What are page views?
Pageviews is a digital tracking metric that summarizes the total number of visits to a specific web page. Pageviews are the commonly used key performance indicator (KPI) marketers use to analyze the number of times a page on the website has been viewed. That said, they are considered vanity metrics as they are rarely indicative of the success or popularity of an online service.
Pageviews help marketers know their customers better by offering information on what website visitors or app users are looking for, their behavior trends, and how well the pages are optimized. When page views are used alongside other metrics, you can get some indication of the page’s popularity or post on a website.
Pageviews in Google Analytics
Google analytics tools help track page views, and the service has earned its popularity rightfully. It is worth noting that the quantity of page views is not the same as the number of users. By refreshing the page, one user can contribute several page views in a single session. It is easy to assume that page views come from different people, giving a false impression of the page’s popularity. In reality, it’s one person refreshing the page several times.
Pageviews and Unique Pageviews
As defined above, pageviews are recorded when the page is loaded and reloaded. Unique pageviews are the total number of sessions when a page has been viewed more than once. Unique pageviews are counted for every page title combination and page URL.
For example: when a visitor goes to the eCommerce website and the product category, then to another product page, and back to the initial product page, it means this product page has been viewed two times. Although the two-page visits were on the single sessions, the analytics software will add them to the number of pageviews. But, it will be counted as one of the unique pageviews because it is a single product page viewed by one visitor in one session.
For that reason, the number of unique pageviews is lower than that of page views. The unique pageviews are tracked using client ID or the individual user and not the number of visits, even from the same user. With Google Analytics, you can view the unique page views and pageviews side by side for better comparison.
Optimizing Pageviews
To get more pageviews, you have to consider increasing website traffic. Here are techniques for increasing page views;
Paid Traffic: Paid traffic includes buying from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, media buys, native advertising, etc.
Social Traffic can include creating social media followers, making content such as blog posts and videos for Youtube or social media sites to gain a following naturally.
Organic Traffic involves search engine optimization (SEO) to organize content on a website for a higher ranking for specific keywords that help in generating relevant organic traffic to your site.
Another way to increase page views is by providing internal links to relevant content and optimizing the website for longer user sessions involving multiple pages viewed.
