facebook

Google Analytics Page Views & Pages/Session

In this article we’re looking at Google Analytics Page Views to understand WHAT interests your website visitors related to your offerings. We also touch on the Pages/Session metric too.

This is the second in a series of four short articles dedicated to improving your website effectiveness and website ROI. By improving your Google Analytics understanding.

How to see Monthly Page Views in Google Analytics

To find out what people are interested in when it comes to your website effectiveness, you need to look at data known as unique page views. Google Analytics Unique Pageviews are recorded every time a page is viewed. More technically, a pageview is recorded every time the Google Analytics pageview tracking method is triggered on your website. For example:

  • Whenever a visitor hits the back button, a new Google Analytics Unique Pageview is recorded.
  • Whenever a visitor hits refresh, a pageview is also recorded.
  • Every time a user opens a page in a browser, a new pageview is recorded.

In each case, these event triggers increase the number that shows up in your Google Analytics page views report.

So where do you find your monthly page views? When you are logged into your Google Analytics account navigate to Behaviour>Overview. To drill down further, click on Site Content.

How to find Pages/Session in Google Analytics

Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Imagine a website that has 1,000 sessions and 3,500 Page Views. If we divide the number of Page Views by the number of sessions (3,500 / 1,000)  we get the number of 3.5 Page Views Per Session. This is the average number of pages a visitor clicks on during a single visit.

Finding your Pages/Sessions is easy. When you are logged into your Google Analytics account navigate to Audience>Overview. Right in the middle of the page, there are eight quick reference statistics. Pages/Session is the very last one.

Why are Google Analytics Page Views and Pages per Session important?

The Google Analytics pages viewed data gives you your first indication of how popular a single post or page is.

This is important because it can help you know and understand what your visitors are interested in. The more you know what they are interested in, the more easily you can meet their needs. (By packaging your products and services in line with their interests).

In other words, for one reason or another, they’ve clicked on something (on or off your site) related to the content on that page. Or at least Google’s interpretation of the content on this page. And that means something related to that page caught their attention.

On its own, this information doesn’t tell you whether your page’s content provides the information the User is looking for. Meaning this data doesn’t tell us whether the content on the page provides the answer to the question they are researching. (but we’ll cover that next and in other blog posts.

As we said, whether or not the page your visitor landed on kept their attention is another matter! And this is where other Google Analytics metrics such as bounce rate, average time on site and pages per session need to be considered in your marketing mix.

For example, a more interesting metric is the ratio between Google Analytics pageviews and sessions; i.e. the Google Analytics Pages per Session report.

The Google Analytics Pages Per Session report is a very good signal of whether or not you are engaging your viewers to learn more about your company, products, services, etc. With this report, The higher the number the better.

The benefits of Google Analytics Page Views and Session data to improve website effectiveness and ROI

Remember, using your website to find out what interests Users/Visitors is a foundational stepping stone to improved website ROI.

I’m sure you’ll know from your own experience, if you can’t catch your visitors’ attention very, very early, you risk losing them.

At the same time, it’s important to note that while people seem to spend hours online every day, they actually spend very little time on individual pages. For instance, someone may land on one of your blog posts looking for a specific answer. They will most likely skim the post in order to find that answer and then leave.

So your job is to interrupt that skimming pattern and give them more reasons to stay on your site.

Fortunately, there are endless ways of getting your website visitors to increase their page views. Here are a few of the more easily executable ones that can be carried out in-house.

New content

Use keyword research to find related content that you could write about. This can be as simple as using Google’s own search page. Simply scroll to the bottom and look for either the ‘People also ask’ box or the ‘Searches related to’ list.

Use a survey or poll to ask people their biggest challenge or ‘why they XYZ?’. Use their responses to see if you can create some new content that helps address their challenges. And positions you as the trusted guide in the process.

(Then use your Google Analytics data to see if this new content does indeed interest your visitors).

Internal linking

Look for any opportunity to add internal links to your content. Meaning, if you mention anything on one of your website pages related to another page, insert a link to it.

If you have a lot of content on certain pages covering a lot of different topics/sub-topics it may be hard to work out exactly what Users are interested in. If this applies to you, consider using topics/sub-topics to create new/more content focused on answering specific questions. Then use the internal linking technique.

Calls to Action (CTAs)

Put simply these are any kind of content (e.g. buttons, widgets, pop-ups) that compel the User to click. In doing so, they get transferred to a new page on your site and you now have a deeper understanding of WHAT interests your website visitors.


For some suggestions on how you can execute some of these tactics and more, check out this article on 23 Clever Ways I Increased Pageviews Per Visit On My Websites.

So now you have a basic understanding of WHAT interests your website visitors, it’s time to find out HOW MUCH are visitors interested in your website? (Part 3 of this 4-part series).

PS. Our goal is to simplify analytics reporting so it’s useful to a small business person. So we encourage you not to over-analyze or over-think Google Analytics data. Rather, just think about Google Analytics data as a trending tool rather than a precise measuring tool.

Stay focused on your vision, your mission, and strategic goals and recognize trending data is still very useful. For example, you can learn a lot comparing one month to the next, one quarter to the next, etc.