A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following

* How many people visit your site?
* Where are they from?
* How are visitors finding your site?
* What traffic is coming from search engines, links from
other sites, and other sources?
* What keyword search phrases are they using to find your
site?
* What pages are frequented the most - what information are
visitors most interested in?
* How do visitors navigate within your web site?

Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions
is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the
return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your
website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your
tracking software. The three main statistics that will show
your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views.
Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your
server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be very
misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your
website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a
website is Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good
indication of two things. First, how many people are coming
to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your
site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can
figure that most visitors view one page on your site and
then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views
per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's
content so your visitors will stay around longer.
If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as
well as the number of page views per visitor increasing then
keep up the good work! Always look for this stat as an
overall barometer of how your site design is going and if
your marketing campaigns are taking hold.
Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a
person visits your site they will not be added to the unique
visitors’ category if they visit again. This is a good way
to track new visitors to your website.
Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your
website is. A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided
by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic will give
you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your
visitors are staying on your site for a long time and
surfing.

Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics
(mostly because of the sheer volume of data available), but
they shouldn't be. While there are many highly specialized
statistics that can be used for more in-depth web traffic
analysis, the above areas alone can provide invaluable
information on your visitors and your website performance.
Remember- this data is available for a reason. It's up to
you to use it.