Behavior Reports

This chapter was last updated in August 2021, refreshed content on GA4 is coming soon...

When creating content, the goal is generally to get people to interact with it. Whether that means people read a full article, click on a call-to-action, or watch a video, every page is looking for audience engagement. This engagement leads to a longer time on site and shows Google that your site is answering questions for the users.

Behavior Overview

In the behavior overview you will see either sums or averages of engagement. Pageviews and unique pageviews will both show sums, while all other metrics will show you site averages.

Under the summary metrics, you will see pageview breakdowns by content at different levels.

While there isn’t a ton of information in this view, it’s a good “at a glance’ report. You can get a general understanding of how people interact with your site from this page.

Behavior Flow

The next behavior report is the behavior flow report. This interactive flow chart shows you how users move through your site.

By default the data is broken down by landing pages. In the example below from the demo account for the Google Merchandise Store, you will see that no matter where users land, they are very likely to end up on the “Google” page of the site within their first two interactions.

Going through the behavior flow can give you insight into what is important to your site users. Are they likely to visit your “About” page before going to the “Contact” page? Do they navigate to the “Sale” page before going to the “Cart” page?

How to use this information:

• Find the most popular user journeys to determine which pages are the most important to users.

  • See if there is any information on these pages that could be used for marketing campaigns.

  • Determine if there is a way to shorten the journey.

  • Be sure all of the information a user will need before converting is present on those pages.

• Visually identify where users are dropping off and create strategies to lower the exit rate.

All Content

When tracking the engagement on your site, you will likely want to see how each page is performing on it’s own. To see stats for every page, navigate to Site Content > All Pages. The data is sorted by most visited pages by default, but you can sort by any metric or use the search bar to find the information important to you.

This report helps you understand how each page performs. For instance, you are able to see that the “Google Redesign Apparel” page had 433 entries and still managed to average a 1:22 time on page, 34% bounce rate, and only a 22% exit rate. This tells us that the content on this page is extremely engaging for users.

How to use this information:

• Audit the stickiness of your content. Look for content that generates high time on page and low exit rates and compare it to content with low time on page and high exit rates. Find the difference and test changes on the not-so sticky content.

• Find bloat on your site. See if there are pages with little traffic and low engagement and determine if those pages could be removed.

• See the content your audience cares about and remix, or reuse the content. This is especially relevant for sites with blogs. Are the blog posts about Technical SEO the ones that are visited more often? If so, write about Tech SEO more or re-write the outdated blog posts.