Visitor Recency: Why it matters and how to measure it

Visitor recency tells how long it has been since a visitor last visited a website. Put in another way, it measures the gap between two visits from the same person. Websites may be updated every day, or multiple times a day, and visitor recency will show whether people are checking back to the site to see the updated information. This metric is important because it shows visitors’ commitment to the site. (Kaushik, 2010).

The best way to determine whether or not the visitor recency percentage of a website is adequate is by determining how often content is added to a website. If a website is updated every day, a marketer may want its visitors to visit the site just as often, to see the new content. The recency report can show what percentage of visitors have returned within a day or less.

This metric may be less vital to websites that are not updated frequently, or those that have longer buying cycles. For example, a college’s admissions website may not have a high percentage of visitors returning to the site each day, because they may be researching the school, looking at the application process and gathering all of the information they need to decide on whether or not to apply. For blogs or news sites, however, the goal is typically frequent engagement as there is frequently updated content, so recency is more beneficial as a PKI for this type of site (Thayer, n,d.).

To increase visitor recency, marketers should post links to their newest information on their social media accounts. Email campaigns and newsletters with fresh content, coupons and special offers can also drive frequency (Bateman, n.d.).

An example of a blog that may use the visitor recency metric is J’s Everyday Fashion. The blog is updated almost every day with new fashion advice, sales, daily outfits and other fashion-related news.

To keep visitors coming back, the blogger posts updates to her social media accounts every day, with links to the full post on her website. She also sends out emails every day, like the one below, which can be clicked to go to the blog post as well.

Another way visitor recency can be useful is to measure the success of a campaign in a more long-term way. For example, a social media website runs a campaign in hopes of gaining more users, and the result is 500,000 new signups. While the campaign may look successful at face value, visitor recency can be used to take a closer look. By waiting 30 days and looking at the visitor recency report for visitors that came to the site as a result of the campaign, a marketer can see the behavior of those new members (Kaushik, 2009).

Have they visited the site within the last day or so? Or have they not visited since they signed up? As shown in the example above, 30 days after the campaign, nearly 77 percent of those who signed up during the campaign visited the site 30 days later, which shows that many of those new members are engaging with the site and find it relevant to them. If, however, 30 days after the campaign, if only a small percentage of visitors had re-visited the site for the first few days, then the campaign may not have been as successful as it may have looked judging solely on signups (Kaushik, 2009). In other words, although the campaign may have created more “members” to the site, it may not have created more actual “users” of the site.

References:

Bateman, S. (n.d.). Frequency and recency climb with the right drivers [blog post]. Retrieved online from http://www.promisemedia.com/organic-marketing/increase-web-site-traffic-with-frequency-drivers.

Kaushik, A. (2009, Jan. 21). Excellent analytics tips #15: Measure latent conversions & visitor behavior [blog post]. Retrieved online from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-15-measure-latent-conversions-visitor-behavior/.

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Thayer, S. (n.d.). Visitor recency – how long has it been since they’ve come back? [blog post]. Retrieved online from http://www.trendingupward.net/2010/12/visitor-recency/.