Don't settle for the lame statistics you get from most Web servers. You need to know who is visiting your site. Add your own stat counter and you'll get far more details about where visitors come from and even what they search for in Google to find you. Although most service providers include basic Web traffic reports as part of their hosting services, you're likely to get far better results from a service like Google Analytics or StatCounter.com.

Google Analytics is one of the best traffic counters on the Web, and one of the most popular — and it's free! You just add a little snippet of code to your Web pages, and Google tracks your visitors, creating a comprehensive report full of juicy details.

You'll not only get the numbers of visitors and where they came from, you can even see what people search for on Google before they visit your site.

To sign up, just visit www.google.com/analytics and follow the instructions to create an account for your site and generate the code you'll need to add to your pages. Then it's as easy as copy and paste to get your site set up. If you use a template to create your pages, you can simply paste the Google Analytics code snipped into the bottom of your template and it will automatically be added to all your pages.

One of the best ways to keep people coming back to your Web site is to remind them of what you have to offer, and one of the best ways to do that is to create an e-mail newsletter.

Managing e-mail newsletters is a complex process. Creating a page design that works well in lots of different e-mail programs is hard enough, but did you know about all the legal requirements regarding what you can and can't do when you send an e-mail letter to a mailing list?

Among other things, you're legally required to make it easy for people to stop getting your e-mail if they don't want to subscribe. If you've ever used the unsubscribe link at the bottom of an e-mail message you received, you probably understand why it's important to make it easy for people to get off your mailing list, as well as sign up in the first place. See the nearby sidebar for more about legal requirements.

If you have more than a few people on your mailing list or you want to send messages on a regular basis, you'll be best served by signing up with an e-mail newsletter service. You can read all about such services in E-Mail Marketing For Dummies by John Arnold (published by Wiley).

Here are a few of the most popular ones:

Professional photographs and graphics can transform a simple page design into a professional showcase. High-quality images can be pricey, though. For professional, royalty-free images without the high price tag, visit iStockphoto (www.istockphoto.com) where you can buy — and sell — high-quality photos and other images for $1 to $5 (depending on the resolution).

This searchable site makes it easy to find all kinds of photographs, illustrations, and even animated graphics and videos. Search for German Shepherd, for example, and you'll find nearly 1,000 photos of those lovely beasts; search for dogs, and you'll find more than 16,000. You can even search for general terms, such as smile or raised hands, to find images to fit almost any design idea or Web site.

When you find a photo that you like at iStockphoto, you can download a comp version for free. Free images have the iStockphoto logo printed across the middle but are handy to use for mockups. You can also save images to a collection (a lightbox) stored on the iStockphoto Web site so you can easily go back and review your favorites later.

When you're ready to purchase images, you can use any major credit card to buy credits on the site. The more credits you buy in advance, the better the price. The cost of each image is based on the resolution: The higher the resolution, the more the image costs, but most images are available in multiple resolutions. Prices can vary by image, but most low-resolution images (less than 400 pixels wide at 72 dpi), which work fine for most Web sites, cost as little as $1. Make sure the read the license agreement for details.

If you're looking for free images, or you like the idea of using images that are provided for free by photographer directly, consider www.sxc.hu, where you find more than 300,000 images from more than 30,000 photographers. Again, make sure to read the contract details carefully because some images on this site require that you work out the right to use the images with the photographers directly.

In Chapter 5, I give you instructions for editing, resizing, and saving images. See Chapter 6 for instructions for inserting images into your Web pages.

The innovative online service Snap-shots (www.snap.com) creates a small pop-up preview of any page you link to on your site. You simply sign up for the free service at Snap.com and use its online tool to generate special code that you can copy and paste into the code in your Web pages.

With the unique Snap.com pop-ups, anytime a visitor rolls the cursor over a link, a small pop-up window appears with a preview that displays the page or site that you linked to from your site. It's a useful way to give visitors a little more information as they peruse your pages and to highlight the links on your site.

