PROS

CONS

Web logs

1.       Readily available from web servers, i.e. Apache common log format, or Windows 2003 log format.

2.       Free and low cost web log report software to sophisticated web log software i.e. SawMill

3.       ONLY method that record search engine bots

1.       Need programmers to create reports for marketing and user behavior analysis – Filters are numerous to sort out relevant data.

2.       Cookies are needed for visitor identification

3.       Page caching traffic is not in the web log.
Users pressing of the "Back" or "Forward" buttons on the left corner of their browsers is not recorded in the web log.

Web beacons (or Page bug)

1.       Simple to implement around an HTML IMG tag

2.       Choose what to record

3.       Less filtering as bots do not request beacons

4.       BEST for multiple domain tracking

A third party such as Coremetrics can save a cookie on a user's browser. This cookie can be recognised across domains.

1.       Third part cookies are needed – Many spyware programs blocks image download and 3^rd party cookies. If used, users must  be informed, as tracking users across non related domains are in violations of consumer privacy.

Javascript tags (page tagging)

1.       Easiest to implement – inserting a few lines of JavaScript codes on HTML web pages. Some products, such as Clickstream.com's automatically embeds into the header of every dispatched page regardless if it's static or dynamically generated.

2.       MOST CONTROL on what information is captured for Flash, or AJAX

1.       Capture only client side information

2.       Not easy to capture information on downloaded pdfs, mp3, avi, etc.

Packet sniffing

1.       Capture the most data of all methods

1.       Page caching is not captured

2.       Interactive Flash or Ajax applications traffic is not captured.

3.       MOST EXPENSIVE

Event logging

1.       Capture data at the application layer, not web server layer

2.       Capture Rich Internet Applications such as Flash and Ajax.

1.       Only certain software applications offer this. Since this is a real time capture - before the 'return' key is hit. Applications using Coral8 or Sqlstream can go further by loggin every key stroke as users type in. This can catch their changing their mind in mid stream.