Referral Traffic: A Consumer Roadmap

Referral traffic is an important web metric because it can be used to analyze consumer behavior in regards to internet usage.  By following referral traffic, businesses can determine how consumers are arriving at a website, which other sites have links to the website, which search engines provide the largest amount of traffic to the site, and if other means of web advertising are directing traffic to visit the site. 

Referrer

A referrer, when speaking in terms of web metrics, “describes the source of traffic to a page or visit” (P.I. Reed Schoolof Journalism, 2013).  This traffic can originate from different referrers (P.I. Reed School of Journalism, 2013):

•        Page referrer – describes the source of traffic to a page

•       Session referrer – first page referrer in a visit

•       Visitor referrer – first page referrer in a visitor’s first session. 

Traffic

Most traffic that is directed to the website through (Kaushik, 2010):

• Direct traffic– Individuals type a specific web address into the URL or use a bookmark to access the website. Direct traffic represents individuals who know who you are, know your web address, know what they are looking for, and may be returning visitors.  A higher percentage of direct traffic suggests a healthy consumer connection and retention rate (Kaushik, 2010).
• Referring sites – A link located on other sites that individuals click through to arrive at another website. Referring sites are important because they provide information that encourages the use of a link to your website.  This may be a site with an affiliation to your business or industry, which could be used to establish marketing relationships and determine which information on your site individuals find helpful (Kaushik, 2010). 
• Search engines – When individuals type in a description or keywords in the search bar of search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, etc), specified sites will appear, both in the organic and paid search area. Search engines account for the at least 1/3 of traffic on most websites (Kaushik, 2010).  Organic searches are the free searches, whereas paid searches are those in which a business has paid for a certain amount of impressions within the paid search area, most often at the top or side of the web search. 
• Other – This traffic is derived from display banner ads, email campaigns, social media outlets, etc (Kaushik, 2010).  This traffic metric can be used, along with other metrics, to determine a generalized return on investment of a specific campaign. 

Real World Example

 Using Hayworth-Miller Funeral Homes web analytics, an independently owned funeral home in North Carolina, one can see the majority of visits, 77%, from January 1, 2014 – January 19, 2014 would be considered from direct traffic.  This traffic may also be directed from search engines using a secure search engine like Safari, or a mobile device without proper referral tracking.  Seven percent was traffic that originated from the site, with 10% of the traffic coming from search engines, and the remainder of the traffic coming from a referrer site or other means such as display ads. 

As a funeral director at Hayworth-Miller Funeral Home, I can see that most of the visitors have a bookmark or are familiar with the Hayworth-Miller website.  This is great news for consumer retention.  I also see that an array of search engines are used as referrals, whereas the local newspaper is the fifth highest referral source.  This is not a surprise as most individuals look online for obituary listings which are linked to the Hayworth-Miller website for online condolences.  Consumers use and knowledge of the website (shown through direct traffic visits) is shown by the high amount of direct traffic.  This may be attributed to print advertising.  The much smaller percentage of search engine referral sites shows a need for more online presence and possibly more paid searches. 

Referral metrics can be used alone or with other metrics to provide detailed referral information that can be used to determine the most popular keywords individuals use to get to the website and which pages within the site most visitors are first directed.  All of which prove helpful in designing an effective online marketing strategy.

References:

Kaushik, A. (2010).  Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability and science of customer                 centricity.  Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.