If you've ever tried to identify an unusual font, you know how challenging it can be — and you'll likely appreciate the character recognition software offered from WhatTheFont (www.whatthefont.com). Using this free online service, you can upload any graphic or enter the URL to any image on the Web, and the program analyzes the image and tries to identify the font.

The system isn't perfect, but even if WhatTheFont can't identify the exact font, it gives you the closest matches it can find, which at least gets you pointed in the right direction. You can also opt for the "human" service, to have your graphic further reviewed by expert font matchers.

And, if you want to buy the font after you use the service to identify it, the site's creators are happy to sell you fonts that you download to your own computer. For more on the best options for using fonts on the Web, see Chapter 6.

Another great place to test fonts ... www.dafont.com.

If you want to know what visitors to your site really think, just ask them.

An online survey is a helpful way to gauge the experience of your audience and to invite reviews. You can also use online surveys as planning tools to poll your audience about how and where they might want an event, for example, or what new features they're most interested in.

You can create a free, online survey from SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com) and link to it from your Web site. SurveyMonkey makes it easy to create the survey by simply filling out a form in a Web browser, and then it automatically tallies the results and presents them in a series of reports and pie charts. The data you can gather and present is an excellent way to impress your board of directors at your company's next annual meeting.

Have you ever wondered how some sites add those little custom graphics to the address bar, at the top of the browser? For example, Google adds the letter G, and Adobe adds its logo. You too can add any image to your site — you just have to get it in the right format.

Fortunately, turning a graphic into a favicon (or shortcut icon) is easy and free with FavIcon from Pics (www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon). Just upload any graphic of your own, and this online tool automatically converts it into a favicon that you can use on your site. After your image is saved in the ICO format, you simply upload it to the main root folder of your Web site, and your image is automatically displayed on the address bar in a browser.

Favicons also appear in the list of bookmarks, or favorites (which is where the name comes from) when a visitor saves your Web site in a browser. Thus, including a favicon can make your site stand out from a list of saved Web addresses and can help build and strengthen your brand.

Spammers gather millions of e-mail addresses from Web sites every day by collecting e-mail addresses from links on Web pages. Web designers commonly include e-mail links so that visitors can easily contact them. Unfortunately, those simple e-mail links make it even easier for spammers to gather e-mail addresses automatically.

To help counter this problem, the programmers at AddressMunger (www.addressmunger.com) have come up with a special way of "hiding" e-mail addresses from the automated bots that spammers use. When you add this special code to your Web pages and use AddressMunger to create the e-mail links on your Web pages, your visitors can still e-mail you easily, but spammers can't read your e-mail address. It's an easy way to cut down on all that spam in your inbox.

To use this service, you need two snippets of code:

You can find instructions for adding code to your pages in Chapter 13.

Want to set up a conference call for free? Really, for free. Well, you do have to pay any long-distance charges you incur if your call to the conference center requires dialoging a long-distance number, but if you have an unlimited calling plan with your phone company, you're already covered on that front. You can pay extra for an 800 number, but if you're willing to let the service pick the number, all you pay are any necessary toll call charges.

To use the service, simply visit FreeConference at www.freeconference.com, sign up for the free account, and immediately start scheduling conference calls. You can invite as many people as you like into the call. FreeConference even includes a handy system for managing contact information and sending out invites on your behalf.

I use the service on a regular basis to schedule conference calls with clients and students. You can even add desktop sharing for $9 per month, making it possible to simultaneously share information on your computer or use the service. That makes it ideal for Webinars, review sessions, or other kinds of collaborative meetings online.

The company makes money by charging for specialized services, such as the use of an 800 number, or if you want FreeConference to record or transcribe your calls.

Online training, teleconferences, and virtual seminars are increasingly popular, thanks to services like SlideShare (www.slideshare.net). To use this innovative service, just upload your presentation to the site and point visitors to your special address, where they can view your slides and use the simple controls at SlideShare to move forward and back through your presentation.