AN ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS SOURCES OF WEBSITE TRAFFIC FOR ONLINE STARTUPS TO DEVICE GROWTH STRATEGY

Abstract

India's e-commerce market was worth about $3.9 billion in 2009, it went up to $12.6 billion in 2013. In 2013, the e-retail segment was worth US$2.3 billion. About 70% of India's e- commerce market is traveling related (Evolution of e commerce in India, 2014). According to Google India, there were 35 million online shoppers in India in 2014 Q1 and is expected to cross 100 million mark by end of year 2016. With the increase in the number of online shoppers, the real challenge lies in driving traffic to a specific web site because there are billions of websites in the world (MailOnline, 2014). The study addresses the issue of web site traffic generation for Startups which have limited resources. The purpose of the study is to identify visitor (New Visitor/Returning Visitor) responsible for generating more number of page views for a website and to find out the traffic source responsible for generating more number of return visits. To achieve this goal, the study would require monitoring the website traffic data for which there are various tools available in market such as Google Analytics, Yahoo Analytics, AWStats. The study will use Google Analytics as it is a freemium and most widely used software for capturing website traffic data. Some statistical matters with regard to the use of Google Analytics data in combination with time series methodology are fine-tuned. Return visits are the main engine for nurturing session length, but which type of traffic source nurtures these return visits? In order to answer this question, an important distinction must be made between “total return visits” and “marginal return visits”. Site entries stay longer to the extent their “marginal return effectiveness” is higher. For our particular web site direct visits are the most effective ones, followed by search engine visits and only thirdly link-entries.