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What is a New Visitor vs Returning Visitor?

4 min to read

New visitors are users who have never previously interacted with your website. These visitors might find your site via search engines, social media, or through someone sending a link to your site.

Returning visitors, meanwhile, have visited your site at least once before; they might find you again via search engines/social media, but it’s also possible that they directly typed the URL.

Knowing the differences between these two groups is a necessity if you want to optimize your digital marketing approach. New and returning visitors react differently to various approaches, and it’s primarily because they’re at different customer journey stages.

New visitors are in the early stages most of the time and will likely be exploring all of their options.

Key Takeaways:
  • New visitors are users who have never previously interacted with your website. Returning ones, on the other hand, have visited at least once
  • Consider focusing your re-targeting and targeted campaigns on returning visitors
  • You should understand the differences between new and returning visitors to tweak your marketing strategy
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What is a New Visitor vs Returning Visitor?

Comparatively, returning visitors will already be familiar with your brand. As a result, they might be more likely to buy and receptive to targeted campaigns/retargeting.

Device and browser changes, in addition to cookie preferences, mean that you need to consider the challenges associated with determining who is a new visitor and which users are returning ones. Advanced analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, are crucial for user profiling; you should ensure that your website builder has an integration for easy access. 

Pro Tip: 
Implement a user profiling strategy that includes advanced tracking tools. This is vital for tailoring your marketing efforts to user needs.

What do new vs. returning visitor ratios mean for customer loyalty, repeat business, and marketing strategies? 

Healthy new visitor vs returning visitor ratios are essential for sustainable growth, and they suggest different metrics. A high ratio of new customers suggests there might be a correlation between marketing efforts and acquiring new customers. There’s a potential correlation between these features and variations in market share and brand awareness.

However, you should also aim for a high percentage of returning visitors. This characteristic may play a role in influencing the likelihood of repeat business. Returning visitors may lead to recommendations, which could potentially contribute to an increase in the number of new visitors, although the extent of this impact may vary. Returning customers can also potentially affect brand perception; frequent visits might imply trustworthiness. 

However, you should beware of only having one or the other. With a significant proportion of new visitors, it’s worth reviewing your retention strategy. Keep in mind the impact of customer acquisition costs on profitability. 

While a high number of returning visitors is positive, it may indicate that your acquisition strategy could be improved.

What determines if a website visitor is new or returning in google analytics? 

Google Analytics determines who is a new or returning visitor via cookies. Cookies are text files stored on a computer when someone visits a website; the site can then identify the cookie when the user returns and mark them as a returning visitor. 

This, however, warrants a more careful consideration of the various factors involved. Even if they technically aren’t, users are treated as new visitors if they have cleared their cookies before they visit your website. The same goes if they use a different browser the second time they visit your site. 

You can also track visitors via Google Analytics’ session identification; visitors are assigned one when they initially visit your website. Your website utilizes a session identifier to monitor user activity; however, the accuracy of these identifiers may be subject to limitations. 

While both cookies and session identification methods are valuable tools for user tracking, they may not always be completely accurate; this is particularly relevant in situations where multiple individuals share the same device, potentially leading to inflated visitor counts.

Pro Tip: 
No analytics tool is entirely accurate; cross-check Google Analytics with other data sources occasionally (e.g. third-party analytics and web server logs).

What is a good new vs. returning visitor ratio? 

What counts as a good new vs. returning visitor ratio depends on several factors, such as your industry and business model. Generally speaking, however, you should aim for between 30% and 50%. 

Pro Tip: 
Repeat customers are typically less expensive than new ones, so you should look at your returning visitor data with particular attention if you want to drive long-term growth.

Conclusion

New and returning visitors might seem obvious, but it’s not always easy to identify them in analytics software. Nonetheless, knowing the difference – and how your analytics tool tracks them – is crucial if you want to finetune your digital marketing efforts. 

If you have lots of new visitors, it shows that your brand awareness and promotional strategies are working – however, too many could lead to higher acquisition costs. Returning customers show that you’re making customers happy and they want to buy from you repeatedly; nonetheless, a skewed ratio can suggest a poor acquisition strategy. 

You need to balance new and returning customers to navigate market shifts and build long-term success; your pipeline should ideally always be full.

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