Convert & retain
Compare new and returning visitors
See who comes back, and whether they buy.
Updated · 1 min read
Some visitors arrive once and never return. Others read a post, leave, come back from a newsletter a week later and then buy. Splitting visitors into new and returning shows how much of your business depends on people coming back.
Why this matters
If most buyers are returning visitors, your job is to bring people back: email, retargeting, useful content. If most buy on the first visit, your landing pages and pricing carry the weight. Knowing which helps you put effort where it pays.
Why most analytics tools can't tell you
Many tools define returning visitors with long-lived cookies, which privacy settings and consent banners clear. Others don't let you filter the rest of the dashboard by the split, so you see the counts but can't compare revenue.
How MetricRaven does it
MetricRaven counts a visitor as returning when the same visitor ID viewed a page on your site before the selected period started, otherwise as new. Traffic → Technology & activity → New vs returning shows the split, and clicking a row filters the whole dashboard, so revenue, conversion rate and sources update for that group.
New and returning visitors
Orbit Analytics · synthetic data · last 30 days
How to do it
- Make sure payments are attributed to visits (Connect Stripe, identify users).
- Open Traffic → Technology & activity and choose New vs returning.
- Click Returning visitors to filter and compare revenue per visitor with the site average.
- In the chart's options, add new and returning visitors as lines to watch the trend.
Before consent, the visitor ID changes daily, so someone who returns on another day can count as new. With consent it lasts up to a year, so treat returning counts as a lower bound (consent and visitor IDs).