When I first launched my online marketing career, I was mostly focused on monetizing my websites with Google AdSense. I used a variety of online calculators to estimate future AdSense earnings based on website traffic projections.
Experienced marketers understand why these tools are useless and counterproductive. Unfortunately, they are based on a faulty assumption that is all too common in our industry. Many marketers equate traffic volume with the success of an online marketing plan.
The reality is a lot more nuanced than that. Digital marketers need to recognize that some forms of traffic are higher quality than others. Traffic volume is important, but you can’t make it your sole focus. You also need to pay close attention to the types of traffic that are converting the best and scale them as much as possible.
Tyler Horsley, founder and CEO of Nuclear Networking, one of the leading Denver marketing agencies, has discussed this reality.
“The digital marketing industry has become oversaturated with bottom-tier firms that focus on maximizing traffic at all costs. Skilled marketers understand the importance of taking a granular look at traffic data and ensuring it aligns with conversion goals. Newer marketing platforms afford marketers with the opportunity to deliver laser targeted traffic, which they should utilize to their fullest capability,” Horsley stated.
Here are some factors that you need to look at when determining the quality of website traffic and getting the most value from it.
Traffic mediums have the biggest impact on conversion rates and CPAs
There are a number of different traffic mediums. Social, search, email, referral and direct traffic are the basic categories.
The value of these types of traffic vary considerably. Of course, every industry and business model is different, so it is hard to draw any universal conclusions. However, in general, search engine traffic is statistically more valuable than social media or referral traffic.
A study by Smart Insights found that the conversion rate from search engine visitors was 68% higher than visitors that found the site through social media. Conversion rates from email visitors were 41% higher than search engine visitors.
Conversion rates alone don’t tell the whole story, though. The average value of a conversion from a search engine visitor is often higher than one from someone on social media. Your website could easily generate more revenue from 40,000 organic search engine visitors than 100,000 social media visitors.
Traffic values vary significantly by device
A lot of digital marketers have overemphasized the importance of reaching visitors through mobile devices. It is easy to see how mobile web traffic is getting more attention. New data shows that 52.2% of all Internet traffic is driven by mobile devices. This has caused countless people to optimize their sites for mobile traffic.
It is a good idea to optimize your site for mobile devices. However, traffic from mobile users is not usually anywhere near as valuable. Traffic from desktop users is 114% higher than traffic from smartphone users. However, tablet users converted almost the same rate as desktop users.
You should still try to reach smartphone users on organic traffic. However, since conversion rates are a lot lower, it might not be worth paying for PPC or social media ads to reach them.
Conversion rates vary considerably by country
You are also going to find that conversion rates are significantly different across countries, even when you factor for local preferences. Many marketers are trying to expand their horizons and reach customers in other parts of the world. However, this might not be a good idea if you’re focusing on countries with poor conversion rates.
Conversion rates tend to be the highest in the United States. However, there is a significant difference even between conversion rates in European countries. The average conversion rate from a visitor from the United Kingdom is 50% higher than a visitor from Italy. It might still be worth paying for PPC ads to reach Italian visitors if the costs of traffic are much cheaper, but you need to be realistic about the value of their conversions.
Your digital marketing strategy must balance traffic quality with volume
Traffic volume is obviously important. However, it is not the only variable that you should be looking at. It is easy to get excited when you see that the number of people visiting your website is steadily increasing.
The problem is that rising traffic volume does not necessarily indicate that your website revenue is increasing. You also need to consider the types of traffic that you’re attracting, as well as the conversion rates associated with it. You’ll probably get more value from a desktop user that found your website through in organic search engine in a primarily English-speaking country than a smartphone user at stumbled across your website through Facebook
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t focus on traffic sources that tend to have lower conversion rates. If you can get a lot more traffic volume from them at a lower cost, then they can certainly be worth the investment. However, you need to consider the value of that traffic when you are developing a strategy.