T
The Daily Insight

What is a good new vs returning visitor ratio

Author

Mia Horton

Published Feb 21, 2026

How do you calculate new or returning visitors?

If they are not logged into Chrome on both devices, then when they view your site again on their smartphone, they’ll be counted as a new visitor. If a person visits your site once and then comes back a second time 3 years later.

What is a good returning user in Google Analytics?

A ‘returning user’ is a visitor who has already been to your website in a predetermined timeframe and has initiated another session using the same browser on the same device.

What was the difference between the new vs returning customers?

New versus returning users is one of the most basic types of user segmentation. New users are the people who have never visited your website, app, etc and are interacting for the first time. Returning users are those who have already visited before.

How can new users be higher than users?

New users + returning users will not equal total users, it will usually return a higher number. This is because some of the users have both labels. The higher the total of new + returning, the more return sessions your users make. If the numbers are similar then most of your users make only one, session.

What is a good percentage of returning visitors?

It usually depends on the industry you’re in, but a good returning visitor rate is 30% on average. And if you can balance your new and returning visitors with 50% each, then you’re in the perfect situation.

How does Google Analytics distinguish returning visitors from new visitors?

If someone has visited our website within the past two years and returns from the same device, they are marked as a Returning Visitor in our Google Analytics. If it has been more than two years since someone has visited our site, the next time they return they will be counted as a New Visitor again.

What is a returning visitor?

Definition of Return Visitors

On a very basic level, return visitors are users who have been to your site before. Every visitor to a website generates a unique random number, and a first timestamp, which combines to create their User ID, and allows their visits to the site to be tracked.

Should sessions be higher than users?

If you build a custom report that has page level dimensions (such as Page, Page Title, or a page level custom variable, Users may be greater than Sessions. This may occur when combining Sessions with any page level dimension because Sessions is incremented on, and associated with, the first hit of the session.

Are users and new users the same?

In simpler terms, “users” is the number of new and returning people who visit your site during a set period of time. … This will help distinguish the person as a “new user”. When the same user visits your site at a later time, they will be counted as a “returning user”.

Which calculated metrics would return average events per user?

Avg.Events Per User – Average number of events per user
  • Calculation = {{Total Events}} / {{Users}}
  • Formatting Type = Float.

What are new visitors?

(Dimension) A new visitor (or new visit) refers to an Internet user’s first visit on a site that is being audited.

What is the difference between visitors and sessions?

A Session, sometimes called a Visit, is the set of interactions, or web requests, made within a given time frame by a single user visiting a specific website. … Website Visits, also referred to as sessions, track the number of times a user interacts with your website. Repeat visits within a set time period are excluded.

Are users the same as unique visitors?

The official Google Analytics definition of this Web metric was: “Unique Visitors is the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.” The new “user” definition is: “Users that have had at least one session within the selected date range.

How does Google Analytics count unique visitors?

Google Analytics Unique Visitors is the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. For Example, if you browse to an advertisement regarding some sale while sitting in the office and browse it again when you get back to home.

What is a good number of sessions per user?

What is a good sessions per user? Anything more than 1.6 would put you in the best 20% of sites we benchmark for sessions per user, and more than 1.9 would put you in the best 10%.

What does New sessions mean in Google Analytics?

Defining Sessions in Google Analytics

A new session in Google Analytics starts after 30 minutes of inactivity, or at midnight — so if a user opens your website, walks away from their computer for 45 minutes, and returns to the page after that, it counts as 2 sessions.

Are sessions the same as visits Google Analytics?

Google Analytics has quietly changed the terminology they use within the reports to change what they call “visits” and “unique visitors.” Now, visits is named “sessions” and unique visitors is named “users.” … And, Visits are now referred to as Sessions everywhere in all of Google Analytics.

What is a good session rate?

2 – 3 minutes For a good average session duration, the industry standard is 2 – 3 minutes. What can happen in two minutes? Two minutes might not seem like much time, but it’s enough time for users to read content and interact with your website. And for this reason, longer sessions indicate more engaged visits.

What is average session per user?

Sessions per User – the average number of sessions per user. Pages / Session – (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of the same page are counted.

What is an average session duration?

Average Session Duration measures the average amount of time spent per session on your website. It is calculated by dividing total time spent across sessions by the total number of sessions.

What is a good number of page views?

What is a good Page Views Per Session benchmark? The average number of page views per session across all industries is 5.

Is time on page A good metric?

Time on-page is just one of many important metrics for website owners. It gives you further insight into how users behave with your website.

Are pageviews more important than sessions?

The reason sessions work so well as a metric is because they have repeatedly been found to be the best metric at understanding how an audience is interacting with a website. Users only focus on how many individual people are interested in your website, while pageviews do not account for the individual visitor at all.