Having this understanding would change how business is done online. Every marketing investment, every page created and entire flow of a site could easily be tracked and understood.

Additionally, how you market to people would change significantly for both site owner and site visitor. If a person bought one product you could easily suggest other products that they would probably like. Amazon has virtually mastered this feature. This could also work for sites that don't sell online. If you knew a person enjoyed a certain article you could easily suggest to them that they read another article. You could track exact path people take through your site and compare that with your most wanted response. By understanding this information you could easily tweak your site until this response increased.

However, while technology is available to do this, most statistical analysis programs largely do not provide information in this format. The technology that enables this kind of detailed, valuable information is either custom made for a specific, deep-pocketed company or is just extremely expensive. The reason this has happened, in my opinion, is that average site owner has no idea this information is available. And if there is no apparent demand chances of seeing this kind of analysis tool in near future in not likely.

Freestats.com - http://www.freestats.com Free Stats is free and easy to use. The downfall is code they give you inserts a banner on pages you wish to track. They do offer a "gold" service that eliminates banners for only 5.95 a month.

Thecounter.com - http://www.thecounter.com

The Counter supplies in-depth traffic reports. Tracks number of visitors, referrers, browsers, and more. Simple to use add a few lines of HTML to your pages and you're good to go.

Stattrack.com - http://www.stattrack.com

Stat Track is more then just a counter; you get detailed information about your web guests. To use it you will have to tolerate a small 88X31 button on your tracked pages. Sign up, paste code and you're done.

Now, let's move on to third party or pay stats services. Third party means another server collects and tabulates your website traffic, not server your site is hosted on.

Professional SuperStats- http://v2.superstats.com/service_options.html

Offers advanced real time tracking and historical reporting on site traffic. Not software, it's easy to set up. The tracking code is invisible to your site visitors, no banners or buttons. You can also export data to MS Word, Excel or PDF format for further analyzing. Only 19.95 per month or 200.00 US dollars for year.

Bondsmith.com - http://www.bondsmith.com

Provides traffic measurements and third party auditing services to website owners. Excellent for proving traffic patterns to potential advertisers. Sign up and get your first month for free.

Site Gauge - http://www.sitegauge.com/reports.htm

Offering a free service, but you have to show banners on your site. For only 19.95 a month for up to 20,000 page views I'd go with Pro service. It's invisible on your site and stats collected are really in-depth. You can also request that stats be e-mailed to you daily.

The last and final option is your web host. Some web hosts will be able to supply you with stats but not all of them. You'll have to ask yours if they do and if there is any charge involved. Usually they supply you with this information for free as an add-on to you hosting service, but I have seen some that charge a small fee for access. Make a point to ask, as many of them won't point it out to you otherwise.

There you have it, stats in a nut shell. By analyzing your website statistics you'll be able to make more informed decisions and know what's working and who's visiting your site. The breadcrumbs are there.... do you have a system in place to find them?