April traffic is up, news and opinion lead the way

The traffic on theorion.com was up in April; not a surprise considering spring break in March cripples that months' numbers. Still, the appointment of a new Chico State president and the faculty contract settlement that avoided a strike helped the website continue its recovery from last semester.

Here is the summary from Quill Engage, which grabs data from Google analytics and produces a traffic report:

Sessions were up 9% from the previous month to 33,483, which is more than triple your 12-month 10,328-session monthly average. The rise in traffic was driven by referrals, growing 35% to 13,579 sessions.

• Last month, your site's total pageviews increased 11% to 59,460. Similarly, your pages per session rose 2% to 1.8, which is close to your monthly average over the past year.
• Users seemed to be more engaged with your The Orion : 365Chico photo project highlights individuals of Chico page last month, having spent 26.2 minutes longer on the page, making it the most improved among all pages on your site. Average duration on your The Orion : Chico State lacrosse returns after tragic loss of teammate page, on the other hand, dropped to nearly 3 minutes from 29.6 minutes- the biggest decrease of any page.
• Your site saw a 5% increase in unique users last month to 25,914, which is higher than 8,288, your site's monthly average.

News stories and opinion columns earned the most clicks. Here are the top five:

Faculty strike shows college turning into a business - 4.872 page views

Christian advocate sparks rally with name calling - 2,130

CFA strike postponed following tentative agreement - 1,919

First openly gay CSU president a step in the right direction - 1,259

Students want to halt the use of single-use water bottles - 1,015