IF YOUR BUSINESS HAS A WEBSITE it’s essential to know something about the web users who visit it.

Using information about visitor numbers, you should be able to work out which parts of your site are most popular and which aren’t working well, and adapt the design of your pages accordingly.

To make it easier, there are plenty of free counters to give you the information you need. See www.statcounter.com, www.sitemeter. com or www.bravenet.com as starting points.

Here are three of the most useful pieces of information these counters will give:

· Unique visitors. Not to be confused with ‘hits’ which simply show how many pieces of information the visitor has downloaded.

A page with text and three pictures will count as four hits.

Unique visitor numbers better reflect how many individuals are viewing your site

· Referrers. It’s useful to know not only which sites are linking to your website but also which search engines are providing you with the most traffic.

· Pages viewed. Are visitors making the most of your site or missing out on pages you’ve spent hours building?