5 Reasons to Track Direct Web Traffic

What is Direct Traffic?

Search engines, social media, and referring links are all sources of traffic to your site that you track and tweak, aiming to increase the quality and quantity of visitors to your site. But don’t forget about the other source of traffic – direct visits. This channel is rarely talked about in terms of improving a site’s performance, but shouldn’t be.

Direct traffic comes from people who have bookmarked your site (return visits) and those that type your URL directly into their browser’s address bar. Put another way, these are visitors who come to your site without first visiting a search engine or another site. 

Most analytics packages also count visits from email links and RSS readers as direct traffic, and offline marketing (print advertising, direct mail) will also be included if the visitor types in your URL from your material.

(As a side note, direct traffic numbers would be higher if users didn’t type first URLs into a search engine, which is a very common method of accessing websites).

Why Should I Care?

Here are five reasons:

1. Direct traffic is high quality traffic. You may notice direct visitors spend a great deal of time on your site.

2. Direct visitors are loyal visitors, and tend to convert at higher rates than search or referral traffic.

3. Direct traffic can tell you if your site is improving - if a visitor chooses to remember you, you’re doing something right!

4. Direct visitors are warm leads, which will be the most responsive to whatever you are offering. 

5. Direct traffic tends to be less expensive than other sources (though this point is arguable).

How Can I Improve It?

Improving direct traffic is not easy. Having a strong brand, good design, and clean navigation all help to make a positive impression, as does valuable content that is updated regularly. Your domain name should be branded, but not too long or complicated. It helps to give visitors a quick way to bookmark your site, or sign up for RSS updates.

Of course, increased recognition leads to increased loyalty (meaning direct traffic tends to increase along with other traffic). With increased recognition and direct traffic you will receive more repeat visitors, and likely, higher conversion rates. 

For this reason, a sound overall online marketing strategy is important. Once you pull them in, make sure you’re converting with these tips to improve ROI.