According to Analytics Edge, websites tend to have more new visitors than returning ones, which is good and bad.
You need a steady stream of new visitors to discover your website and enter your sales funnel. But studies have shown that returning visitors add more items to their cart and spend more money than first-time shoppers, so it’s important to keep them coming back.
To keep your business running, you’ll need to target both new and return customers with your marketing, and keep track of how many customers of each type are visiting your website.
That’s where Google Analytics comes in. Here are a few ways you can use Google Analytics to keep track of your new and return visitors and market to them better.
4 Ways to use Google Analytics to track new and return visits
1. See what percentage of your website traffic is coming from new and return visitors
Google Analytics can help you see what percentage of your website traffic is coming from new customers and from return customers on any given day.
If you compare your percentage of return visitors to industry averages, you can get a rough idea of how well you’re doing at retaining customers.
As marketer Christoper Penn points out, though, this metric doesn’t give you much information you can use to guide your marketing decisions because it lacks context.
So let’s segment this metric down further and see what else we can find out about your new and returning customers.
2. See what percentage of new and return customers come from social media
You can also use Google Analytics to see what percentage of new and return customers are coming to your website from each one of your social media channels.
Google Analytics puts the data for each social channel in a handy pie chart for you and allows you to compare multiple charts side-by-side.
This helps you see which social channels are best for attracting new customers, and which ones are better at getting your return customers to come back to your website. This is really valuable information that can help inform your marketing strategy.
If your return visitor rates are lagging, for example, now you know which social channels you need to double down on to get them to come back to your site.
3. See how many new and return visitors you get over time from all channels
Another helpful thing you can do with Google Data Studio is see how many new and return visitors you get from all sources, such as email and social, over time.
This can help you identify trends and see where the bulk of your new and return visitors are coming from month after month.
4. See how many new and return visitors you get over time from each channel
You can get even more specific and use Google Data Studio to see how many new and return visitors you’re getting from each source, like email or social media, over time.
You can use this metric to monitor the success of your marketing campaigns. If you see an unusual spike in new visitor traffic after running some Instagram ads, for example, then you’ll know that your campaign worked.
Google Analytics can be a little confusing to navigate. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to uncover some pretty useful insights about your website, especially when it comes to new and returning visitors.