Repeat vs first time visitors

Web Analytics

Every decent web analytics package can segment your traffic data by repeat vs first-time visitors. If you can track e-commerce transactions by $ amount you can also quickly see what the value of those two types of visitors is. You may find that repeat visitors are several times more valuable (in terms of $) than first-timers. What’s your call to action with this sort of information?

I think there is a big opportunity if you can set up your site to meet the needs of those different types of visitors. So rather than have one theme that sort of appeals to all visitors, what if you could deliver different but more relevant content to those different visitor segments?

It is interesting to see that this concept is being picked up by "mainstream" marketer Seth Godin:

One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat
returning visitors differently than newbies. It’s more work at first,
but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people. Full blog post.