Google Analytics, the analytic offering from the behemoth that is Google, is a one stop shop for all your analytics needs. For small businesses and agencies, Google Analytics is the perfect way to stay on top of all your metrics, KPI’s, and visualizations.
And best of all – It’s FREE.
Today, we take a look at one of my favorite reports within Google Analytics – Navigation Summary that is within the Behavior segment.
Navigation Summary Google Analytics
I use this report extensively to see
- Which of my website pages are working and which aren’t?
- Visitor movements
- Next page views
- Exits
Home Page Path
In the image above, it is naturally assumed that the path is linear…for example
Previous Page ——-> Current Selection (page) ——> Next Page Path
However, that is incorrect.
What Analytics shows is this
(Stay with me here, this might get a little confusing)
Previous Page Path to Current Selection
We can see that the first entry under previous page path, school bags sent 60 page views to the home page (indicated by /) under current selection. Similarly, other pages have sent 45, 29, 22, 21 page views to the home page.
So the path followed here is
School Bags ——> Home Page
Previous page ——> current selection (page)
Current Selection (page) to Next Page Path
What this metric shows is where your visitors went from your current selection (page).
From this image, we know that there were 318 page views for the school bags page on the website, right after the visitor was on the home page. And so on.
So the path followed is
Home Page ——> School Bags
Current selection (page) ——> Next page
I hope this helps in making the Navigation Summary report easier to understand and glean insightful data and actionable results.