New Visits vs. Returning Visits.

In this article:

• New Visitors % + Returning Visitors % = 100%
• Growing Churches want to Increase their New Visitors %
• New Visitor % and Public/Private Networks
• The Study-wide Mean New Visitor % Benchmark
• Crosspointe Winterpark, an Average Example
• Crosspointe’s Referral Sources

New Visitor % + Returning Visitor % =100 %

Google Analytics has a metric in the Visitors section called New vs. Returning.  Very briefly, a New Visitor is someone who has never visited the website in the past, and a Returning Visitor is someone who has visited the website at least once before, irrespective of how long ago that was.

It could be last week, or two years ago, Google can track that Returning Visitor.  Together, New Visitors and Returning Visitors should add up to 100%.

In the example to the top right, from Crosspointe Winterpark in Winterpark, Florida, you see that the sum of their visiting percentages is: 53.1%+46.9%= 100%.  It makes sense.  If you’re visiting for the very first time, then you may be someone who has never visited in the past.  (Note: This stat is not perfect but more a general indicator.)

Growing Churches Want to Increase their New Visitors %

We primarily will be looking at the New Visitor data from our analytics study, because not only is Returning Visitors the inverse of New Visitors, most churches are probably more interested in getting their message out to more new people (the unchurched or those who are looking for a church).

Conversely you might expect a higher Returning Visitors count if you are running a successful community network off your main site.

New Visitor % and Sites with Public Login Functionality

One of the public websites we’ve seen with a member login on the site is CityReformed.org.  Churches that include a members login area on the website will probably skew toward more  Returning Visitors.  Many of the features included on CityReformed.org are geared toward their existing community.

New Visitor % and Sites with Private Login Functionality

In contrast to websites with a Public Member Functionality, we also have sites that choose to set their users up on more of a Private Member Website.

An advantage of a Private Website is that analytics software like Google will not be skewed by this primarily community-centered activity, nor require extra analytics hacks to get GA (or any other analytics software) to ignore all traffic related to the community network.One example of a Private Community web app is Cobblestone Community Network.

Cobblestone is a Private Community web app that is designed to move people deeper into real relationships, inviting users to connect online for sharing, encouragement, and prayer, with the goal of building relationships that move into the real world.

Some of the functionality designed into this application include automatic home group member sorting, event management, a prayer module, and volunteer and service opportunity coordination.

A recommendation may be to evaluate what your  website goals are and to offer two websites, one for members and another to communicate the vision of your church to the public.

The Study-wide Mean New Visitor %

The mean New Visitor % for all church websites studied is 50.88%. That means that on average, half of a church’s visits are from New Visitors, and the other half of a church’s visits are from Returning Visitors.  Let’s take a look at one church that is cruising right at the study-wide average of 50.88%, Crosspointe Winterpark, in Winterpark, Florida (www.crosspointewinterpark.com).

Crosspointe Winterpark, an Average Example

50.11% of Crosspointe Winterpark’s visitors are New Visitors, which is nearly identical to the sample-wide church average of 50.88%.  We will release a case study in the future about more of what Crosspointe is doing, but just in the meantime, we will take a look at a few of the things that Crosspointe is  doing that might be indicative of a church which has an “average” New Visitors %.

Crosspointe Winterpark is a church of 80 members located in Winterpark, Florida,  and has three months of Google Analytics available starting from February of 2009.  All websites have one of three sources.  Search, Direct, and Referral.

Crosspointe gets 5.56% of its traffic from Search (This is pretty low, and a future article will discuss appropriate Search traffic percentages), and 12.33% of its traffic from Direct input of the website’s URL into a browser address bar.

These Direct hits are most likely from people who are familiar with the website’s URL already, and a significant portion of whom are likely church members.

Crosspointe’s Referral Sources

With 5.56% of all traffic from Search, and another 12.33% of traffic from Direct, it is astounding to reveal that 82.11% of Crosspointe Winterpark’s visits comes from Referral traffic.  The largest portion of those 989 hits per month within Referral traffic came from Design-oriented websites.

Design sites will be covered in an article later as well, but for now, we’ll just say that being teamed up with a good web designer, and being set up on a great Church Content Management System (CMS), can lead to getting linked on design-oriented blogs, and design idea/rating sites, which are able to impact the Referral traffic bottom line.

There are many ways to get inbound referrals and the design route probably not the most effective way to attract high amounts of relevant traffic.  Churches should consider if they receive a lot of this traffic how they want to present the gospel to hundreds if not thousands of visitors who come to view the website design.

In our study, there were a lot of churches who received considerable design-gallery traffic.

Next Article: The Highest Performing Website in New Visitor %.

Our next article will take a closer look at churches who are getting the highest performance in New Visitors vs. Returning Visitors, and what they are doing to acquire and maintain those positions.