The last topic we’re going to cover in our Web Analytics Primer is the Content section in Google Analytics. This is the section which will show you which parts of your web site are more popular. Here are the main pieces:
- Overview
- This lists Page Views, Unique Views and Bounce Rate (three items we covered in “A Web Analytics Primer – Visitors“).
- There is a also a list of the top 5 pages on your web site based on percentage of page views within the site.
- Top Content
- This is a list of the top 10 pages on your site pages on page views
- If your site is a blog, you might find that most of your visits are to the home page. This is normal
- This report also lists how much time on average visitors stayed on each page as well as the bounce rate and percentage of visitors who exited your site from this page.
- Content By Title
- This is the same list as “Top Content” except listed by page title and not URL.
- Content Drilldown
- This report list the most popular sections on your site
- It’s broken down by directory or folder
- It has much of the same type of information as “Top Content”
- Top Landing Pages
- This is a list of the ten most popular pages people come to first when they click over to your web site
- It lists how many entrances, bounces and the bounce rate.
- This can be a valuable report to monitor success or failure in a Search Engine Optimization strategy or an advertising campaign.
- Top Exit Pages
- This is a list of the ten sites which most visitors click off your site from.
- It can show you pages which might need some content work.
- Higher exit percentage page are ripe for review and possible changing.
- Site Overlay
- Clicking this link brings up your web site in a new window.
- All links on the site are marked with the percentage of clicks.
- This shows the most popular links on your site in a nice, graphical way.
- Hovering your mouse over the link gives you raw numbers.
- This is very valuable to help you understand how your visitors navigate your site.
- You can very easily see where some work may need to be done with link placement or wording.
I hope this series of articles was helpful to those new to web analytics. Please feel free to post questions in the comments.
