page visit duration

What is a Good Average Time on Page & How to Increase it

You might already understand the importance of optimizing your landing page views and attracting new site visitors . But there’s another website performance metric that you should consider: time on page. 

Analyzing time on page can help you understand whether you’re attracting the right kind of visitors or false leads — people who land on your site only to realize that it’s not what they were looking for. It can also give you valuable insight into how your content is performing. 

In this post, we’ll look closer at the time on page metric to learn how it works. We’ll also explore what information this measurement can reveal about your site’s performance. 

What is average time on page?

According to Google Analytics, time on page is the “average amount of time users spent viewing a specific page or screen, or set of pages or screens.”

For most sites, this is the amount of time a visitor spends reading the content on a single page. This number is calculated from the moment they land on a page until they click to go to the next one. 

One flaw with this metric is that Google can only record time between landing on one page and going to another on your site. So if someone lands on your site and then leaves without advancing, Google won’t measure the time. Likewise, if someone visits dozens of pages on your site, a time won’t be recorded for the last page they visit. 

How time on page might trump page views

As websites become more and more interactive, time on page may continue to increase. For example, a site visitor may be able to open a lightbox with additional content on the same page, or click a button to view portfolio items or galleries without leaving.

Consequently, the time on page metric might become even more important than measuring the total number of page views. 

Understanding average time on page vs. session duration

Time on page is the amount of time between a person landing on a web page and moving on to another one. Remember, if the person doesn’t move on to a second page, no time on page is calculated or added to the average. It’s like the person never even visited. But you shouldn’t confuse this metric with session duration time.

Session duration refers to the average amount of time people spend on your entire site across all visits. This includes everyone who bounced without taking any action. But Google can’t accurately measure the time a person spends if they don’t interact with your site, so the duration is counted as zero seconds for those people.

Why average session duration is almost always lower than time on page

Average session duration includes all bounced traffic ( usually around 50%) and enters each of these sessions as zero seconds. This brings down the average significantly. 

Time on page, however, doesn’t include bounced sessions. So the average time calculated is usually much higher. 

How to find key metrics in Google Analytics

Now that we understand more about the difference between average session duration and time on page, let’s discuss where you can find them in Google Analytics. For each, there are multiple reports you can use.

For session duration, you can locate the data in reports dealing with how users view your pages, like the Landing Page Report or Channels Report . For time on page, you can use the Behavior Overview Report or All Pages Report .

How to find average session duration in Google Analytics

From your Google Analytics dashboard, navigate to Behavior → Site Content → Landing Pages .

Here, you can find the average session duration for each of your pages. 

Alternatively, you can navigate to Acquisition → All Traffic → Channels Report to view the average session duration for each channel.

How to find average time on page in Google Analytics 

For average time on page, go to Behavior → Overview report .

You can also navigate to Behavior → Site Content → All Pages report.

How to evaluate and benchmark average time on page

Once you know where and how to locate your time on page metric, the next step is to assess the results and determine where you can improve. However, when conducting a time on page benchmark, keep in mind that a “good time on page” varies based on a lot of different factors.

One study shows that the average time that a site visitor spends on a webpage is 52 seconds across all industries. You can compare your metric to this standard to get a benchmark of your website’s performance. But a better mindset is to just focus on continual improvement of your metrics compared to your site’s past data. 

To properly evaluate your time on page metric, it’s best to set your expectations based on the type of content you have on each page. You should also consider where people go after they leave one of your pages.

What it means when time on page is too short

A short time on page can indicate a problem with your site. For instance, you might have content that’s irrelevant to the search terms it ranks for. As a result, visitors are likely to be confused and leave pretty quickly. 

But a short time on page doesn’t have to be negative — a homepage that only features graphics and a few short introductory sentences might justify a shorter (but possibly very effective) amount of time on a page. A good indication that this is the case is a high number of page views or conversions. 

Let’s imagine you just intend for the content on a page to pique interest. In this scenario, the time on page may be short, but if your bounce rate is low, this again doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong.

But what if your content provides the information people are looking for, but your time on page is shorter than you want it to be? In this case, it’s time to evaluate your user experience (UX). 

Poor performance often leads visitors to abandon websites — after all, who wants to sit and wait a long time for a site to load? Instead, visitors will just go somewhere else.

The easiest speed optimization plugin for WordPress

Jetpack Boost gives your site the same performance advantages as the world’s leading websites, no developer required.

What it means if time on page is too long

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a longer time spent consuming your pages is generally a good thing. 

