Do you know what pages are the most popular on your website? Google Analytics can tell you!
Use the Top Page report to get a quick glimpse into what users are viewing on your website. It lets you know which pages are the most popular by how many page views they received over a certain period of time
Why is this report helpful?
It tells you about visitors’ interests
Having a look at your most popular pages can give you insight into your visitors’ interests. You get a sneak peek into the kinds of topics that they are interested in. Perhaps you can create more content related to this subject.
Recently one of our most viewed pages is this blog post on Using Categories to Organize your Website. This suggests that people may be interested in reviewing their website structure. And they may be looking for ways to organize things. We can use this info to:
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Create posts on categories and tags, navigation best practices, or tips on organizing content on a page.
- Add a call to action on that page that directs them to our Website Review Training.
- Link to similar content that already exists on our site.
You can see if people are getting to important content
There may be pages (programs, events, important dates) that you would like your visitors to see. The top pages report tells you how often these pages are being viewed. If they are not getting frequent visits, you can do a few things that might help out:
- Add the page to the menu, create a Quick Link on the homepage, or link from the banner.
- Optimize the page with some SEO techniques, so people find it in Google.
- Highlight the information in other communications (newsletters, links from other pages and websites)
You gain insight into trends
Look at your popular pages and how many views they received. Consider what the numbers mean and can tell you. Look at trends. If a particular page was very popular this month, is that an increase or a decrease over the previous month? What might have caused a recent spike in interest on this page? For example, a newsletter or social media campaign may be driving traffic.
Put your data in context. What other variables or factors could be affecting these numbers? It could be the season or term, or topics of interest in the public and larger university environment.
Use this information to inform your web content decisions. For example, at the start of the academic year, ITS wants to make sure that account information is front and center on its site for new students. And during peak recruitment cycles, academic departments can make sure that program and application information is easily found.
How to View Top Pages
To view the top pages on your site:
- Login to analytics (here’s how to get access)
- Go to Behaviour > Overview > Site Content > All pages
- Choose how many rows to view in the bottom right
Tips
- Change the date range at the top right. You can look at the last week, month, quarter or whatever time period is relevant.
- Check off “Compare to previous period” to view changes in how particular pages perform over time.
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Have a look at the average time spent on your top pages as well as the bounce rate. This gives you an idea of how engaged users are with the content.
- Use what you have learned to make changes. Start with one thing and review your analytics in a few months’ time to see if it made a difference.
For more tips on optimizing your website, check out our online training!