A site visitor channel defines a means through which people find their way to a particular website. In today’s competitive world, online businesses use all possible means to increase their sales and outdo their competitors. The success of any online business is heavily dependent on the amount of traffic generated on its website. This means that for an online store to increase its sales, it will have to increase the amount of traffic on its website.

Traffic, in this case, can, therefore, mean the number of users that visit your site at any time. These visitors can come from social platforms like Instagram and YouTube or directly from Google searches. Regardless of how attractive and well-designed a site is, profitability can only be realized by increasing traffic. When you have properly understood the peculiarities of the diverse channels that exist, you can develop a robust procedure for boosting the site’s traffic.

That said, what classifications of channels are there, and how do they work?

1.   Search Channel 

This involves people accessing a website for free via search engines such as yahoo.com, google.com and bing.com. For example, when a user types on a Google search bar “Best designer shoe outlets in California,” your store’s link will appear among the many results for that search. Given that ranking in search engines depends on keywords used, conducting proper search engine optimization will see your site’s visitors rise. You can easily retrieve your organic search traffic from Google Analytica under Acquisition > All traffic > Channels.

Search channel information should be used to monitor SEO efforts and how your site is being found among new visitors. Potential gaps in information failing web pages can highlight areas of improvement across your website.

2.   Direct Channel 

This involves people gaining direct access to your website without the help of referrals. A good example of this is when someone types your site’s URL and enters your site or when a user revisits a website via a bookmark. This, therefore, means that when someone accesses a website through an app that fails to show the referrer, Google reports it as directs traffic.

This information is important as it highlight trends in certain visitors connecting with your website. Direct access by frequent visits shows great potential for lead generation and it is an important area for your business to focus its efforts.

3.   External

Whenever people access a site through diverse links or resources, we call that an external visit, this may also include paid campaigns. Links can easily be made available for clicking on varied social media platforms. When you increase the presence of links on many platforms, you increase the possibility of generating more traffic to your site. Referral traffic information can easily be retrieved from Google Analytica under Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels.

Paid Campaigns

These channels involve increasing your website’s presence through any online Ads. Anyone can generate Paid traffic from a popular source like Bing or even google. There are several other sources of paid traffic, including social media platforms and media networks. There also are different types of this traffic to choose from, including pay per click (PPC), pay per advertisement (PPA) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

4.   Social channel 

This incorporates using social media platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube to generate traffic to a site. This channel involves referral links that people click on, on social media platforms. For online stores or other sites that need the traffic to capitalize on this channel, they will need to be on all platforms where they expect their clients to interact actively. After executing your marketing strategy and becoming active on these social platforms, you will notice that not all platforms will generate the same traffic. Gaining access to social media traffic on Google Analytica can be done by going to, Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals.

How to use channels information

By examining the channels used to reach your site its possible to create strategies and campaigns that utilize specific channels, stop the use of certain channels, or highlight areas for improvement.

Understanding the importance of each channel and how it corresponds to your business ensures that your marketing and sales campaigns are making the changes that you set out to make.

Along with the channel information Leads5050 also provides information on the number of visits per day, how many pages were visited and the bounce rate. This information can be measured over a specific period and helps to show exactly what channels and pages are having the most success.

Though channel information is not the most important aspect of leads5050, being able to quantify your efforts on to channels that will result in new sales and customers will save you time and money in the long term.