Can ads grow direct traffic for a health and beauty store?
Usually yes, if the ads reach people who later come back by typing your address. If you sell beauty or wellness products, Direct also fills with reorders and creator viewers. Judge the ads on first-time customers and total sales, not the Direct line.
By Joris van Huët, Founder & CEOUpdated 5 min read
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Usually yes, if the ads reach people who come back later by typing your address. If you sell skincare, makeup or supplements, Direct also fills up with reorders and with people who saw a creator's video. So judge the ads on first-time customers and total sales, not on the Direct line.
If you sell health and beauty products
If you sell skincare, haircare, makeup or supplements, a good share of your sales may come from people who already use the product. When the jar runs low, they reorder. Many never see an ad first: they type your address or tap a bookmark. GA4 files those visits as Direct unless it can hand them to an earlier campaign.
New buyers may meet you far from your site. If a creator tests your serum on video, viewers can watch, read the comments and look up the ingredients without one click. When they finally visit, GA4 sees a typed address or a search for your name. So ads can feed Direct two ways: by finding new buyers, and by reminding regulars who were coming back anyway.
Here is what one store's export shows. Store A is one store, and nothing in its export says what it sells.
One store's anonymised GA4 export, 1 January 2024 to 21 August 2026. It holds shares of revenue only: no ad spend, no order counts.
| What the export shows | Share of revenue | Source cell |
|---|---|---|
| Direct, in last click, first click and touched views | 57.7% | Channels sheet, Direct row |
| Journeys with 1 touch (0.5 days to buy) | 79.5% | Journeys sheet, 1 touch row |
| Journeys with 2 to 3 touches (12.5 days to buy) | 12.2% | Journeys sheet, 2-3 touches row |
| Journeys with 4 to 9 touches (16.9 days to buy) | 5.4% | Journeys sheet, 4-9 touches row |
On the Channels sheet, Direct carries 57.7% of revenue in every view. On the Journeys sheet, 1-touch journeys carry 79.5% of revenue and took 0.5 days to buy.
If you sell beauty products, that fast slice is the shape a reorder takes: one visit, a basket, done. But the export holds no customer data, so it cannot say whether Store A's quick buyers were regulars or newcomers.
The slower rows are where buyers who research would show up. On the Journeys sheet, journeys with 2 to 3 touches hold 12.2% of revenue at 12.5 days to buy. Journeys with 4 to 9 touches hold 5.4% at 16.9 days, also on the Journeys sheet.
If your ads find first-time buyers who compare ingredients before they commit, their effect lands in rows like these, weeks after the ad. Reading Direct the morning after a launch tells you very little.
What changes for a health and beauty store?
Reorders drift into Direct over time. GA4's default lookback for purchases is 90 days, and it also applies to session attribution. If a tub lasts longer than that, a customer who reorders by typed address leaves GA4 no recent campaign to credit. Their visit lands in Direct unless an ad or email click brought them back.
Creators persuade without clicks. If you pay creators, their videos may do the convincing while your site sees nothing. An untagged link from a creator's YouTube or TikTok lands in Organic Video. A video watched without a click lands nowhere, and Direct collects the visit later.
Some of the lift lands off your site. If your products also sit in shops, pharmacies or on marketplaces, an ad can send buyers there. Your site's Direct line will never show that. Judge such ads on total sales across every place you sell, where you can get the numbers.
The honest scoreboard is first-time customers. Regulars type your address with or without ads. An awareness ad earns its keep when first-time customers rise where it ran, not when your loyal buyers visit more often.
What to do this week
- Split first orders from reorders. In Shopify admin, go to Analytics > Reports, filter the Category to Customers and open New vs returning customers, grouped by week. Pass: first-time customers rise in the weeks your ads run. Fail: only returning customers move, so the ads mostly reach people who were coming back anyway.
- Check how long reorders take. In the same category, open Customer cohort analysis, which groups customers by the month of their first order. Pass: most returning orders arrive within two months of the first, well inside GA4's default lookback. Fail: they come later, so expect many typed-in reorders to land in Direct.
- Read where the ad month's new customers came from. In Customer cohort analysis, click a cell in the row for the month your ads started. The details list the top marketing channels that directed that cohort's customers. Pass: the ad's channel is among them. Fail: Direct leads, so the ad's buyers arrived untagged or were coming anyway.
Check the homework. Your GA4 Attribution paths export already holds the evidence. Causality Engine reads that one file and shows what each channel caused next to what last-click gave it, in 1 to 2 minutes, for €99 once (excluding VAT), refundable within 30 days. Check the homework
Sources, 1 October 2026: Scopes of traffic-source dimensions (Google); Select attribution settings (Google); Default channel group (Google); Collect campaign data with custom URLs (Google); Customers reports (Shopify)
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Do creator videos count as paid or organic traffic in GA4?
It depends on the tags. An untagged link from YouTube or TikTok lands in Organic Video. Tag a paid creator post with the platform as utm_source and a paid medium, and GA4 sorts the click as paid. A video watched without a click shows up nowhere.Do sales in shops or on marketplaces show up in GA4?
Not unless the buyer visits your site. A sale on a marketplace or at a shop counter never touches your tag, so GA4 has nothing to record. If your ads send buyers there, your site's Direct line and sales can stay flat while the ads still work.Should I judge a beauty ad on its first month of sales?
Rarely, if your products get bought again when they run out. An ad's best customers may only show their worth at the second or third order. Judge the first month on first-time customers, then follow those same customers for a few months before you decide.
Go deeper: Causal attribution, explained.
Sixty-second versions of these ideas: Causality Engine on YouTube Shorts.
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Terms in this article
- Ad SpendAd Spend is the total amount invested in advertising campaigns. It is measured against Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) to evaluate campaign effectiveness.
- AnalyticsAnalytics is the systematic computational analysis of data. It reveals customer behavior and measures campaign performance.
- AttributionAttribution identifies user actions that contribute to a desired outcome and assigns value to each. It reveals which marketing touchpoints drive conversions.
- Causal AttributionCausal Attribution uses causal inference to determine which marketing touchpoints genuinely cause conversions, not just correlate with them.
- CausalityCausality is the relationship where one event directly causes another, essential for identifying specific actions that drive desired outcomes in marketing.
- Direct TrafficDirect Traffic refers to website visitors who arrive by typing the URL directly into their browser or through bookmarks. They do not come from search engines or referrals.
- Repeat Purchase RateRepeat Purchase Rate is the percentage of customers who have made more than one purchase. It indicates customer loyalty and satisfaction.
- RevenueRevenue is the total income generated by the sale of goods or services related to a company's primary operations.