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Visitor Characterization and Google Analytics: Using New Visitor Insights to Gauge Marketing Acquisition

By: Allison Akers

Google Analytics pulls metrics for company websites in the aggregate, segmented as a subset, or as a single visitor (Tietbohl, 2022). Once the analyst decides which representation to consider for their insight, the metrics can be broken down by categories. These metrics categories are:

• Foundational,

• Visit characterization,

• Visitor characterization,

• Engagement, and

• Conversion (Tietbohl, 2022).

For the purpose of this blog post we will look at the category of visitor characterization. You will learn which metrics fall in the category of visitor characterization, how the metric is calculated, and how this metric is used in a real-world example to provide insight for a company.

Visitor Characterization- What Is It?

The visitor characterization category includes metrics such as new visitor, returning visitor, repeat visitor, visits per visitor, recency, and frequency (Tietbohl, 2022). These analytics can prove useful for determining whether your marketing acquisition strategy is working or needs to be fine tuned (Eckerling, 2014). 

Did your new visitors grow or decline over periods? Did your returning users grow or decline? 

These questions are a good start.

New Visitors- Measuring Acquisition

A new visitor is defined by Tietbohl (2022) as the “number of unique visitors with activity including a first-ever visit to a site during a reporting period.” As mentioned above, this is an important metric to track in order to take a look at your marketing strategy. For example, as Eckerling (2014) points out, “If you’re losing traffic, it’s important to locate the disconnect… if new users are declining, it usually means you have an acquisition problem.” This could mean your site isn’t ranking high enough for the right keywords that are relevant for your target market or your marketing efforts aren’t driving your targets to convert and click through. Taking the insight further, you can then use Google Search Console and Keyword Planner to optimize site content for keywords to deliver a better ranking (Google, n.d.). You can also test new marketing graphics or action boxes within campaigns to see which changes drive more visitors.

Analytics in Use

In this example we will take a look at Vision Technologies (Vision) website in terms of new visitors. The pandemic affected every business across the world- both positively and negatively. Uncertainty led to product pivots and reigning in spending. Vision was no different, as they released “return to work” safety and screening solutions for businesses while also cutting back the usual marketing budget. However, in 2020 93.8% of users were new visitors. In 2021, this number was still high in terms of the ratio, but actually dropped 29.13% from the prior year. 


Figure 1. Analytics: Vision Technologies audience overview 20210101-20211231-20200101-20201231. Google Analytics pie charts showing new visitors year over year. By Google Analytics. (2022).

Using what we know from above, we can see that new acquisitions are strong. However, the tactics used in 2021 compared to prior years need to be scrutinized further in order to gain insight into the drop in new visitors. This number alone is not useful enough to derive full value from. It does signal the need to do some deeper digging that involves other categories of metrics. Segmentation can also be useful here as well. Dopson (2021) states that “with Google Analytics segments, you’re able to dig deeper into your collected data, identify common traits and learn more about your core audience which in turn helps you to make better-informed decisions for your business and also run more successful marketing campaigns based on those findings.” 

Vision segments are broken up by key “business unit” areas which are our key service lines which the company is broken down by- AV, mobility, cabling/data centers (ITS), security, and pro services (Vision Technologies, n.d.). We can take a look at the top units to see which ones are driving the most new visitors such as this glance between first quarter of 2021 vs 2020:



Figure 2. Analytics: Vision Technologies audience overview segments 20210101-20210331-20200101-20200331. Google Analytics pie charts showing new visitors year over year segmented by top key business units. By Google Analytics. (2022).

Of these top units, wireless brings in the lowest amount of new visitors, but ITS and AV actually grew by new visitors. These insights could help guide targeted marketing campaigns.

Concluding Thoughts

This blog dove into one metric from the category visitor characterization- new visitors. But the metric of new visitors is best when compared to the metric of returning visitors to get a better idea of the acquisition picture. 

Be sure to check out the next blog post to learn about the returning visitor metric.


References

Eckerling, D. (2014, October 6). 5 ways to use metrics to improve your social media marketing. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/metrics-improve-social-media-marketing/

Dopson, E. (2021, May 9). 25 examples of google analytics segments that enable deeper analysis. Databox. Retrieved from https://databox.com/google-analytics-segments#23

Google. (n.d.). Keyword planner. Google Ads. Retrieved January 22, 2022 from https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

Google Analytics. (2022). Analytics: Vision Technologies audience overview 20210101-20211231-20200101-20201231. Unpublished internal company document.

Google Analytics. (2022). Analytics: Vision Technologies audience overview segments 20210101-20210331-20200101-20200331. Unpublished internal company document.

Tietbohl, M. (2022, January). Week 1 lesson: intro to web analytics and the basic of web analytics/tool introduction and selection. Ecampus. Retrieved from West Virginia University, IMC 642.

Vision Technologies. (n.d.). Homepage. Retrieved January 23, 2022 from https://www.visiontechnologies.com/

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