Figuring Out the Source of "direct traffic" by looking at landing page parameters
-
I have a client who runs an e-commerce website, and I noticed that 40% of his traffic and 25% of his sales are all attributable to Direct Traffic. At first, I tried to solve this problem by tagging all of the previously untagged links in his e-newsletter, which I expect to be very helpful.
However, then I looked at the landing pages for his direct traffic, and I see that it is almost entirely filled with thousands of unique URLs that begin with a question mark followed by the name of his e-newsletter or shopping cart vendor. It would be the equivalent of having a url like the following: "www.willmarlow.com/?constantcontact=keya;sldkfjsdlfkjdf;sldkjf"
If we have this amount of information in the link, shouldn't there be a way to add additional parameters to the URL to move this traffic out of the Direct column? Has anyone encountered this before? Thanks.
-
Sure hope you can fix that
-
Thanks to both of you. These are very helpful answers - I'll let you know how this works out! I think you are both right.
-
Sounds like the buyer is leaving the website to make a payment then coming back, which would be a direct visit. You said " shopping cart vendor". When someone goes to make a payment, do they leave the site?
-
Hi Will, I imagine you (or your client) will have full control on the email vendor. In that case you may ask them to add to each link the utm tags which will help GA to recognize correctly that traffic.
My recommendation is to add to each link the following:
- utm_source=newsletter
- utm_medium=email
- utm_campaign=(the_month_you_sent_the_newsletter)
- utm_content=(the portion of the ad where the click so you can see which parts of the ad performs the best)
That would be enough, but you still have the utm_term available where you can insert any other thing you may want to track.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Analytics - Tracking multiple thankyou pages?
Hi Guys, I want to track email opt-ins for multiple thank you pages. The setup is as follows: http://image.prntscr.com/image/57632e05a15f42fda0b8ffec2d176460.png I have not yet built the thank you pages, so i was wondering what the URL should be to make it easy to track them in GA? I'm thinking: domain.com/thankyou-page/page1 Then using regular expression in GA to track /thankyou-page/ Would this be a good way to go about it? Cheers. f6c7r0
Reporting & Analytics | | spyaccounts110 -
Tracking Organic Traffic and Conversions from multiple TLDs with Google Tag Manager
Hello Guys, I want to track traffic / conversions from different domains (basically same brand - but a lot of different TLD's). The "problem" is that the main conversion which I want to track always happens on the .com TLD and all other TLD's link to there. The problem is, that now the traffic always counts as Referral Traffic, even after setting up cross domain tracking over the google tag manager... So example: Sessions begins on example.co.uk/landing-page11 after User searched on it on google. He decides to buy the product and therefore moves to example.com for the checkout process. No I will have the conversion in my google analytics under referral with example.co.uk. --> but I want to have it under organic, and not under referral. How I can manage this? Thanks for you Help!
Reporting & Analytics | | _Heiko_0 -
In Analytic Ipad Traffic Showing in Desktop, tablet and Mobile all 3 is it possible?
Hi, In Google Analytic when i see Mobile Overview in secondary dimension when i select Mobile device Model and when i search Ipad then i can see ipad in tablet, desktop and mobile why is it so? Ipad traffic and transaction should appear only on mobile whey it is showing on desktop and tablet? John..
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Adwords start Organic traffic SIGNIFICANTLY drops
I hope someone can give me some insight here, or at least point me in the right direction. As of September 1 we are running Adwords. We are seeing an alarming drop in our organic traffic since then. It's almost like Adwords is cannibalizing organic. August/September Paid 116/847 Organic 648/178 We've looked at why the Organic could have dropped (penalties, site function issues, etc.) and have found nothing unusual. Can someone give me a reason why this might be happening, Why such a dramatic decrease just as adwords is started. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Britewave0 -
Page Views for a List of URL's (Excel & Analytics)
I've been playing around with a few excel plugins trying to get the visit count for over 350 different URL's on the same website. I cant seem to find a function that can do this. Can anyone advise a work around or a way i can achieve this? Greg
Reporting & Analytics | | AndreVanKets0 -
How do I find "bad" backlinks
Hi, I have used open site explorer to review our back links, but I don't know how to determine which ones are bad? For example, I think I am getting penalized for links from strictlygifts.com, but not sure. StrictlyGifts is a second site of ours that has a web hosting plan (our main site does not have hosting - long story). We use this site to store things that link to our main site, trophycentral.com. As an example, we have several online catalogs with hundreds of pages that link to products on trophy central. I have a gut feeling that this is hurting us, but I don't know how to confirm it. I can easily remove the links but don't want to if they are helping us. Can anyone help? Thanks!!!
Reporting & Analytics | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Site Crash Effect On Traffic
All, I manage a site that unfortunately crashed due to a server issue in late October for about 3 hours. Prior to the crash, traffic was the best it had ever been in the 3+ year history of the site. As you might expect, since the crash traffic has gone gradually down and is now about 15% off pre-crash numbers. I understand that when a site crashes, it disrupts the crawling process and can disrupt traffic (in my case rich snippets were thrown off for days) but would love to hear experiences any of you have had in similar situations. How much did traffic drop after a crash? When did it recover? Other thoughts? Thanks, John
Reporting & Analytics | | JSOC0