Chapter 4. Stats—New versus Return Visitors
You will have many first-time visitors, and some of them will come back. By separating them into groups, you can start to understand the health of your site and what makes people return.
The “health” of your site is general metaphor I have used a lot in meetings with clients and bosses. Basically, it is the combination of many statistics that indicate whether things are getting “better” or “worse” overall.
Return visitors and new visitors tell a big part of that story. They are like taking your site’s pulse.
New Visitors
When a user comes to your site for the first time, they know nothing. They might come from an ad, or a link on a blog, or they might have searched for something relevant (or irrelevant) and discovered you by chance.
Either way, they’re new.
Return Visitors
If that new visitor comes back a second time (or third, or hundredth), they are a “return” visitor. This is important, because now they know what your site is and hopefully they recognize it.
Note
It is still possible that the user came from an ad, or a link on a blog, or they searched for something to find you again. But they also might have come back by choice.
These numbers mean more together.
Like most of these analytics, the real information comes from comparing the two numbers. This time we want to know the percentage of each, because if you add all the new users and all the returning users, that’s all the users. Math is fun!
Remember
If a percentage goes down, it doesn’t mean you have less of something. It just means that number represents a smaller piece of the pie. It might have gone down because the other number went up! Or, maybe both went up, but the other number went up more!
Try to balance growth and loyalty.
Early in the growth of your site, it’s actually good to have mostly new users. It means you’re being discovered a lot. Maybe 10 to 20% returning visitors, but that’s just a rough guideline.
Over time (months or years), your goal is to make the numbers shift the other way, without losing “sessions and users.”
A very established site will have mostly return visitors, and more like 20 to 30% new visitors.
If you have very few return visitors, that’s a problem because nobody is coming back.
If you have very few new visitors, that’s a problem because nobody is finding you.
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