Metric Categories 101: Visitor Characterization

Visitor Characterization is a valuable web metric that allows businesses to identify the 'category' of visitors that visit their website. There are five unique types of Visitor Characterization, which include the following:

1. New Visitors 
2. Returning Visitors 
3. Repeat Visitors 
4. Visit Referrer / Initial Referrer 
5. Referee

Let's review which each of these characterizations entails! 

New Visitors 

New visitors are those users who show as a first-time-ever visit to a site during a reporting period (ClickInsight, N.D). 

Returning Visitors

Returning visitors are those users who have visited a site at least once during a reporting period, but also at least once prior to a reporting period (ClickInsight, N.D).

Repeat Visitors

Repeat Visitors are users who have visited a site multiple times during a reporting period, and possibly multiple times prior to a reporting period (ClickInsight, N.D).

Visit Referrer

Visit Referrers are the first referrer in a visit (ClickInsight, N.D).

Visit Referee

These users are ones who come to a site, through a visit referrer. 

Leveraging Visitor Characterization for Marketing 

Visitor Characterization insights allow businesses to serve personalized communications and messages to consumers, based on their categories! A great way to leverage this is through personalized offers when shopping online. Here are some success stories of how local businesses use Visitor Characterization for marketing:

The Donut Pub is a New York City-based company, uses Visitor Characterization to identify new visitors and communicate them to fulfill multiple objectives. This is done, through a pop-up that welcomes new users, and invites them to sign up for email marketing and be able to try their newest donuts for free. This marketing tactic allows The Donut Pub to, 1. Provide a personalized welcome message to never-before-seen users. 2. Quickly attempt to add these new leads into their marketing funnel 3. Delight and strengthen the brand awareness cycle by offering new consumers free tasting. 

This tactic can also be utilized for returning and repeat visitors. A successful business leveraging such a strategy is Office Depot. Office Depot often displays pop-up coupons on their site or delivered consumer emails, to returning and repeat website visitors as an incentive! This is a great way to show appreciation to visitors deeper in the buying cycle with Home Depot, and are ready to make purchases. Additionally, it boosts the consumer's feelings of being recognized by Office Depot and is receiving personalized messaging unique to their buying stage needs. 

Leveraging Visitor Characterization for Business Insights

Many businesses have objectives of growing both incoming new visitors and returning and repeat visitors. This way, they can measure how well their lead generation and consumer retention are going. "One of the hardest parts of running a successful marketing campaign is finding the right balance between generating leads and retaining loyal customers. After all, both are important components that make any business successful, and neither should be neglected." (White, 2021). 

Businesses should monitor steady growth, and address any drops in either visitor category, as engaging both new and usual visitors is necessary. Businesses can quickly create nurturing campaigns that address any significant losses in new visitors, or returning visitors - or, measure the success of their actions, on running efforts to generate leads or nurture knowledgeable consumers based on visitor characterization metrics. 

References:

ClickInsight. (No Date). Web Analytics Definitions. Retrieved from: https://www.clickinsight.ca/res/web-analytics-definitions-3#visit-referrer

White, M. (2021). Inbound Strategies: Lead Generation or Customer Retention? Retrieved from: https://www.thecreativemomentum.com/blog/inbound-strategies-lead-generation-or-customer-retention