Tracking source of website visits

[Broshuisels]

I want to determine in what stage of the buyers journey a contact is, based on the source on which they came in to the website. The idea is that somebody who comes in through direct traffic, is already in the decision stage and somebody who comes in through a mailing, is in the awareness stage. This helps us to sent the right content at the right time to our contacts. 

[Broshuisels]

Hi @Phil_Vallender, 

Thank you for your reply, this certainly helps! I agree that Hubspot does not update the orginal source in a visitor returns, however it seems a good contribution if they would. Offcourse only when it is reliable, but reading the academy I do not see any remarks based on the idea that the direct traffic is not always reliable like Google Analytics. Maybe somebody at Hubspot knows more about this? 

Thanks for your suggestions on how the determine the stage in the buyer journey. I agree that we should focus on page views, content downloaded etc. However, how can country etc. tell us something about the stage in the buyers journey? 

[Phil_Vallender]

Hi @Broshuisels

You're right that country does not help determine buying stage 🙂

What I find is that buyers (B2B buyers especially) are erratic and very few things are a reliable source of insight on their own. 

When scoring leads to identify MQLs I look for behaviours and firmographics that qualify them - so this tends to be a combination of interacting with content and meeting the ideal buyer type in terms of country, industry, persona role etc. 

Of course, no system is perfect and the most important thing is to do something so that you can collect data and improve over time. 

Good luck!

[Broshuisels]

Yes I totally agree, thanks for your help. 

[Broshuisels]

Hi @phil, 

For me the behavior of the source on what they come into our website, is one of those behaviors that can help us determine the stage they are in. I agree that searching for a good balance with leadscoring is the best. 

Thanks. 

[Phil_Vallender · Accepted solution]

Hi @Broshuisels

I think its a really good idea to try to understand where your contacts are in the buying process but I dont think you can rely on source to determine this. 

For a start, HubSpot only tells us the original source, this is not updated each time a visitor returns. 

Secondly, direct traffic is not a reliable segment, at least its not in google analytics so I assume the same is true in HubSpot. Its actually a combination of lots of traffic sources including actual direct, dark social and even organic traffic. This Search Engine Land article explains why Up To 60% Of “Direct” Traffic Is Actually Organic Search

You would be better to use visitor behaviour on your site (pages views, content downloaded, etc), explicitly shared data (persona, industry, company, etc) and dependable implicit data (country, etc) to judge stage in the buyer journey - or lifecycle stage. 

Does that help?