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Repeat Visitors - What drives them?

Before answering the question as to what drives repeat visits, let us first understand why repeat visits are important for your website.

No matter what your website exists for repeat visits is always a good thing. For instance, if you’re selling something, if guests visit your site repeatedly that probably means that they like the products that you have to offer and are going to convert. If you are a content site, repeat visits mean you have a loyal set of readers, if you are a lead generating site, repeats would eventually lead to higher number of leads.

So we can confidently say that in most cases repeat visits mean that there is something good in line for your future. Now how to improve on your repeat visitor stats will be discussed later. First let’s look what motivates browsers to repeat.

The only objective answer to this question is “Customer/guest/browser Intent”.

In subjectively answering the question at hand let us broadly classify the guests who visit a typical e-commerce website into the following 3 categories:

1. Guests who come to the site for random browsing: these browsers visit the website without any intent of making an online purchase, nor are they researching any product.

Chances that they would end up purchasing something are very low. If they like the site content, products on offer and the site navigation itself chances are they would probably come back in case they need to purchase something in the future.

So for this group of visitors/guests the repeat is driven more by the content (products, product info etc) and how easy it is to navigate to product of one’s choice. However in this case the average time between repeats is not very steady.

Source: Paid Display Ad campaigns, StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, Facebook.com, etc.

2.Guests who come to the site from organic or paid search results: More often than not these set of browsers have a definite intent of purchasing something from the site (because of the obvious reason that they were searching for something in the search engine). Now such kind of visits might not immediately result in a conversion as such visitors tend to research the same product across multiple online retailers before settling for the best bargain. Also we are not sure whether the visitor will end up purchasing online or make the final purchase from a store.

As such given that our prices are competitive, visitors of this category are sure to come to site again either to confirm the product details or make the final purchase. The average time between repeats for this segment should be a week at max.

In this case the driver for repeat visit is the actual intent to purchase. Later purchases and repeats can be attributed to competitive pricing, better user experience.

Of the guests who end up making a purchase online/store, a considerable portion can be expected to move to a different segment (Guests who visit the website directly by typing the URL.)

Source: Search Engines, Shopping Comparison sites, Word of Mouth sites etc.

3. Guest who visits the website directly by typing the URL: These are the regular/loyal visitors to the site. And they seem to repeat because of the brand value and also since they have become accustomed to the site navigation. A large number of visitors in this segment migrate from segments 1 and 2 discussed above.

These segments of visitors visit the site regularly for their product needs. Repeats may vary depending on the product requirement.

Source:  Direct Visitors/guests.

Omniture Exit Link Tracking

Exit link tracking is very important for most sites more so if you are an affiliate site (if you send traffic to other site through your review links or product links) since your revenue stream is directly related to the amount of traffic you send. It is also helpful in understanding which links are browsers taking as they exit your site. Omniture SiteCatalyst provides out of the box exit link tracking functionality.


SiteCatalyst will automatically track exit links based on parameters set in the JavaScript file.If needed, these types of links can be \anually tracked using custom link code

Because clicking a link often takes a visitor off the current page, a 500 ms delay is used to ensure that an image request is sent to Omniture before the user leaves the page. This delay is only necessary when leaving the page, but is typically present when the tl() function is called. If you want to disable the delay, pass the keyword 'true' as the first parameter when calling the tl() function. The first parameter is typically the object being clicked on, but if true is used, there will be no delay. e.g.

Use a 500 ms delay to insure data is collected before leaving the page.
s.tl(this,'o','link name')

Disable the 500 ms delay when the user is not going to leave the page.
s.tl(true,'o','link name')

The JavaScript file can be configured to automatically track exit links based on parameters that define exit links. The parameters that control automatic tracking are as follows.

s.trackExternalLinks=true
s.linkInternalFilters="javascript:,testsite.com,....."
s.linkLeaveQueryString=false

The parameter trackExternalLinks determines if automatic exit links tracking is enabled. When enabled,any link with a URL that does not contain one of the values in linkInternalFilters will be automatically tracked as an exit link.

The parameter linkLeaveQueryString modifies the logic used to determine exit links. When
linkLeaveQueryString=false, exit links are determined using only the domain, path and file portion of the link URL. When linkLeaveQueryString=true, the query string portion of the link URL is also used to determine an exit link.

Custom link code allows exit links and custom links to be tracked in situations where automatic tracking is not sufficient or applicable. Custom link code is typically implemented by adding an onClick event handler to a link, or adding code to an existing routine; however it can be implemented from essentially any JavaScript event handler or function.

The basic code to track a link using custom link code is shown in the following example.


Two SiteCatalyst parameters (linkTrackVars and linkTrackEvents) control which SiteCatalyst variables are set for  exit links and custom links, and are, by default, set within the JS file as follows.

For example to track "prop1", "eVar1", and "event1" with exit link, and custom link,use the following settings within the global JS file:

s.linkTrackVars="prop1,eVar1,events"
s.linkTrackEvents="event1"


Site Catalyst Report Location:
Paths -> Links -> Exit Links

Unstructured Data: Text Data Mining: Content Analysis: Text Analytics Buzz

No matter whether you are an Analyst or the Head of the Company, you must have been very busy number crunching, deep-diving and analyzing the key reports generated. The more structured the information, the more significant it is. Still, most of the organization’s information is unstructured which may include Survey Questionnaires and Results, Contracts (essentially information stored in Content management systems).

Shopping Cart Abandonment Solutions for Online Business

For many e-commerce websites the biggest loss of revenue happens due to the checkout process. A recent study reveals the following:

A 70% average shopping cart abandonment rate was observed for the majority of retailers. Since, on average, websites convert visitors-to-sales at a rate of 1% to 2% then 98% to 99% of the guests to your website leave without purchasing!

The cart abandonment rate is one the most “stared- at” metric in retail e-commerce, and one that most businesses could stand to improve. But before making changes to their Web sites, retailers need to study and understand the many factors that lead to cart abandonment – not all of which are inherently evil.

Key Performance Indicators

Online Channel KPIs:

I went through an article regarding the KPIs and could not resist writing the same.

The Web Analytics KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) focuses on measuring the Business’s Online Campaign/Marketing activities.

There are three types of online Campaign/Marketing activities you can measure: 

Key metrics used for E-Commerce/Contents Site.

E-Commerce and Non E-Commerce sites serve their purpose individually. While the former is more concerned about the Conversion Rates and Average Order Value, the latter is happy with the Engagement metrics such as Clicks etc.