Click tracking question

Well, I would like to use some kind of program or script that tracks all clicks on a website. For marketing purposes I need to know which links and pictures get clicked most, so I can either drop unsuccessful links/pictures or push others to more prominent places on the website and things like that.

I've asked our server admin if he knows more about this, but he only said that usually webmasters write their own scripts for tasks like this. Unfortunately our webmaster is very busy with other project so I don't want to burden him with more workload at this time.

I've googled the topic and came across FM Click Tracker which is free and seems to do the job. However, it would be great to hear some recommendations of programs and/or scripts from more experienced people. Any other advice on how to deal with the task at hand would be really appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance!

it really depends on what kind of "click tracking" you need. for example, you could very easily install a script that could count a "raw" hit...meaning anytime anyone clicks on the link it will increment the counter. then there are unique clicks, where you don't count it if you've already seen the IP or the cookie in a certain period of time.

i would also be very careful of what i call "Self-fulfilling Prophecy" -- sure, you want to display the banners or images that are most often clicked, but of course, the more you display a banner or image, the more often it will be clicked, even if it's a horrible banner, if it's displayed 99.9% of the time, then that's the one that is going to generate the most hits.

Thanks for your input, Hagan. Well, I think the "unique" clicks would be more useful of course, so that's a good point to start with.

Since I never had anything like this to monitor the traffic, I first of all, want to know which parts of the website find the most interest and which parts are maybe just waste of space and time. I mean, generally spoken, if it's there and people don't look at it, it doesn't need to be there (or maybe improved).

So the first step for me would be to gather some general ideas about the site itself and secondly about the displayed content and which is of most interest for visitors. The banner question and such is for the fine-tuning, I guess, once I know a bit more about the visitors and how the spend their time on the website.

I'm still looking for a ready-to-go solution before I get my webmaster on this. I know he would love to write some script for this task, but he has to keep his focus on other work at the moment and I don't want to distract him too much.