Most e-commerce businesspeople check in on their business' growth and health by relying on site statistics. Your Web server logs compile these numbers and tell you interesting tidbits, such as how many visitors came to your site today. The problem with these site statistics is that they are unreliable.

Internet technologies contain inherent problems that make tracking data, such as the number of visitors to your site, difficult. Programs from companies like WebTrends gather site statistics and use mathematical stuff to turn hard-and-fast numbers (such as the number of page views) into the kind of information that managers like to see (the number of people who visited the site). You can customize almost all the available Web utilization applications to work according to the different rules and assumptions that best suit your needs.

Rely on traditional business indicators, such as the number of sales you're making, the dollar value of each sale, the number of returns you process, and so forth. These numbers tell you how your business is really doing.