Your homepage may not be the biggest traffic driver in terms of overall volume, but  it does matter for your most loyal readers. On average, 11% of views to articles come from homepage traffic and 80% of the people who visit a homepage are return visitors.

If you want these audiences to stay loyal, it’s critical to understand what resonates with them—and quickly. We’ve completely overhauled the Parse.ly Overlay bookmarklet and packed it with a range of new data to help you keep content on your homepage fresh and engaging.

Clicks galore

On index pages, like homepages or section pages, you can sort articles by clicks per minute, percentage of total page clicks, and click-through rate. Bright green badges call out articles that are attracting lots of attention.

Popular articles are easy to spot by clicking the Overlay toggle at the bottom of the panel. This will layer a heatmap on top of your homepage. For all click metrics, the more green a slot, the better its performance. When a metric that shows change (like “Change in Click-through Rate) is selected, the redder the slot, the worse its performance.

Click on a badge or a title from the list to get more see data on an individual story or slot. You can evaluate the success of a story pick by seeing how its current click-through rate compares to past articles in the same slot. Looks like that Elon Musk article is killing it.

Note: Slot analytics (“Historical” and “Change in” metrics) are available to customers on the Analytics Tier. Contact your success manager to learn more.

Device and visitor breakdowns at a glance

On index pages and individual posts, you’ll see device, visitor, and referral breakdowns, as well as the metrics you’re used to seeing in the dashboard. Speaking of which, clicking on the article’s title, section, or author will open a dashboard page in a new tab with details about that story.

That’s much simpler than setting up a second monitor, right?

See Overlay in action

To see the changes for yourself, go to your homepage and click the Parse.ly Overlay bookmarklet.

Never used the Overlay bookmarklet before? Get it here.

And join us on August 8th for a webinar about how homepage editors can use Overlay to quickly make use of their audience data. Register now.