Telemate.Net's solution not only tells you how many people visited your site, it also breaks users down into groups, locations and their activities during their visits. You can even create reports to help track customer calls to your helpdesk. Granted, this powerful set of reporting tools takes several days to learn, but the information you can gather is worth the cost of purchasing the software and training an administrator.
Pricing for eSpective is based on the number of Web servers you have. It starts at $9,995, for a single server, and costs $4,995 for additional servers at the same site. The product includes Microsoft SQL Server and Seagate Technology's Crystal Reports. Because of its power, you'll need at least a high-end Pentium III system with 256 MB of RAM and dozens of gigabytes of disk space. Fortunately, you can run eSpective from any Windows- based PC and remotely monitor and track a server in another location. The package includes more than 100 canned reports, and if you choose different filters, you can create more than 1,000 customized reports.
To test the product, I installed eSpective along with SQL Server and Crystal Reports on a PC running Microsoft Windows 2000. I then pointed the software to a Web server running Microsoft's Internet Information Server.
The eSpective package includes sample data that I used for learning how to navigate the software and create test reports. Overall, I spent about three days with the product before I became comfortable creating all the different reports, but most users can create generic reports within hours of installing the software.
To set up eSpective, I had to first select the data source I wanted to use. The product is marketed toward Web sites, but it also can generate reports from other sources, such as a SQL database. I had several options for picking the data I wanted to track. For example, I was able to select my test Web server, create advertisement/hot click groups, and specify both internal and external URLs to track.
Web administrators look for trends beyond just the number of visitors to a particular site or page. Fortunately, eSpective lets you track users by group, including individuals, domain names and even IP subnets. This is a good way to track visitors from a particular customer group or even an entire city. In testing the product, I used the sample data to group visitors by subnet. Because I knew that a particular subnet was based in a U.S. city, I was able to see the number of visitors from a particular location.
Tracking Visitors
The eSpective solution does more than just track the number of users to your site, it also lets you see how long they were connected, which pages they viewed and how much data they sent or received. And you can view cookie information to collect particular facts about users' PCs and where users typically surf. You can even create groups of particular PCs and OSes accessing your site, such as the number of Pentium III and Macintosh visitors--particularly useful if you are a hardware or software vendor.
While the ability to track visitors and where they came from is impressive, eSpective is also a useful tool for bandwidth and CPU monitoring. To test this feature, I created a report that showed the amount of bandwidth consumed over the course of a typical business day and how many Web pages my server was able to process. These reports help enterprises make decisions such as when to upgrade their Web servers or increase the bandwidth of their Internet connections.
Searching Search Engines
One of my favorite features of the product is the ability to track the number of keyword hits from a particular search engine, such as Excite, Lycos or Yahoo. This lets administrators see how many visitors are using standard engines to find their sites. As with all of the reports, results can be viewed in both numeric and graphic screens.
You also can register the product with an online database that lets you find out more information about users based on their e-mail addresses. This service can provide a visitor's full name, address and phone number.
Call-Center Services
One of the lesser-known features of eSpective is the ability to track customers and call centers. A typical application for this would be to track how often a customer contacts your call center and how long he or she is connected. You can then use this information to see which customers call you the most and how long they are typically on the phone. You can further use this information for billing customers and/or to see how much a particular user is costing you in support.
Steve Rigney is a network consultant specializing in storage management, VoIP and remote access. Send your comments on this article to him at srigney@adisfwb.com.
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