Page Views

How many do you get per visitor?

[Grumpus]

I'm just rather curious on this - and since multiple pageviews mean that you've got some content, I'm posting it here. Hopefully, this is the right section.

My site, an informational based entertainment site, has about a 5.25 pageviews per session average. On my web design site, I get about 2.25. I assume that this is mainly because when they come to my design site, they know what they are looking for, find their way in from Google, and then see what they need and leave. On my entertainment site, people find their answer, but the data on the screen in front of them either makes them say, "Hmmm, I wonder if I can find this out?" or makes them interested in one of the links on the page to another section of the site.

I'm just curious what kind of pageviews other folks are getting, and the general theme of the site in question. Is 5.25 a good number? Should I be doing something to get that up even higher, or should I be happy with it and worry more about speed and code cleanup rather than trying to improve site structure and interactivity?

G.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Page views for a certain site of mine usually linger between 3 and 4, though I guess it all depends on the page - i.e. how much text etc

another thing you might want to tie in with pages viewed is the actual time that they were viewed. I know this thread will only be viewed for about 2 mins by the people who have read these 2 messages, but in 24 hours, maybe another 10 people have posted.

[dcheney]

Current number is 5.85 pages/visit

[abertone]

7.50/visit

[CromeYellow]

On a new site, rather pleasingly 9.5 per visit. This is because the site is set up in a 'course' style.

Cy

[deejay]

around 5.7, 5.8

[pleeker]

5.6 for a music-based fan site

[tedster]

Sometimes a site is "fortunate" enough to have a good ranking on a single often-searched keyword. While that can mean a lot of traffic, it can also mean a lot of one-hit-wonders and that pulls down the pages per session stat.

I recently chewed on the logs for one such site and spit out all the single page hits, analyzing only what remained. For users who requested more than one page, the average was over 12 pages per session. But with one hit wonders included, it was more of a depressing 3 or so. A huge swing!

Another site I work with has very low single word traffic and a lot of 3-4 word phrases. They have fewer one-hit-wonders and are over 9 pages per session on average. This includes the "handicap" of a calendar page that many regulars have bookmarked and then refer to on the fly every day.

[Key_Master]

Ditto to what Tedster stated. You also have to consider the "proxy effect" which also tends to warp the page views per visitor figure.

[Black Knight]

hmmm my main content based client gets around 9.5 PIs per visitor as an average, though what that really means is that some of the visitors browse the site for hours - there are always a few visits in excess of 3 hours on any day. The mode average rather than mean average would be the single page view search referral - around 50% of all unique referrals click straight away again.

Naturally this is extreme, and only one of my clients has this kind of viewing data.

Ammon Johns

[chiyo]

On our info ezine sites.. around 4 to 5
On our commercial site around 2... on the latter we try to get as few page views as possible.. the faster they email us or do some other action the better!

[EliteWeb]

My message board sites get around 10-20 per session, that is the major percentage of course there are the people who view one thread and dont find what they want and leave but the majority is 10-20.

[engine]

Interesting that many sites achieve only a few pages viewed on average and others such a high number.

I see some as low as 3.5 and some in double figures.

As a guide, the sites in double figures have user interaction and participation. Some of the lower figures come from sites with data sheets where all the information is supplied in one. Although the pageviews are fewer, I also notice that these sites do get added to visitors' favourites more often.

Top positioning for irrelevant content is likely to be one thing that contributes towards most of the one-hit wonders, usually by misguided positioning for a generic keyword.

Clearly, there is no substitution for fresh, quality content to increase page views and to retain visitor interest.

[Woz]

Average is about 2.5-3, but then for a directory/engine that is about right. My goal is to get them to where they want to go as quickly and efficiently as I can.

Onya
Woz

[Grumpus]

Good stuff folks. Thanks, and keep it coming.

I'm using AWSTATS for checking stats, so I can't really see average times. I'll have to look into writing something another script and seeing what comes of it.

I'm going to guess that my average of 5.25 is similar to most results - I've got quite a few 1 Hit Wonders, I'm certain.

G.

[starec]

Grumpus, whether or not to try to increase the pageviews per session depends on the nature of your site.
Pageviews = liability in my e-commerce site. I try to reduce the pages per sale indicator as much as possible. It tends to push down the pageviews per session, too (currently at about 4.5).
If pageviews are an asset (you sell banner space etc.), then clearly the higher the better.

[Grumpus]

Starec,

Currently, my site is still trying to develop its identity. I'm not quite certain which way it is looking to evolve. Right now, it just about, but not quite, covers its costs with affiliate links (tie ins to the movies, cds, etc) that are related to the film or person they popped in there to see.

As you can imagine, by having a site in a very competitive area, but with some unique features that you can't find on the other sites, you still can never be sure where it's going to go. I imagine that, in a year or so, it'll end up being a rather nice "community" and/or starting point for people looking for information relating to movies. If that becomes the case, advertising on the site will end up being the main source of revenue - making pageviews important.

G.

[shanz]

I may have missed the boat but I'll add my point.

I have a bit of a niche site. It doesn't get many visitors but the PV is about 15. From this it only gets a trickle of business. The client is however happy with this as it marks a new avenue of sales.

So low traffic + high page views per visit = low sales. Would you conclude from this that its traffic that is the king?

I would be worried personally as an advertiser that page views are a major factor in determining how much to pay. I think you can see from this post that it is avery subjective figure.

[bruhaha]

No one seems to be considering how AOL skews your results. The way they bounce folks from one IP to another, one visitor may appear in your logs as 10 or more (unless you've used cookies to 'mark' each time the same browser is used).

If you can correct for this you will have a "smaller" (more accurate!) number of visitors, but the true average number of pages per visit will go up!

[4eyes]

One other factor that will affect the page views per visitor is your search engine profile.

The more traffic you get from Google, the less page views (visitors get dropped on or close to the page that they need)

The more traffic from directories the higher the pages views (visitors arrive throught the front door).

[mattb]

Looks like we get around 18 views per visitor but only 1.3 minutes per visit. E-commerce site with message board. Niche market.

[Eric_Jarvis]

3 sites...three distinct patterns

site one is basically an in out, find a single piece of info sort of thing...that seems to average just under three...which is bad since I'd like to get it closer to two

site two has a load of info and links to site one...that is averaging just over six

site three is some of the content of site two translated into 12 languages...that is averaging around five and a half over most of the languages

[europeforvisitors]

I average 4-5 page views per unique visitor. When my site was new, I was getting 10-12, but the average dropped as my traffic increased. I think this happened for a simple reason: Once my 2,500+ pages were fully indexed by Google, more of my readers were people who were searching for (and finding) material on specific topics.

[4crests]

I get 3.1 Page Views per visitor.

I average 15 cents in sales for every Visitor.

don't have a clue if this is normal, but there it is.

[gcross]

4.36 on mine, 12.46 on my husband's! Yikes!