Visitors' actions depend on whether they trust your website or not. Trust is influenced by brand, design, recommendations, usability, et cetera. One important trust factor is the traffic source from where the visitors come from.
Traffic from search engines
Visitors that are searching for something and find you are very reluctant about your site. If they are first time visitors1, you only have 1-2 seconds to cater them. They presume that your site is low quality. They are just poking around. If you don't have what they need they'll leave fast, really fast.
If this is a large portion of your audience, you should give immediately the users what they are searching for. Use large type, measure scent and give the hi frequency landing pages a lot of attention.
Traffic from referrals
These visitors have clicked a link to get to your site. They trust the source enough to follow a link. That trust is rubbing on to you. In this case they will be more gentle and will spend more time to form an impression about your site.
Direct traffic
These people entered the address in the browser. They'll be patient and they'll explore. The site may have a steeper learning curve and still keep the users engaged. This is the sweet spot, and you can use your situation to cast some trust on other resources you might have
Of course there is much to talk about each category. This is just a reminder of how quickly you can separate your audience into 3 groups with different expectations and needs.
- There are also visitors that search your brand name. These count in the third category.