Identify your main traffic sources in GA

Business Benefits

Use traffic source data to optimize your ROI.


Go to Acquisition > All traffic > Source/Medium and check the Users and Sessions metrics to learn which traffic sources bring users to your website.

Users metric indicates the number of unique visitors to your site. Sessions metric shows the number of visits to your website, the count also includes multiple visits by the same user. New users metrics show the users that visit your website for the first time. Use this metric to learn which traffic source is effective in reaching new audiences

Go to Source/Medium and check the Goal completions metric to see which traffic sources contribute to your business goals.

You can find the absolute number of goals per traffic source in the Goal completions column. The Goal conversion rate column indicates the percentage of visitors that complete the desired goal. Identify traffic sources with a high conversion rate, higher than the website average, and see if you can drive more traffic from these sources.

If you use ecommerce tracking, click on Ecommerce to see which traffic sources are most effective in generating revenue. Pay attention to paid marketing channels and compare the number of goals or revenue to the cost invested in the channel.

In the Source/Medium report, check the Site usage metrics to find out which traffic sources generate poor engagement.

Analyze the bounce rate for each traffic source and identify negative outliers. High bounce rate indicates low traffic relevancy or poor user experience. Check the Avg. Session duration and Pages/Session metrics and identify traffic sources with low values. Low values for these metrics indicate low engagement visits.

Use different time ranges to understand development over time.

Select and compare different time ranges using selector at the top right of the report to understand trends and seasonality.

Optimize your marketing strategy based on the insights collected in the analysis process.

  • Identify the channels that generate high cost but don’t generate many goals or much revenue. Consider reducing investment in these channels or changing the channel strategy for example, testing a different target audience, changing ad creatives, and tweaking the ad message.
  • Identify low-engagement channels such as, those with a high bounce rate or short visit duration, and test a different approach such as changing the landing pages or adjust targeting.
  • Identify well-performing channels and scale them if they have growth potential. For example, increase ad spend or increase frequency of social media posts.

Repeat the above process on an ongoing basis.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T15:50:42Z