What do we mean by quality traffic?
It’s a bit of a buzz at the moment, everyone wants it but what actually is quality traffic?
When we talk about quality traffic what we mean is highly engaged ‘traffic’ ie. People, customers, and humans with the intent to take an action when they hit your website, this might be to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter or leave a review.
How do you measure traffic quality?
The main way to measure the quality of traffic is by analysing the actions these people take when they hit your site.
Analysis, analysis, analysis. Although you won’t believe me, Google Analytics (a free google tool that is the heart of any client’s performance) will become your best friend, you can use behaviour, landing and exit page analysis and a whole host of metrics to really define who your target customer is and what they’re most interested in when they get to your site – then you can tweak your ads to ensure you cover all of this and are spending in the correct places/sending traffic to the correct landing pages.
4 key metrics which allow us to understand the quality of traffic which has hit our site are:
- Bounce Rate
- New vs Returning Visitors
- Time on Page
- Landing/Exit Pages & Page sessions
Bounce Rate never lies, if bounce rate is high then an investigation is needed, users are simply not interested or engaged with content if this is high, they arrived at your site and within a matter of seconds left. This, however, gives us great learnings so we can see if our landing page is relevant and if our onsite content needs some TLC. Rumours were that this would be removed from GA4 but Google has reversed and it’s staying… phew we say!
New vs Returning visitors lets you see how many new people have visited your site or then again people who have visited previously and returned. You can cross reference new vs returning conversions to see if these metrics mirror each other and if you’re successfully building a following of repeat purchasers.
Avg. time on a page like bounce rate gives a slightly different view of a similar metric, this shows how long someone stays on a page anything under 52 seconds (you can round this up to a minute for ease) is something to watch and see if they return and how long it takes them to return.
Page analysis is a valuable tool for optimisation, we can see where people are going what they’re doing on a page and also which pages have a higher/lower bounce rate, we also recommend creating segments within GA for ‘qualified’ traffic, essentially showing which customers visit ‘x’ amount of pages for ‘x’ amount of time, these customers you will slowly begin to build and you’ll have a pot of people who you know are valuable to your brand.
There’s also a whole host of tools that you can use to assist you in your detective work. A firm favourite of ours is Hotjar. This tool gives heatmaps and click maps in both desktop and mobile views so you can see exactly what a visitor does when they land on your site, do they scroll to the bottom of the page or do they completely miss the content that you were directing them to – all channels working holistically will maximise your ability to gain high-quality traffic that converts (giving a high and strong conversion rate) and continues to return time and time again.
Hotjar also offers a great feature of recordings so you can set up a goal and the tool will record the visitor when they trigger this goal so you can see exactly what happened, this is brilliant for finding issues with a page if all other metrics tank.
Why do we want quality over quantity?
Quality traffic means that the customer is moving down the funnel closer to taking the action which we want them to take and getting us closer to achieving our marketing goal.
Driving quality traffic demonstrates that we are spending our marketing budget in the right place, on the right people, which inevitably leads to results.
So, how do you get this quality traffic?
Talk to the right people, at the right time in the right place. In simple terms, you have to put yourself in their shoes and provide them with a journey which allows them to fulfil their goal in the most convenient way.
Within your ads themselves you can then use all the tools available to you to reach your core customer;
- Location targeting, do we want people who are near us or from further afield?
- Gender, do we know whom our products will be of most interest to or are there a natural gender that your product falls under
- Age, are your products targeted at the elder demographic or are you looking for a younger audience?
Identify your audience then use targeting to reach them
Think about where they spend most of their time, where do they live, how old are they what do they do in their spare time?
Put yourself in their shoes
Where do they shop, how do they spend their free time
What makes them buy?
What is the hook that makes your target customer buy, is it the price and a really great saving or could it be that they are looking for luxury or exclusivity?
Once you’ve identified who your target audience is, its time to think about how they shop and where they shop you need to work on your marketing content
Creatives – eye-catching? The right call to action price? Savings? One-off? Testimonials?
What’s next? They’ve seen your ad, it’s what they’ve been looking for they click through they are what we’ve been looking for ‘high-quality traffic’ and BAM they’re on your site. This is your big opportunity to sell yourself, and the product/service you have on offer to drive that final result.
Visit us at Green Ginger Digital for more helpful tips and tricks!
