Google Analytics – Executive View – Content Summary
The goal of the content summary page is to review whether the website’s content has been effective in retaining readers.
For a given time period, this report shows the top 5 entrances (which pages did visitors hit first or landing/arriving pages), top 5 exits (which pages where the last visited), and the top 5 content (which pages were the most visited).
The report is meant to compare one date range against another. So to get the most out of this report one needs at least two months of data. Set the current month to report on, and the past month for comparison purposes. Once the comparison has been set up, the report will show percentage change from the current month to the previous. The percentage reflects a change over the previous date range. A green arrow indicates a positive change, while the red indicates a negative change.
Key Stats
For entrances, the key stat is bounce rate. Bounce rate indicates what percentage of people ENTERED at this page and then left the site all together. Ideally, webmasters want visitors to continue visiting their site no matter which page they arrive on. A low bounce rate means visitors moved on to another page on the site from this page. A high bounce rate means visitors arrived at this page but were not compelled to continue visiting/browsing the site. One should aim to lower the bounce rate for those top 5 entrances. If these indeed are the top 5 landing pages for your site, they should be optimized to hold visitors and enable them to continue to visit. This is one stat where it is ok to see a red arrow. It is desirable for it to decline!
Exit rate is similar to bounce rate. Bounce rate reflects an immediate arrive/leave scenario. All readers leave a site, even if they take their time and meander and visit a lot of pages. The Exit rate reflects which pages where the last one visited in a visitor’s visit.
Under Top 5 Content two items are important. First, simply noting the top 5 visited pages can lead a Webmaster to make certain decisions. How can this content be improved? Is there a way to monetize this content since it is the most visited? etc. Avg time is also important. Are people taking time to read this page? They definitely are reading it if the time is over 2 mins. If it is at 1:30 then they are scanning/skimming it. 1 minute and under, they are simply glancing at it or maybe finding it irrelevant. Pages will a low average time need to be improved, unless of course that page is a short read!
Posted by Paul Flyer on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 in General
Mark’s Digital Farm - Digital Art, Web Design, Tech Discussion, and a bit of everything else » Blog Archive » Wordpress 2.01, Page Rank, and Bounce Rates - it’s all in this article Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 5:11 am
[...] I’ve also relooked at the navigation of my site, I have had a few requests for a more visible “Home” button. So at the top, in my site header, you will now see some more visible basic navigation buttons. Click away, I hope this lowers my bounce rate. Impressed hey? I’m getting down with the lingo. For those of you that don’t know, here is the description of this cool SEO word, as per Recommended Web Tools: [...]