, how long they were navigating your site for and much more. All this information is contained in the log files your Web server piles while serving your pages.

Unlocking the more useful trends and analyses provided by the average Web server log file can be impossible without the right tools. ISPs often offer online graphical analysis, but the results are pretty much fixed.

If your company requires more tailored information, such as an indication of how well a marketing campaign is going, youll find WebTrends mentioned regularly. The company has been improving its analysis products for several years, and the latest result is a suite of applications for tackling a gamut of Internet tracking responsibilities.

Analysis Suite 7s foremost task is to monitor the log files of traffic to your site, such as the IP address or domain of each visitor, the date and time they visited, pages requested and whether they were successfully delivered or not. This information can become even more useful when used to help manage a particular marketing campaign. For example, you can organise appropriate access doors to your Website from various links, and plan routes around your site to achieve a particular sales message. Using Traffic Analysis, you can then analyse the log files to follow where surfers came into your site, where they exited and the routes they took to get there. Finding the weak spots and well-trodden routes, and comparing this information with what you actually had in mind is crucial for improving the sites design to meet its purpose.

Analysis Suite 7 can go even further and specify the search engines that served certain pages of your site, even which phrases and keywords had the top results. You can then tailor reports to count returning visits as opposed to new visits, and the popular pages.

There are many more activities recorded by your server on a daily basis than just visitor statistics, and Analysis Suite 7 can help you look at these areas in a graphical format. These reports on such riveting items as the ratio of cached hits to redirected hits, or failed access situations where a server error page was displayed are more likely to be of interest to the IT administrator or Web developer.

Analysis Suite 7 also monitors your Web server for possible network problems, which is unusual for log file analysis software. For example, you can receive an SMS text message or email if your server stops responding or changes status outside of predefined normal behaviour. Youll need the appropriate server access privileges in order to exploit WebTrends recovery services, but once its running the software can even reboot the system remotely.

Many Web design applications have useful analysis routines to help prevent uploading of links to missing pages and graphics, for example, but Analysis Suite 7 can examine your Website online for such problems. While perusing your Website, it can even offer suggestions for improved image alt tags.

For sites offering streaming media, Analysis Suite 7 can keep an eye on audiovisual access. This software can see how long clips are being played and what players are being used by the visitors to your site. Even more useful is the data transfer speed employed handy for tailoring file sizes to meet with typical demand.

WebTrends Analysis Suite 7 is a sophisticated piece of software and a major player in its field, but its price tag is quite a jump compared to many of the free or shareware offerings available. However, if your companys bottom line is how well your Website serves your visitors, anything less simply wont do.