You can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. If you're spending a lot on search engine ads and keyword buys, you need to see which ones are performing and which aren't. Web analytics tools let you see which search engines are sending you traffic as well as the most popular keywords used to find your site. What if you aren't spending any money at all on online marketing? A Web monitoring tool will show you the gaps and holes in your search engine rankings and results, and very likely how you can shore them up with search engine submissions and/or keyword buys.

You need to know where your traffic is coming from, and why. Are search engines your site's biggest source of traffic? Or do you have little-known but significant on-ramps from other Web sites, perhaps complementary companies who are potential business partners? Also, are your efforts to generate new customers and sales leads (such as newsletter signups and free product trials) working or not? FastCounter Pro, for example, contains a "referrer" section showing who is sending you traffic — by specific Web page, by domain and by domain type (such .com, .edu, .gov, etc.).

You need to know what users like and don't like about your Web site. Web site monitoring tools identify your site's most requested pages, as well as your most common entry pages and exit pages. "If you know what is working well, you can optimize your site to provide more of it," says Helen Chan, a small-business technology analyst with The Yankee Group, a technology research firm. But knowing your most common exit pages can be just as beneficial, Osmeloski says. "Where users bail out is important. Maybe you're losing people because of the content on that page," and you need to change it to something more intriguing or compelling, she says.

You need to know about any defects on your site. Most Web monitoring tools enable you to see the operating systems and browsers your users have. It should help you to know, for example, the percentage of your users who have Macintosh systems (versus Windows) and who use Netscape browsers (versus Internet Explorer). What's the customer experience using a Mac or Netscape? Beyond that, a tool such as Fast Counter Pro enables you to see how many users are attempting to link to nonexistent or "404" pages. "These pages are a bad reflection, not just on your Web site but also on your business. People may draw conclusions about your customer service," Chan says. "The more you know about how the customer views your business, the better off you are."

It's how you'll really get to know your customers . The Internet -- and all of the technologies associated with it -- allows you to understand your customers and prospects better than other media and marketing channels. "In the online world, not everybody is going to come to your site to buy a product or service. But the Web allows you to track where they go and what they do on your site, so you can make changes to your site based on their behavior," Chan says. "You've become smarter. You can do that online."

Web monitoring tools also can track conversions (sales) and trace the steps leading to conversions in a way no offline medium can, says Andrew Goodman, a Toronto-based search engine marketing consultant. Such tools, he says, "have forced people to do different things with their Web sites. They're working harder now on their Web sites and their businesses."