Traffic acquisition: session source and session medium
Understanding how traffic reaches the website is important for optimising marketing activities and improving the user experience. In this blog we will discuss traffic acquisition: session source and session medium.
What do session source and session medium cover?
In Google Analytics, session source (Source) and session medium (Medium) are important metrics that help trace the origin of website traffic. They answer the question: which channel was a visitor in before they arrived on your website? Making this traffic visible is important for determining which digital channels matter for your website traffic. In addition, these two dimensions are important for understanding the effectiveness of different marketing channels and strategies.
Session source (Source)
The session source identifies the origin of traffic to a website. It tells you specifically where users came from to reach the website. This can be:
- Search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo (shown as ‘google’, ‘bing’, ‘yahoo’, and so on in the reports).
- Websites that link to your website. For example, if someone clicks on a link to your website that is on another website, that website is shown as the source.
- Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
- Direct access when a user enters your website URL directly in their browser. This is displayed as (direct) in Google Analytics.
Session medium (Medium)
The session medium describes the type of channel the visitor used to reach your website. This is a more general category than the source and indicates the nature of the traffic. Examples are:
- Organic traffic (organic): Visitors who come to the website via an unpaid search.
- Referral (referral): Traffic that comes from another website that links to the site.
- Paid traffic (cpc – cost per click): Visitors who come via paid search ads.
- Social media (social): Traffic that originates from social media sites.
- Email (email): Visitors who come via links in email messages.
- Direct (none): Traffic without a specific medium, often through direct URL entry.
Why are these elements important?
By having insight into the source and medium of website traffic, the following points can improve significantly:
- Optimising marketing strategies: Identify which channels are most effective at attracting quality traffic and adjust your budget and efforts accordingly.
- Calculating ROI: Measure the return on investment for different marketing campaigns by looking at which sources deliver the most converted visitors.
- Adapting content: Understand users’ intent depending on their source and medium and adapt the content on the website to better meet their needs.
- Improving user experience: Optimise the paths users take based on how they reach your website, to improve the user experience and increase conversions.
Tips for using session source and medium
First of all, it is important to segment the data. Create custom segments for different sources and media to dive deeper into specific user behaviour. Next, link goals to traffic sources and set specific goals within Google Analytics to see how well traffic sources convert to desired actions such as purchases or sign-ups. Make use of attribution models and experiment with different attribution models to determine how conversions are assigned to different users.
Having insight into session source and session medium in Google Analytics can help you understand which traffic flows to the website matter, and provides insights that can lead to better decisions in your digital strategy. Need help? Schedule a no-obligation consultation with us.