Secondly, the visitors must have a reason for giving out the information. Remember that as invaluable as this information is to you, it is of little benefit to the visitor. One of the most common ways to entice the visitors to fill out a form is to enter them into a sweepstakes. Everything from money to Palm Pilots are routinely awarded daily on the web. Another tried and true method is to offer a free product or service, but require a registration.
Visitors only get the benefit after filling out the form.
Although these tactics are marginally successful, the majority of your visitors will not even give up their e-mail addresses much less all the other personal information. Fortunately you still have one way to gather some of the information that you are looking for, and it does not require either the knowledge or consent of the visitor. These nuggets of information are buried in the mysterious log file. For each hit on your site, the log file will tell you several things about the visitor. First, it lists their IP address.