{"id":477,"date":"2010-08-25T13:07:22","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T13:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.agconsult.com\/en\/how-to-track-down-the-least-visited-pages-of-your-website-and-what-to-do-with-them\/"},"modified":"2024-07-25T15:45:19","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T13:45:19","slug":"how-to-track-down-the-least-visited-pages-of-your-website-and-what-to-do-with-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.agconsult.com\/en\/usability-blog\/how-to-track-down-the-least-visited-pages-of-your-website-and-what-to-do-with-them\/","title":{"rendered":"How to track down the least visited pages of your website and what to do with them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Too many pages makes life hard for your visitors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Your website should focus on your users’ top tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, lots of websites don’t do that. They put everything they have ever done and more on their website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Result: a website with loads of pages nobody’s interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that really so bad though? I mean, a user can ignore those pages he’s not interested in, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theoretically, yes. But in practice, those extra pages make for a more complex navigation stucture, more links and more choices. Which makes it hard for people to find what they’re looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If your website focuses on the stuff people really use it for, there will be fewer pages and people will find what they need a lot faster. Because there’s no clutter to distract them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less is more. More conversion. More satisfied visitors. More return on investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use your analytics tool to track down rarely visited pages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We’re using Google Analytics here as an example. As this article was written a while ago, the screenshots are of the old Universal Analytics interface. You can of course use other analytics tools as well. It’s about the principle here, not the tool. And that still stands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Define a period that’s suitably long<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For a first analysis, I usually take 6 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That way, I minimise the risk that the results of my findings will be brushed aside by people who blame the holidays, the weather or other stuff for the lack of visitors on ‘their’ pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heck, if your website is heavily subjected to seasonal changes, make it 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Define<\/a>
Define a period that’s suitably long<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2. Go to the ‘All pages’ report<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If you click on ‘Behavior’ > ‘Site content’ you’ll find the ‘All pages’ report. This shows you the unique pages that were visited in the period you chose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the bottom of the table you can see the total number of unique pages that were visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check this number against the total number of pages on your site. If the second number is far greater than the first, I’ve got some bad news for you: you’ve got lots of pages nobody ever visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Go<\/a>
As you can tell, this is still the old Universal Analytics UI. Ah, good times.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. Select ‘Unique Pageviews’ in the dropdown<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I always pick ‘Unique Pageviews’ because ‘Pageviews’ is somewhat artificial. If a person visits the same web page 5 times during 1 visit, Google Analytics counts that as 5 pageviews but only as 1 unique pageview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Select<\/a>
Filter on ‘Unique pageviews’. However that looks like in your analytics tool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

5. Enter a number<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For a first analysis, I usually want an overview of all pages with less than 50 pageviews over a period of 6 months. I think that’s being quite generous… You can of course change this number to 100 or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Enter<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

6. Click on ‘Apply’<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Nearly there. On the screen you see now, you can already tell how many pages have been visited less than 50 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Sort by \u2018Unique Pageviews\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This sorts the results by the number of unique pageviews. The standard setting is on the total number of pageviews. For our report, that’s not quite ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. Save report<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Click on ‘Shortcut’ at the top of the page to save this report for later analysis. Give this report a name so you can easily browse to it via the menu ‘shortcuts’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you know now?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You know which pages have been visited less than x times in the period you chose. Hopefully that number hasn’t left you shell-shocked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had to tell a customer recently that over 80% of their web pages were visited less than 50 times during the past 6 months. Not the greatest news to deliver, but they took it really well. They decided to dedicate the next 12 months to managing existing content rather than creating new pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is ‘barely visited’ reason enough to get rid of a page?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not always, but it does give a good indication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from the cold, hard figures there are other things to take into account:<\/p>\n\n\n\n