Evaluating Traffic Quality

In marketing, traffic refers to the total number of visits to a website over a given period. More visitors might seem better for business, right? Not exactly. Entrepreneurs may invest both time and money in driving traffic, but this does not always result in increased sales.

The thing is, traffic doesn’t automatically equal customers. Visitors need to take action, such as calling, filling out forms, or making a purchase. But only the right audience is willing to do that. Traffic must be high quality. Take Steve, for example: he’s a local plumber. There’s no way he’s buying a Prada handbag. He is just a one-time visitor, and it’s highly unlikely that he will convert.

Attracting the right people means regularly evaluating the quality of your website traffic. This means learning more about your website visitors, making sure you have the right tools, and always improving your site so that it turns visitors into sales.

Tools for Traffic Analysis

You can’t evaluate traffic just by looking at it, as you’ll need analytics tools. These help you understand your audience: their gender, age, where they’re coming from, and their interests.

Metrics for Analyzing Traffic Quality

Just like in a physical store, there are different types of visitors online. Some come in, glance around, and leave quickly. Others wander around, examining every shelf, but leave empty-handed after half an hour. The best customers are the ones who quickly make a purchase and keep coming back.

In a store, a security guard is keeping an eye on things. He can tell where the visitors came from, where they went, how long they spent browsing, and what they bought. On a website, these insights, or metrics, can be collected through the traffic analysis tools we’ve already mentioned. There are three main types of metrics: quantitative, behavioral, and conversion. Let’s take a look at how each one can benefit your business.

Quantitative Metrics

Quantitative metrics are like security cameras in a store: they track who came in and how long they stayed. On a website, they primarily show the number of visits and unique users. These numbers are the foundation of traffic analysis.

If it’s growing — great! That means users are showing interest. But if out of a thousand visitors only two end up making a purchase, it’s time to investigate. Often, this is due to poorly configured ads, but sometimes the issue lies with the product itself or poor website usability.

If most of your traffic comes from returning visitors, that’s not necessarily a good thing. While it shows stability, it can also indicate a lack of growth.

It’s better when the number of unique users is growing. This means your strategy for attracting new customers is working. New visitors are especially valuable for a growing business. They help the company define its target audience.

If one person returns to the site five times, analytics will count them as one unique user with five visits. A visit is another indicator of visitor loyalty. It’s any activity from a person on the site within a 30-minute window (by default). More visits than unique users? Great, that means the page is engaging.

For example, Maria visited an online store to choose a perfume for her sister. Half an hour later, her friend invited her over, and Maria left without turning off her laptop. Analytics detected that she was no longer active and ended the visit. Two hours later, Maria returned to her laptop and continued browsing. The system counted this as a new visit.

Result: one unique user and two visits.

Behavioral Metrics

We’ve learned about the number of visitors to the site, but now we need to understand how long they stayed, when they left, and how many pages they viewed. This is where behavioral metrics analysis comes in.

Imagine you walk into a store, see empty shelves, and immediately turn around. That’s a bounce. Calculating it is easy:

For example, if 1,000 people visit the site, but 600 of them leave right away without viewing other pages, the bounce rate will be 60%.

This metric is important for the following reasons:

It’s bad if visitors only view one page and leave immediately. This could be due to complicated navigation, boring content, or slow page loading.

Another important metric is Time on Site. Short session durations aren’t always a red flag. For a food delivery service, short sessions are common since users quickly find what they want and place their orders. But for a blog or an online store, it’s not ideal — people come but don’t stay. This usually means the content isn’t engaging enough, or the products are hard to find.

Conversion Metrics

Let’s explain how conversion metrics work by looking at a real-life example. A city’s annual festival takes place every summer. The media published a full schedule of events, concerts and workshops. The advertising worked, and the event attracted not only locals but also visitors from other cities. It turns out the organizers managed to generate significant traffic. Now, entrepreneurs can capitalize on this.

The workshops now require a fee, food stalls charge for meals, and a carousel ride costs $5. By paying for something, a person takes a desired action and becomes a “customer” of the business.

Now, let’s see how this relates to internet marketing.

In an online store, a conversion would be a completed order, and for an educational platform, it could be a paid subscription for new videos.

Conversion Rate (CR) is calculated using the following formula:

Let’s say 1,000 people visited the site, and 50 of them completed an order. The conversion rate would be (50 / 1000) × 100% = 5%.

Why is this important?

The higher the conversion rate, the more successful your strategy is. If the numbers are low, it’s time to investigate the problem. Perhaps the order form is too complicated, or the products aren’t catching users’ attention.

Cost Per Conversion (CPA)

However, just knowing the number of conversions isn’t enough. You also need to understand the cost of conversion (CPA, Cost Per Action). This tells you how much it costs to acquire a customer who completes a desired action:

For example, if you spent $400 on advertising and attracted 100 customers, the cost per conversion would be:

Why does this matter?

The cost per conversion helps you understand which advertising channels are most cost-effective for your business: they bring in more customers for less money. For example, conversions from social media might be relatively inexpensive, while paid search ads require higher investments.

Form submissions

The form on your website is another effective conversion element. Marketers use it to guide the user towards completing a desired action. The form can be simple (e.g. a request for a callback) or more complex (e.g. registration for a webinar). The simpler and clearer the form, the higher the chances that it will be completed.

