User tracking

Hello,

Do you know if it is possible to track specifically where a user goes (trace his movements through the site) without logging in ?

Basically we have a public website that is being visited by a certain number of users; however, we would like to be able to know and report where does each user go from the homepage. This is, user x that visited the website at 9:15am went directly to "Contact us", user xx that visited the website at 9:17am went to "about us" then "searched into our catalogue" then closed the application, and so on; however, we don't want to make the user register so we can follow his path as it is only an informational website. Is there any application that tracks it or is there any way to do it?

Thanks for your help!
Gloria

As far as a pre-written application alot of it depends on the underlying technology your site is written in - i.e. Java, PHP, etc.

Basically you would use cookies to track the movement. When the user first hit the site you'd set a cookie for them. As they requested other pages you'd be able to determine what those pages are and where the user came from by the cookie.

If the user has decided to not accept cookies then this won't work. There are other options but, again, it depends on the underlying technology.

Lastly, there are log file analyzers that will do something like this too. However, they are only so reliable - if a user is behind, for example, a corporate firewall then a large number of users will appear to come from the same IP address. This can really mess up the tracking.

stdunbar,

I understand, so probably is better just to buy one of these applications that make everything for you... I found a very nice application that could help: http://www.123stat.com

Thanks again!
Gloria