Returning Visitors - How To Make Sense Of The Numbers...

[darren13]

Hi
(btw, hope this is the correct-est forum for this post, if not, sorry and please move me!)

I've been checking out our stats (in StatCounter) which gives us a Returning Visitor percentage of 18.3%, with a Maximum Visit Length set at 1 hour. So anyone visiting for a while, then going away for an hour, then coming back, will I assume be classed as a new visitor.

I was wondering should I set the Maximum Visit Length up a bit as I'm sure people check our site at work, then look again later in the day and so on. Does anyone have any statistical/analytical experiences with this?

Another thing I've wondered is this:- does anyone else out there have comparison figures - ours is a travel site but I'd be interested in hearing from other industry sectors too. Or maybe someone knows of a comparison site (maybe similar to Alexa for example) where you can check certain stats for sites in different market sectors etc?

Thanks guys,
Darren.

[Irishjim]

I'm not sure I can help you much, Darren, but we are a travel site, too and are averaging about 19% on return visitors.

So I guess you're in the ballpark (or we're both out of it) but I'm wondering how many page hits per visitor you're getting on your site.

It seems like this is more important to a travel site.

I'm not sure what the industry average is. It seems like you were doing well with three page hits a visitor but it's been a long time since I've seen stats on this.

As for page hits, we run between 8 and 9 on average.

Also, I like to check where they come in and where they leave. We've had a few really popular pages over time, like our Lisdoonvarna page that gets its fair share but I've found these are not buyers... only lookie-loos.

We get as many exits from the Lisdoonvarna page as we do entries.

To me this means they are coming in, reading the page and failing to look around any further.

[office7]

We get around 15 to 20% returning visitors, and something like 2.5 pages visited per visit.

Vicki Heath
Director
www.businessperform.com

[juliemarg]

IrishJim

I love your writing style - I'm going to post a link to you at my site.

On my site, I'm up to almost 150 visitors a day, with 3 page views per visitor. I don't know what percentage are repeats.

[ron angel]

Hi
(btw, hope this is the correct-est forum for this post, if not, sorry and please move me!)

I've been checking out our stats (in StatCounter) which gives us a Returning Visitor percentage of 18.3%, with a Maximum Visit Length set at 1 hour. So anyone visiting for a while, then going away for an hour, then coming back, will I assume be classed as a new visitor.

I was wondering should I set the Maximum Visit Length up a bit as I'm sure people check our site at work, then look again later in the day and so on. Does anyone have any statistical/analytical experiences with this?

Another thing I've wondered is this:- does anyone else out there have comparison figures - ours is a travel site but I'd be interested in hearing from other industry sectors too. Or maybe someone knows of a comparison site (maybe similar to Alexa for example) where you can check certain stats for sites in different market sectors etc?

Thanks guys,
Darren.

I used to use free counters for an old site I had.
If you are looking for other peoples stats, by clicking on the link to some of them it is possible to see the stats of the site as some of the free ones do not need passwords to access the data.so have a look at the bottom of the source code of the ones that interest you and you may find a free counter link.All I am doing is pointing out what exists,if or how you use the information is up to you.

www.ssrichardmontgomery.com

[darren13]

I'm not sure I can help you much, Darren, but we are a travel site, too and are averaging about 19% on return visitors.

So I guess you're in the ballpark (or we're both out of it) but I'm wondering how many page hits per visitor you're getting on your site.

It seems like this is more important to a travel site.

Thanks Jim, at least I know I'm in the same ball park as someone out there!

It's difficult for me to say whether the number of page views makes a difference as visitors can contact the bookings manager by phone, the number being at the top of every one of our pages, so a visitor could land anywhere and still get in touch. I think longer visits are obviously good though and you can see an 'interested' visitor in the stats flicking from one page to another, then back again to compare properties etc. If they're interested, that's good for us.

Thanks,
Darren.