How to know if your form is working?

Apply the conversion rate formula (CR) and compare the total number of visitors with the number of conversions. For example, if only 10 out of 500 visitors submit the form, the CR will be 5% — that’s a bit low. How can you improve this? You could check the heatmap, run A/B testing, or temporarily replace the form. This way, you’ll gather more data and understand at which stage users are dropping off.

Other conversions

Conversions aren’t just about purchases or form submissions. The type of conversion depends on the current goal of the business. For an educational platform looking to increase sales, a conversion might be the number of visitors who purchased a course on a landing page. A chain of beauty salons aiming to boost direct marketing will measure conversion based on the number of people who downloaded a skincare guide. In exchange, they’ll collect email addresses.

Audience Analysis

Now, you need to understand who’s visiting your site: students, entrepreneurs, or artists. How old are they, where do they live, and what devices are they using to browse your site? Audience analysis helps you tailor your website and value proposition (UVP) to the actual needs of your users.

User location

Traffic geography helps you understand where your customers are coming from. This is especially important for local businesses, such as restaurants, gyms, service centers, and boutiques. If most of your flower shop’s audience is from a specific city, you should consider adding local promotions and adapting delivery terms. If your website selling merchandise from musicians has visitors from other countries, translate the content into English and add international payment options.

Geography analysis allows you to plan your marketing strategies more accurately and expand your audience to regions where it will bring the most profit.

Socio-demographic characteristics

Learn the age, gender, and interests of your website visitors. Then personalise content and improve targeted advertising. For example, if you sell toys and products for children, you need to consider the age range. Metrics show that your site is most often visited by women aged 23-35. You can target them with ads, for example on Facebook or Instagram, and increase your conversion rate by analysing the leads.

Also, don’t forget about the blog on your site. SEO articles can help improve behavioral factors, attract informational traffic, and, with the right strategy, lead to conversions into sales. Internal links to product pages or order forms embedded in the text work particularly well: they gently guide the user to the next step.

New and returning visitors

Another report you can check in Google Analytics is the “New vs. Returning Visitors” report. New visitors indicate how well your advertising is performing. Returning customers help maintain steady growth and bring in consistent sales.

It’s important to strike a balance between these two types of visitors. If new visitors aren’t coming in, the site loses its growth potential. If a regular customer stops visiting your site after two months of consistent purchases, they’ve likely switched to a competitor. How can you keep both groups?

You can attract new users with promotions on popular products and bring back old ones with loyalty programs or exclusive discounts for repeat customers.

Device types

Today, over 60% of users access the internet via mobile devices. If your site doesn’t display properly on a smartphone, the customer will leave without completing the desired action.

Keep usability in mind and check which devices are bringing you the most traffic so you don’t end up with issues like the screenshot above. If mobile traffic leads the way, make sure your site is optimized for smaller screens.

Traffic Sources

Imagine you visited a dentist and got braces for your child. After the appointment, the receptionist asks you to share your thoughts and fill out a survey. At the end, you see a question: “How did you hear about us?” Many people skip it, but they shouldn’t. It’s one of the most important questions on the entire form. By analyzing the answers, the team learns which channels are bringing the most traffic.

The same goes for websites. Some find you through a search engine, others click on ads, and some might come via a link from a friend. Fortunately, you don’t need to manually count the results. Traffic analysis tools will do all the work for you.

Organic SEO Traffic

Visitors can come from various sources: organic traffic, direct visits, advertising campaigns, social media, and messaging apps.

Users from search engines are a valuable source of traffic. The audience is already interested in the product, so you just need to nudge them toward making a purchase. But for your site to appear in search results, it needs to be optimized for SEO: proper keyword strategy, useful content, fast loading times, and a user-friendly structure.

Direct Traffic

These users are often already familiar with your brand: they’ve seen your ads, heard about you, or have made purchases before. Selling products or services to them is easier because they are already familiar with what you offer. A high level of direct traffic indicates strong brand trust. You can be proud of that.

Paid Traffic

This is a fast but costly way to attract a targeted audience. You can run ads through Google Ads and social media platforms.

Social Media

On social media, it’s vital to consistently share engaging and useful content along with links to your website. You can also create paid promotions on these platforms.

Messengers

Messengers such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are popular tools for direct communication with customers. Use them to gather traffic by sending targeted messages to your existing customer base. Avoid spamming: it will harm your brand’s reputation and even lead to customers blocking you permanently.

While not as widespread as email marketing, messaging apps are becoming an increasingly valuable channel for customer engagement, particularly for providing support or delivering personalized offers.

How to Improve Traffic Metrics

You’ve approached the task seriously:

Great job! Now comes the most important part: improving key metrics. Here are some recommendations to help you perfect your promotion strategy.

Conversion Metrics

Engagement Metrics

Quantitative Metrics

Behavioral Metrics

Evaluating traffic quality is the foundation for your business growth. By analyzing sources, conversion metrics, engagement, and user behavior, you can improve your site and attract the right audience.

Don’t chase the number of visitors. Even a thousand visitors mean little if they aren’t completing the desired actions. It’s much more important that each user finds what they need: fills out a form, places an order, or comes back again. Your goal is to identify weak points, test hypotheses, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Key Takeaways from This Article