Why do I always have a big chunk of traffics coming from "direct"?
Why do I always have a big chunk of traffics coming from "direct"?
I'm using GA and Heap. Both show big chunk (20-50%) of traffics coming from "direct". I'm very sure that 99% of my users came to know about us via either email campaigns, Google or FB ads, or social media posts.
Is such a high % of "direct" because a lot of people would copy/paste urls rather than clicking on them, or it seems like a stupid mistake in my tracking code?
If you're running "email campaigns" that's probably most of it.
Anyone using a desktop email client, even an app for social media, when clicking a link doesn't provide a http referrer, and I believe that makes GA show the traffic as direct.
Any web based mail apps (like gmail.com) will not show as direct but not anyone using an app on desktop or mobile will.
That was what i thought when I was running email campaigns at the beginning. I stopped email campaigns for at least 2 weeks now and "direct" % has not decreased by much.
I thimk its because of page refreshes especially on mobile. if you notice when you close chrome on mobile, the next time you open it, its opens previously unclosed pages
Very good point! This also explains the mysterious fullstory sessions in which the users came to my login page and immediately bounced. I was wondering "if you didn't intend to use my app, which did you come to the login page". They all make sense now! Thank you!
It's probably right. What is your site? If you have regular users, maybe they use a bookmark or click from the default chrome "most frequent" used list?
Negative. My app just launched a few weeks ago and there is no way so many users bookmarked my page (I wish they did).
Make sure your site is HTTPS. When a user follows a link from a secure (HTTPS) page to a non-secure HTTP page, no referrer data is passed and the session will appear as direct traffic. This includes Google search results, gmail, FB, and so on.
My site accepts HTTP but redirect it to HTTPS. I checked the links that drove most traffic they are all https. I probably posted a few links using http but they wouldn't account for such a high %.
I have the same thing. Like you, I don't think they are typing in the URL directly but I believe it says direct also when it can't detect where they're coming from.
Thank you for your response. A friend of mine sent me this link: https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-direct-traffic-google-analytics Still trying to get a grasp of it.
Probably the wrong link?
Sorry. fixed the link.