Is your website’s menu broken? Find out fast using the Navigation Summary report in Google Analytics.

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Imagine you’re a shopkeeper. You’re in the store, standing behind the counter, watching as people come in and walk around.

Today is like most days. Everyone comes in, goes straight to aisle four, then immediately turns around and goes to aisle two. After a minute or so, most of them go back to aisle four.

Aisles two and four are crowded with people, jumping back and forth. As usual, aisle one is empty.

If your site were a physical store, you’d be watching. Where do people go first? When do they then turn around? Which aisles are crowded and which are empty? Are your signs confusing?

Few website owners look this closely at the navigation summary reports in Google Analytics. And they miss the opportunity to fix problems with their navigation.

Here’s a quick guide to using Analytics to improve your navigation menu and labels.

Less useful: Users Flow report

There’s a report in Google Analytics that shows the navigation patterns at a very high level. It’s good because at a glance you can see?the top path through your site. It’s bad because it’s not detailed enough to find insights. But since it just takes a few clicks, it’s a good place to start.

Go to Audience > Users Flow.

Suddenly, you see all the traffic flow through all of the pages. To get a closer look at the performance of your navigation, we can focus on the homepage first. Click on the green box with the slash (that’s home) and select “Highlight traffic through here” from the menu.

Now you can see where they went next. Their first, second, third interactions and so on.

The problem here is that it only shows the top five pages. All other pages are grouped into a big bucket called (>100 more pages), which you have to click to see “Group Details.” It’s too high level to guide decisions.

So here’s a better way to check the performance of your navigation menu, find usability issues fast and see how visitors are flowing through your store.

More useful: Navigation Summaries

One of the best reports in Analytics is hiding from you. To find it, go to your Site Content > All Pages report. Then click on a specific page to “drill down.” Use the homepage (the slash) or any page you’re curious about.

Now you’re looking at the same report, but with just one row and just one page. There are no additional insights here. It’s pretty boring until your next click, which is up at the top on the second tab: Navigation Summary.

Continue to the full article.