Visits to a Malayalam website on mental health: Analysis of Seven Years' Data

Abstract

Background: Online articles are an important opportunity for educating the public on mental health topics. No previous study has examined the performance of a mental health website with content in an Indian language. Methods: Data on user acquisition and behaviour were obtained through Google Analytics for the first seven years (February 2014 – February 2021) of a Malayalam website that features 93 articles on mental health. Major Google Analytics variables assessed were the numbers of new and returning visitors, bounce rate, number and duration of sessions, pageviews, and unique pageviews. Relevant variables were compared for the first and seventh years. Results: In the seven years, there were 82,137 sessions, of which 21.81% were from returning visitors, 64.03% were from India, and 35.54% were from the state of Kerala, India. The mean session duration was 2 minutes 18 seconds. User engagement dropped over the study period. While in the first year, 77.20% of the visitors accessed the website from desktops, in the seventh year, 72.03% used mobile phones. Though social media was the major source of visitors (36.26%), the proportion of visitors has declined. Over the study period, the specific social media sites that send the most traffic and the browsers the visitors predominantly use have changed. Most keywords that brought users from search engines were about love and sex. The most popular articles were also about love and sex. Conclusion: Periodic and long-term monitoring using Google Analytics can provide insights that owners of mental health websites can exploit to attract more visitors and improve user engagement. Older websites may need optimization to utilize the growing visits from mobile phones.