How many of your visitors ever come back?
Problem
- Most visitors read one page and never come back, so a site keeps paying to win the same reader again.
- A traffic total hides this - 10,000 visits can be 9,000 strangers or 3,000 regulars.
Solution
- Read your returning-visitor share off your WebCounter counter, month by month.
- Give people a reason to come back - a regular posting day, a newsletter, something they use again.
Key points
- With no reason to return, 1,000 new visitors bring back about 200 visits in a year in our example.
- Regular posting lifts that to about 490.
- A newsletter plus regular posting lifts it to about 1,430 - seven times the first case.
- The difference is decided in the first month - visitors who do not come back soon rarely come back at all.
- All the rates here are illustrative, not a benchmark - your counter is the real number.
In what a returning visitor is worth we put a price on a reader who comes back. This post asks the step before that: of the people who find your site this month, how many ever come back - and what changes the answer.
Why most visitors leave for good
A visitor from search came for one answer. Once they have it, they have no reason to remember where they got it.
- They do not know your site's name - they clicked a search result, not a brand.
- Nothing reminds them - no email, no bookmark, no reason to check for something new.
- The next search sends them somewhere else, even for a question you answered better.
- Returners are cheaper - every one of them is a visit you did not have to rank for again.
Worked example: 1,000 new visitors, three sites
Take one month in which 1,000 new people find a site. We count how many of them visit again in each month after that, under three illustrative cases:
- No reason to return: 10% come back the next month, and half of those keep coming each month after.
- Regular posting: 15% come back the next month, and 70% of those keep coming.
- Newsletter plus regular posting: 25% come back the next month, and 85% of those keep coming.
Counted over the 12 months after their first visit:
- No reason to return: about 200 return visits - and almost none after month 6.
- Regular posting: about 490 return visits.
- Newsletter plus regular posting: about 1,430 return visits, and 42 of the 1,000 are still visiting in month 12.
Illustrative. The 10%, 15% and 25% coming back and the 50%, 70% and 85% who keep coming are assumptions chosen to show the shape - no published benchmark was used. Your WebCounter counter shows your real returning visitors.
A year of one month's new visitors
Visitors from that first group of 1,000 who come back, month by month:
- No reason to return
- Regular posting
- Newsletter plus regular posting
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | No reason to return | Regular posting | Newsletter plus regular posting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | 150 | 250 |
| 3 | 25 | 74 | 181 |
| 6 | 3 | 25 | 111 |
| 12 | 0 | 3 | 42 |
- Win the second visit early - a sign-up box or a "read next" link on the first visit does more than anything later.
- Post on a day people can expect, so there is something new when they do come back.
- A newsletter is the strongest lever here, because it reminds people instead of waiting for them to remember.
To see how fast a newsletter list grows from your traffic, try the free newsletter growth calculator on CalcSA. More free calculators for site owners are at calcsa.co.za.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter separates new from returning visitors, so you can watch this number move. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Returning share: returning visitors divided by all visitors, month by month - the trend matters more than the level.
- After a change: start a newsletter or a posting day, then compare the returning share three months later.
- Pages that bring people back: look at which pages returners land on first.
- Count bots out - crawlers that visit daily look like very loyal readers.
Sources
- The 1,000 new visitors and every return and keep rate are our illustrative assumptions - no published benchmark for returning-visitor rates was used.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Newsletter growth.
Estimates only. How many visitors come back depends on your subject and what you give them to come back for; your own counter is the test.
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