Website Traffic: Types and Evaluation Methods

No matter how beautifully designed, user-friendly, and helpful a website is, it won’t generate any revenue without visitors. When working on a website, part of the time should be devoted to driving traffic. To increase traffic, both paid and free methods are used, which we will explore below.

Website Traffic

Traffic refers to the number of people who have visited the website within a certain period of time. For example, if 3,000 people visit a site in a month, the monthly traffic is 3,000 users.

The website’s traffic is directly proportional to the increase in revenue, as any visitor can become a client. The better the traffic figures, the more orders you will receive.

Features of Targeted Traffic

Paid traffic is the opportunity to attract visitors to a site by paying a certain amount of money for clicks. This method has its downside – the resource may be visited by completely different people, most of whom are not interested in the product or service (this does not apply to Google Adwords and similar services). Targeted traffic tends to be more effective.

Targeted traffic comes from people genuinely interested in buying the product. Attracting targeted users to your site requires meticulous work. First, you need to create a portrait of a potential buyer, understanding their desires, age, income, and interests.

The Importance of Traffic Analysis

If you are serious about website promotion, it is necessary to consider indicators such as the number of site visits and actions taken on the site. The results of the analysis will help understand how effective your promotion strategy is and make adjustments if necessary.

Alongside analyzing your own website, it is advisable to analyze these same indicators for your competitors. Such actions will help you understand what your competitors are doing right and wrong. Competitor analysis is particularly important if your business project is still in the development stage. Ultimately, you will learn the specifics of the direction in which you plan to work, understand how much work needs to be done, and assess the budget.

Types of Traffic

Traffic can be divided into paid and free, but there are five main types in general. Let’s look at them in detail below.

Organic

This includes people who entered a specific query into a search bar and chose a site from the search results that suited their needs.

Organic traffic is considered to be the most effective, and it is essentially free. You don’t need to pay for visits themselves. However, to ensure your site occupies leading positions in search results, you must work on it, specifically by conducting SEO optimization. Naturally, you shouldn’t expect quick results from this approach. The speed of promotion will also depend on the site’s field of work. If the area is highly competitive, the wait may be even longer.

Advertising

Advertising traffic is paid, as people reach your site by clicking on an advertisement.

The advantage is that you can see results immediately after the advertisement is launched. In the settings of advertising traffic, you can choose audience settings, and set a budget to plan. There are downsides too – it only works as long as you pay for the advertisements. Meanwhile, SEO will continue to work even if you stop working on optimization.

Social

Social traffic comes from social media networks. Social media accounts can become an excellent channel for engaging your audience. To achieve this, you need to write interesting and useful posts that readers will want to share.

Good content spreads very quickly with the help of satisfied subscribers. Moreover, your brand will become more recognizable and its name will be on people’s minds.

Direct

Direct traffic involves users who simply type the ready URL into the address bar. This also includes clicks on the browser’s bookmark. Typically, direct traffic represents a small percentage, but it demonstrates customer loyalty and their desire to frequently turn to your services.

To improve direct traffic metrics, you can employ marketing strategies, such as advertising, running promotions, and actively engaging your audience. Such actions can be carried out both online and offline, including distributing flyers and billboard advertising.

Referral

Referral traffic comes from users who have followed a link from another site to yours. This type of traffic not only increases the number of your clients but also helps promote the site. This system operates as follows: if authoritative sites link to yours, it means you are truly deserving.

Ways to Check Website Traffic

You can check traffic indicators for free or paid. Most often, Google Analytics is used for traffic analysis, which allows you to assess:

• The number of visitors.
• The number of visitors who performed a targeted action.
• Types of traffic providing the most and the least visitors.
• Click map.
• Age category, gender, place of residence.
• Return rate.
• How many people visited the site from a mobile phone and more.

During an extensive analysis, you can draw many conclusions: understand what site content and what marketing methods provide more conversions. With such data, you can develop a new strategy or make adjustments to an existing one.

Competitors’ Traffic

It is just as important to evaluate the traffic of your main competitors. This can be done using special services, such as Similarweb.

Conclusion

The importance of monitoring website traffic cannot be overstated. It helps you understand which promotion methods are highly effective and which need improvement.