Introduction to Page Analytics Reports

Page analytics help you to understand how people navigate through your site and what content is most popular at a given time so you can optimise under-performing areas and replicate winning content formulas. The main area for reviewing page analytics within Matomo is the Behaviour section of the main navigation.

The Page Analytics Reports

Within the Behaviour section you will find links to the following page reports:

• Pages – General overview of the popularity of pages on your site.
• Entry Pages – Provides an overview of how many people enter your site from a specific page and how many of those instantly leave.
• Exit Pages – Provides an overview of which pages people most commonly exit your site from.
• Page Titles – This provides an overview of the popular sections of your site based on the page titles. It can be a little less specific than the Pages report.

Depending on your Matomo version and deployment, these reports may be displayed as either a flat or hierarchical tables.

Matomo is gradually introducing flat-first reports that applies a single report-level row limit to prioritise the most visited pages and reduce the number of « Others » rows. Reports that have not yet been updated, will continue to use the hierarchical layout.

Identify Your Most Popular Pages with the Pages Report

If you want to know which pages are most popular on your site, you should review the Pages report. To access this report, make sure you are logged in to your dashboard and click Behaviour in the main navigation on the left hand side. Next, click on the Pages link below it to load a paginated table which lists all of the pages on your site. The Pages report shows you the following metrics by default:

• Pageviews – How many unique times the page has been loaded.
• Unique Pageviews – How many unique visitors have loaded the page.
• Bounce Rate – The percentage of people that immediately leave after viewing a page.
• Avg. Time on Page – The amount of time users spend on the page on average.
  Note: Some pages will naturally have shorter average times like gateway pages used to navigate your site. While others should have a longer time on page, such as long articles. It helps to understand the context of a page to know if this is important.
• Exit Rate – The percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing a specific page.
• Avg. Page Load Time – The amount of time spent waiting for a page to load; from the moment the user requests a page until it has fully completed processing.

By default, the tables are listed in order of Unique Pageviews numbers. However, you can sort the order of pages in this table by any of the above metrics. Sorting by differing metrics can help you discover the top (and worst) performing pages for each. To sort by an alternative metric, click on the title of the column you want to sort by and the data will reload sorted by this metric.

You can also click the currently selected metric (represented by the sort icon ) to toggle and reverse the sort, so that you can review either the lowest or highest performing pages first. The icon flips vertically to indicate whether the metric is being sorted from highest to lowest or lowest to highest

Switching between hierarchical and flat reports

The flat report lists each page on its own row using the full page path. It applies a single report-level row limit, which reduces the number of « Others » rows and prioritises the most visited pages.

The hierarchical report groups pages according to the website’s URL structure. Metrics for sub-pages roll up into their parent pages, making it easier to explore large websites by section. Row limits are applied independently at each level of the hierarchy, so each branch can include its own « Others » row. Learn more about row limits and the “Others” rows in Matomo reports.

In the hierarchical view, click the plus (+) icon to expand a section and view its sub-pages. Click the minus (–) icon to collapse the rows.

In the example report above, expanding my-account displays sub-pages such as /my-account/orders/. A page named index represents the default page within that directory. In this case, /my-account/ and /my-account/index refer to the same page. The metrics shown for a parent page equal the combined totals of its sub-pages. See How to group homepage URLs.

To switch views, hover over the report, click the cog icon , and select Make it flat or Make it hierarchical. The available option depends on the view currently displayed.

Analyse site sections by searching within page reports

You can also search for specific pages or sections of pages within your pages reports. To do this, load the table as usual. Hover your mouse over the table, then click on the green search icon that appears at the bottom left of the table. From here you can type in a search term such as my-account to find any pages that contain the search string within the URL. Continuing the aforementioned example, the following pages could all appear:

One other tip that can be useful is to use Segments when reviewing certain pages or sections of your site. For example, if you are reviewing engagement with account related pageviews then it may make sense to use a segment that only includes customers so you get data based on the people that can access the full versions of a page.

Display pages with Goal metrics

You can change the display of the Pages report to show goal metrics. At the bottom of the table, hover your mouse to enable visibility of additional icons. Click on the table icon and choose Display a table with Goals metrics to change the visualisation of the report.

The report allows you to see how individual pages contribute to achieving specific goals on your site, so you can determine which pages are most effective at driving goal completions.

Ecommerce Order Conversions – Assigns scores to pages based on their influence in driving conversions. For example, if a visitor viewed 8 pages before converting a goal, each page gets a score of 0.125. This score helps identify the most influential pages for conversion.

Other conversion metrics in the report also contain scoring to identify which pages are most effective for driving conversion rates across the site.