March 18th, 2019 | Updated on August 5th, 2021
Ever since the dawn of digital marketing, it has been debated what is best: new visitors to your website or returning visitors? The answer isn’t that simple as there are many factors to take into consideration.
Could the measuring of returning visitors to your website be the most underrated digital marketing and SEO statistic?
Let’s take a closer look at why you should care about the percentage of returning visitors to your website.
The Difference Between Returning Visitors And New Visitors
Marketers know the obvious difference between returning visitors and new visitors to your website. It’s pretty much self-explanatory. Are returning visitors being brushed off as unimportant to digital marketing and SEO success?
It’s crucial to have a website that has loyal followers. It’s been proven that it is in fact returning visitors to your website that are most likely to leave comments, bookmark you and share on social media sites. Now, that’s a good enough reason to understand the difference.
Conversion Rates
It’s a fact that the average website visitor makes a number of visits to a site before making a purchase or even make an inquiry. They become familiar with your brand, products, and service, and it is far easier to convert a regular website visitor to a customer than someone who is visiting your site for the very first time.
There are a number of ways you are can accurately trace conversation rates on your site, the key is to sift through the ones that are effective and important. It’s always a good idea to complete a digital marketing course to learn such basic, yet important differences.
Here are a few ideas to track visitor conversion rates:
- Visitor demographics – It’s not only important to track traffic to your website, but you should also understand how your visitors are finding their way to your site.
- Return visitors – It doesn’t matter whether you made a first good impression, what matters is whether that visitor returns to your site. Focus on your returning visitor conversation rate and increase ways to improve.
Who Are New Visitors?
- As per the definition of Google Analytics, someone who has never been on your website before is a first-time visitor. On many occasions, even a returning visitor could be classified as a new visitor. For instance:
- If someone decides to visit your website in incognito
- If someone decides to visit your site again from a new device and both devices have different browsers.
- If there is a gap of more than 3 years between two visits by the same visitor. Google tracking accounts for only a 2-year period.
- If a person visits your site, and clears their browser cache, and visits again.
Who Are Returning Visitors?
- All those visitors who visit your website more than once are returning visitors.
- As we have explained above, Google Analytics does not show the actual number of returning visitors, as many visitors get excluded by its tracking system.
Get First Time Visitors Back To Your Site
It’s important to realize that new visitors to your site must return, the value of getting a customer back to your site should never be ignored.
Returning site visitors are more likely to go through the process of not only adding to their cart, but successfully completing the purchase too. While new visitors often also add to their cart, they are definitely more likely to exit being completing the transaction.
How To Get More Returning Visitors To Your Site
Returning visitors to your website not only will increase your site’s ranking but will undoubtedly help your website traffic grow.
There are a number of ways to increase returning visitors to your website, which ultimately increases your conversion rate.
Here are a few steps:
- It’s all about them – Give your site visitors an easy navigation experience, no one wants to be frustrated trying to find their way around your site.
- Challenge and engage – Visitors to your site will return if they feel their thoughts have been intrigued and they had a good engaging experience.
- Use calls to action – Keep your call to action short but to the point and use a catchy phrase.
- Content Marketing – Create interesting and relevant content in your blogs. A content marketing strategy is a roadmap that not only tells you what you’re going to create, but also helps in attracting, retaining, and converting viewers into customers.
Non-Returns
There can be quite a large percentage of visitors that don’t return to your site – ever. You want to avoid this, right? The old saying ‘make a good first impression’ couldn’t apply more to this point when it’s been said that around seventy-five percent of first site visitors don’t return. So, ask yourself, is there anything on your website that could leave a ‘bad’ first impression, then fix it.
One of the biggest reasons for visitors not returning to a site is excessive, in your face, advertising, so be sure to blog, engage on social media, and share great content.
Website speed is another big reason for non-returning website visitors. Ensure your site is up to speed, excuse the pun, and keep in mind that even a second of delay can chase your visitors away.
If you would like to learn about Digital Marketing more comprehensively then look at the Digital School of Marketing for an array of accredited marketing course aimed at the digital arena.
