Comparing Website Traffic Sources from 4 Companies

I have been working as an outsourced CMO for the past year, focused on Digital Marketing and E-commerce consulting. This has given me the opportunity to work with a handful of companies. I’ve been able to study their business models, strategies and product offerings. This usually starts with an audit of their marketing activities and an in-depth study of their digital marketing analytics.

When I get access to their website analytics, one of the first areas I look at is their traffic sources. Doing so tells me how they are doing across all marketing channels. Often, I can quickly understand where they are investing their time and resources, which helps me make recommendations about where they need to invest. The first step, though, is to do an analysis on the dollars being spent in each area and their true ROI.

This chart shows 4 companies and the percentage of traffic that their website is getting from each channel.

A.   This company doesn’t seem to be doing much in the digital marketing space and they don’t appear to have a good digital strategy in place. Customers are finding them by directly typing in their website URL and probably through branded searches with the company name. This is good news because people know who they are, but they may not be attracting many new customers. They do have some referral traffic as well, which could be coming from another website they own or referring partner websites.

B.  This company is getting 86% of its traffic from CPC (Google Ads). They don’t appear to have any other strategy, except to pay for traffic from Google searches. This is the most lopsided chart of all. They could focus time on email, social, SEO, and branding strategies. These strategies could help them decrease their customer acquisition costs. They probably need to put a comprehensive digital marketing strategy roadmap in place that prioritizes new channels to develop, based on their sales potential.

C.  This company has nearly 70% of their traffic coming from organic searches. They appear to have a good SEO strategy in place and are ranking for searches related to their product. It looks like they are trying to execute some email strategies, which is driving a small amount of traffic. I would need to take a closer look here at the email content and strategy behind it. They have a fair number of customers coming directly to their website but have some work to do here as well. What does their reorder rate look like? Why are they not investing in paid search or paid social campaigns?

D.  This company has the healthiest mix of traffic sources, although they certainly still have work to do. They have 44% of traffic coming from Google Ads. I would need to analyze the ROI of this spend to determine next steps. They have a good chunk of customers finding them through organic searches, so their SEO seems to be doing well. Direct traffic and referrals are making up 27%. I would need to dig into these areas for potential branding work. They are driving some traffic through display ads and trying some email strategies as well. Both of these areas could be examined deeper to understand the budget, strategies, and resources the company uses.

Which channels drive the most traffic for you or your company? Does this help you make decisions about new areas for growth? How do you measure the success of each channel?