One of the big unknowns with most forms of advertising is, how effective it has actually been. Of course, if you launch a big new campaign which dwarfs everything you've done so far, the increase in turnover itself is simple enough to judge, but most companies run various different publicity in different media which overlaps, and this can make it difficult to make sure your advertising is paying dividends. One thing is for certain - it's easy to waste large amounts of money in a short amount of time through ineffective advertising.

One of the most attractive benefits of advertising through a web site, is that it's possible to avail yourself of very detailed web site traffic reports which tell you a great deal about what's going on. The kind of things you can find out are:

There are all too many ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who do not offer any kind of website traffic logs, and many simply offer the incomprehensible "raw logs". At Room101, we believe that website traffic reports are crucial, they show you which areas of the site to develop next, and they put daily pressure on everyone involved with the site (including us) to achieve better exposure.

No company would do a £2000 printing job producing a company brochure and then leave them languishing in the corner of stock control without giving out the brochures to anyone, but we have come across companies who have spent similar sums on website development without taking the necessary steps to check if enough people are finding the site, and thereby promoting the website address to the necessary extent. In a way, supplying you with these statistics (which we update automatically every 6 hours), gives you a stick to beat us with, but it is especially gratifying to watch the level of traffic go from hundreds of hits a day, to thousands a day, to tens of thousands a day.