"Direct / None" in Top Sources

[mchristofides]

When I'm trying to get a feeling for where our traffic is coming from, I find it really helpful to see the number of Direct visitors alongside the other sources. At the moment, I have to click on the "Details" of the "Top Sources" pain to see this.

Do others prefer it to be excluded in the default view, or could it go there too? I would personally find it helpful, mostly to get a quick understanding of the order of magnitude – e.g. is it most of what I'm looking at, or the minority? I find this tricky to tell at a glance from the Top Sources view at the moment.

Update: "Direct / None" traffic is now shown in the main view of Top Sources as well!

[metmarkosaric]

thanks @mchristofides! when we were adding the "direct/none" source we asked the community about it and most people said that they're prefer it being away from the main view. most don't see it as actionable as other sources and also it stands for the majority of traffic for most sites which skews our little comparison we have on the dashboard.

[mchristofides]

I was looking at your dashboard and realised that people using the hosted version of Plausible count as visitors, so makes sense that direct is so high.

I spotted that you include Direct when viewing “Realtime/Current Visitors” though, which I like. Are others more keen to see it there for some reason?

[metmarkosaric]

yeah, we decided to keep it on by default for the realtime view to showcase everything that's going on right now

[mmasouras]

We 'd like to see the Direct traffic included as well. The primary importance of the metric is that it communicates the level of our dependence to search and other traffic instead of users learning about our site and visiting it by themselves. I.e. it informs how many resources we allocate to SEO vs user outreach.

Can we have a toggle in the Settings perhaps?

[metmarkosaric]

thanks @mmasouras! you can click on the "details" button in the Top Sources report to see Direct/None traffic too.

[mmasouras]

Yes, but I have to do this every time. Ideally, I 'd like to see that acquisition channel along with everything else. A setting would solve that problem, or just always show it.

[andrewholgate]

@mchristofides There's the same discussion happening with others over on this ticket as well #1539

[FlorianWendelborn]

I too would like a toggle for this. Right now it’s not easy to tell if direct traffic is increasing or not. Since I’m working on a tool that I hope users will bookmark, direct traffic is a very important metric

[metmarkosaric]

thanks @FlorianWendelborn! you can click on direct/none to filter the dashboard by it and see the trend. see the example here on our live demo https://plausible.io/plausible.io?source=Direct+%2F+None&period=month

[FlorianWendelborn]

Ah that's very useful, thanks

[metmarkosaric]

Update: "Direct / None" traffic is now shown in the main view of Top Sources as well!

[soaresfellipe]

Hi @metmarkosaric. Will the "direct / none" traffic be available on self-hosted versions too?

[metmarkosaric]

hi @soaresfellipe! self-hosted code is not updated as frequently as the Plausible managed hosting in the cloud, which changes daily. this means that the latest features won't be immediately available. we release a new self hosted version twice a year or so. so this will be live in the next version at some point later this year

[soaresfellipe]

Thanks, @metmarkosaric. :)