{"id":2788,"date":"2018-05-22T20:42:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T20:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.qualaroo.com\/?p=2788"},"modified":"2024-12-17T06:26:04","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T06:26:04","slug":"using-qualitative-data-to-understand-unknown-web-traffic-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/using-qualitative-data-to-understand-unknown-web-traffic-source\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Qualitative Data to Understand \u201cUnknown\u201d Web Traffic Source"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Written and contributed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/angelabartels\/\">Angela Bartels<\/a>, VP of Marketing at Qualaroo<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When understanding your web traffic in tools such as Google Analytics, there will always be that \u201cI don\u2019t know where this user came from\u201d channel known as \u201cDirect Traffic.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Direct traffic is identified by those that land directly on your website by typing the URL into their browser or by saving your web URL as a bookmark.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cl.ly\/2u130p3t382A\">https:\/\/cl.ly\/2u130p3t382A<\/a><\/p>\n<h5>One way to be categorized under &#8220;Direct traffic&#8221;<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a marketer that likes to track everything, direct traffic is like a fly on the wall &#8211; super annoying.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It\u2019s particularly annoying when running paid marketing campaigns because you\u2019ll always wonder how many people were actually influenced by your ad and went on to type your domain name into a browser. Of course there\u2019s view through conversion tracking but it won\u2019t paint a clear picture from source to user. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When we turned on some new paid campaigns earlier this year, I was curious to know more about the users coming into my direct channel so I set out to find out and wanted to share my process and results. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before I do, it\u2019s important to ensure you\u2019ve already taken the steps to debunk direct traffic and document attribution where possible by: &nbsp;<\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Ensuring you have tracking codes on all your landing pages.<\/strong> <\/span><\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our website is built on WordPress but I build landing pages all the time in Instapage<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Have a landing page checklist that includes \u201cadd tracking code\u201d onto your page is crucial as you build your marketing campaigns. It\u2019s easy for things to get missed if not<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Make sure you first have tags set up in Google Tag Manager and then set up conversion tracking on your landing pages. <a href=\"https:\/\/help.instapage.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/206035597-How-do-I-add-Adwords-Conversion-Tracking-to-my-pages-\">Here&#8217;s an article on how to do it Instapage<\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Using 301 redirects to map old URLs to new URLs when doing a website revamp.<\/strong> <\/span><\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did a website update back in December and we have a lot of pages that are highly ranked so wanted to make sure old pages mapped to new pages in our new URL tree map <\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can easily do redirects in a CMS tool like WordPress<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2823\" src=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/redirects.png\" alt=\"redirects\" width=\"394\" height=\"299\"><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Setting up proper campaign tracking.<\/strong> <\/span><\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a no brainer but make sure you have UTM codes set up for all your campaigns running whether paid search, content marketing, email marketing &#8211; all your URLs should be tagged with their UTM source, medium, content<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><a href=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/your-boss-wondering-if-your-marketing-campaigns-are-working-use-utm-tagging-to-prove-it\/\">Here&#8217;s an overview on how to set up proper UTM tracking.<\/a>&nbsp;<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a deep dive into understanding direct traffic, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/guide-to-direct-traffic-google-analytics\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">check out this<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> post on the Moz blog. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Assuming you\u2019ve done what you can to debunk direct traffic, you probably still have a good percentage of traffic within your direct traffic channel. If you have a user dashboard or portal that lives on your main domain name, make sure to omit that traffic from the data that you analyze. For example, our users log into app.qualaroo.com so my segments exclude traffic that lands directly into app.qualaroo.com or lands directly on our homepage and clicks \u201clog in\u201d as their first interaction with our site. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Ok_now_lets_get_into_the_fun_stuff\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, now let\u2019s get into the fun stuff. <\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After I\u2019ve done everything to ensure I\u2019ve narrowed my direct channel to the smallest percentage it could be, I wanted to understand where the remainder of the users in this channel were coming from.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2790\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2790\" style=\"width: 627px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2790\" src=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2018-05-21-at-3.03.30-PM.png\" alt=\"Google Analytics\" width=\"627\" height=\"386\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2790\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Google Analytics data<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just in case you\u2019re worried on whether or not you\u2019re tracking your campaigns correctly, the best way to find out is to see which landing pages your \u201cother\u201d channel visitors are landing on. If you are promoting a landing page for a campaign that is not in your navigation, you\u2019ll be able to quickly see if users are landing on this page as an entry point and can quickly allocate them to the correct paid marketing channel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Why_not_just_ask_users_from_your_Direct_Channel_where_they_came_from\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why not just ask users from your Direct Channel where they came from?<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I ran a Qualaroo onsite survey targeted only to users that came in directly to our website. I designed the survey questions around what I thought might be how they found our website and I left an open ended question to allow users to give us the answers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here\u2019s what I came up with:<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2797\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2797\" style=\"width: 274px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2797\" src=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2018-05-21-at-3.33.09-PM.png\" alt=\"Target\" width=\"274\" height=\"497\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2797\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is how the survey looked like for those targeted to see it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3>For each question, I had a follow-up question:<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2814\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2814\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2814 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2018-05-21-at-4.21.03-PM.png\" alt=\"ads\" width=\"675\" height=\"486\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2814\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">When a survey taker selected &#8220;I saw one of your ads&#8221;, the follow up question was about which network did they see the ad on<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2815\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2815\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2815 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2018-05-21-at-4.23.21-PM.png\" alt=\"Google search\" width=\"675\" height=\"474\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2815\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">And on the selection of &#8220;Google search&#8221;, survey takers were asked the question about keywords<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"I_ran_the_survey_for_30_days_and_received_a_10_response_rate_out_of_3K_views\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I ran the survey for 30 days and received a 10% response rate out of 3K views. <\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here\u2019s a snapshot of what the data told us:<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2795\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2795\" style=\"width: 758px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2795\" src=\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/chart.png\" alt=\"chart\" width=\"758\" height=\"469\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2795\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Distribution of all the answers given by survey takers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As you can see from the data, 10% were influenced by an ad and 2% downloaded our content. With a 10% response rate over the course of 30 days, we could assume that had 100% of the visitors responded to this survey, the allocations would remain pretty consistent with these percentages. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of those that said they were influenced by an ad, I was able to see which network they came in from. I can then take these percentages and re-allocate them into our channel overview percentages. For anyone that selected LinkedIn or Facebook, I would add them to our Paid Social channel. We\u2019re only running ads to promote content so it was important to me to figure out what which channels were more accurately promoting paid content. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_has_the_data_encouraged_us_to_activate_on\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What has the data encouraged us to activate on?<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Paid marketing. <\/strong>Give paid marketing credit for a percentage of the unknown traffic coming in to justify the spend. <\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Increase spend.&nbsp;<\/strong>Content marketing is working, increase spend there.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Previous users. <\/strong>Add a follow up call-to-action for&nbsp;previous users with a \u201cthank you for returning, here\u2019s your discount code\u201d<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Referral program.&nbsp;<\/strong>Start working on a referral program for those that were referred by a friend. Have a follow up with \u201chere\u2019s your discount code.\u201d <\/span><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest takeaway here is to realize how much your paid marketing efforts are actually having an affect on all incoming traffic and see new opportunities for growth that you wouldn\u2019t have realized before. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written and contributed by Angela Bartels, VP of Marketing at Qualaroo &nbsp; When understanding your web traffic in tools such as Google Analytics, there will always be that \u201cI don\u2019t know where this user came from\u201d channel known as \u201cDirect Traffic.\u201d Direct traffic is identified by those that land directly on your website by typing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":2828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2788"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18072,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions\/18072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-staging.qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}