Hack 50. Leverage Referring Domains and URLs
Knowing how visitors found you is as or more important than knowing what they do on your web site. Referring URLs are (usually) the source of this type of information. A site or page's referrer is usually the URL a visitor was browsing when he clicked a link to your web site. Captured via the web server logfile [Hack #22] or reported by a JavaScript page tag [Hack #28], referring URLs are a powerful ally for the online marketer. Without referrers, you have no way to know who is talking about you, what they're saying, or how well your marketing dollars are being spent. While in a perfect world every request would contain a referrer that would help you understand a visitor's intent, the world is far from perfect. 3.15.1. How Referring URLs Are Typically ReportedNearly all web measurement programs provide a basic top-level referring domains report as well as an option to drill down into the details of each referring URL. Data overload is a common problem when you're thinking about your referrers, and often it's best to simplify your referrers to show only the domain. However, in some cases you'll be forced to analyze the entire referring URL (Figure 3-15). Figure 3-15. Referring URLs report3.15.2. Common Problems with ReferrersSince the referrer exists only when a link is constructed from another site to yours, the referrer is one of the most exciting things to a marketer. The first time you see a list of referrers, you'll get very excited to see that people are linking to your site. Still, sometimes referrers get lost or dropped when they should be available for a variety of reasons, including:
Most often, when things in this list occur, your web measurement application will report a higher number of referrers from "No Referrer" than you expect. How do you know how many "no referral" visits to expect? An excellent question! In general, the more offline and word-of-mouth advertising you do, the greater your expectation about people coming directly to your web site. Also, if you do a great deal of email marketing, or use of JavaScript-based links or rich media advertising, you may expect the number of "no referrer" visits to be higher (for reasons listed earlier). The converse is also true: if you do little or no email and offline marketing, any visits without referrers should be considered suspect. 3.15.3. Using Referrers to Your AdvantageMost of the value associated with referring URLs is associated with campaign-specific reporting like banner advertising [Hack #40], paid [Hack #42],organic search marketing [Hack #43], and affiliate marketing [Hack #45] for which the referring URL often contains the reference to the campaigns being examined. Still, the beauty of the Internet is that anyone can link to your site and you never really know how valuable referred visitors are until you can identify them and watch their interaction with your site. The essence of leveraging your referring URLs is looking for referrers you aren't expecting. Use a "what's changed" report (Figure 3-16), get in the habit of looking for sites that have not previously sent you traffic, and work to determine why traffic volumes increase. Build a "top movers" or "top referrers" into your regular key performance indicator reports, and integrate an examination of your referring domains into your regular web measurement program. Who knows how the information you find will change your online business? Figure 3-16. "What's changed" reportFinally, since you always want to keep your business objectives squarely in mind when examining referrers, make sure that you're tying referrers to conversion goals whenever possible. Put another way, knowing who is sending you traffic is valuable, but knowing who is sending you customers is invaluable. John Marshall and Eric T. Peterson |