But you may have issues if visitors spend a lot of time on a page and don’t take the actions you’d like them to — purchasing a product, filling out a contact form, or subscribing to your newsletter. 

Again, understanding the content on each of your pages is important. For example, if you have an eCommerce site, you’re probably looking for sales. So, a lot of time spent reading about a product without a conversion can indicate a few things:

• Your information is confusing
• You’re overwhelming shoppers with too much information
• You’re not providing the right kind of content to shoppers

If this is the case, you might want to make your product pages more user-friendly with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section, additional images, size charts, reviews, or other helpful data. 

How to improve your average time on page

No matter the content or purpose of your site, there are some cornerstone principles that can help improve your average time on page, along with other metrics. 

1. Establish a strong internal linking strategy

Internal links are links to other pages within your website. They can increase time spent on your site and boost your search engine rankings at the same time. Ultimately, they can make it easier for visitors to find other posts they’re interested in without having to spend tons of time searching.

Plus, you don’t have to purchase any plugins or third-party tools to use this strategy. Just naturally hyperlink phrases related to the post or page you’re linking to. 

2. Incorporate videos

Adding videos to your site can keep visitors there longer because watching a clip is often easier than reading through a long body of text. So giving visitors both options will make it more likely that they find an enjoyable way to engage with, and stay on, your page.

Here are just a few types of videos you could create:

• A demonstration of ways people can use your product
• A behind-the-scenes look at your manufacturing process
• An example of how to style an outfit
• A DIY tutorial
• An interview with a happy customer
• A cooking demonstration

The filming process doesn’t have to be incredibly complicated either. A high-quality smartphone, tripod, and good lighting can take you a long way!

Once you’ve created videos, you can use Jetpack VideoPress to add them to your posts and pages. And unlike third-party tools like YouTube, you won’t have to worry about visitors getting distracted by ads or competitors’ content.

3. Make sure your content is easy to scan and digest

Another way to improve your site metrics is enhancing readability. If your pages are challenging to read, particularly on mobile devices, visitors will be less likely to stick around. 

There are many ways you can make your content easier to consume. First, use a font that’s large enough for people to read, including those with vision impairments. 16px is generally considered the minimum, but this can vary based on the specific font you’re using.

Also, try to avoid fonts with lots of embellishments or script typefaces, especially for bodies of text.

Second, break up long blocks of text using subheadings and media. It’s also helpful to incorporate bullet lists, plenty of white space, and short paragraphs. This can make your page less overwhelming and easier for readers to scan for information. 

4. Focus on optimizing your site’s performance

People tend to be impatient, especially when it comes to browsing the web. Three seconds is all it takes for as much as 40% of your audience to give up and find what they’re looking for elsewhere. 

So, if you want to improve metrics such as time on page and session duration, it’s important to optimize your site for speed. 

Jetpack Boost provides a quick way to test your site’s performance and offers options for improvement that literally just take a click. It can implement a WordPress CDN , enact lazy loading images, optimize your site’s CSS, and defer non-essential javascript . 

Even a small improvement in load times can improve your user experience and keep people on your page longer. 

5. Publish the right kind of content

If the content you’re publishing isn’t interesting or helpful to your site visitors, they probably won’t stick around to read it. This is when it pays to know your target audience well. How can you answer the questions that they have about your products, services, or subject matter?

And, especially when it comes to blog content, focus on helping more than selling. People don’t want to read sales pitch after sales pitch. Instead, they want to know how to solve whatever problem they’re having, whether that’s styling an outfit, getting their finances in order, or helping their child learn how to read.

6. Simplify site processes and interactions

If your site’s difficult to use, you can bet that most people will get frustrated and leave. While this can vary based on your site and industry, here are a few ways you can optimize processes:

• Remove unnecessary fields from contact forms and checkout pages
• Avoid distracting pop-ups whenever possible
• Make any “next steps” as obvious as possible with clear buttons and arrows
• Add search functionality to help visitors immediately find what they’re looking for
• Simplify your site menu and use clear language to direct visitors to the right place
• Categorize blog posts and products for quick navigation
• Don’t pack your site full of ads — use them sparingly 

Ideally, ask members of your audience, or even friends and family, to use your site and report any problems or frustrations they may encounter. Then, focus on improving those.

7. Optimize for mobile devices 

Make sure your site is easy to use and looks great on devices of all types — desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. Of course, it would be virtually impossible to physically test on every single device in existence, so try using a tool like Responsinator to get a quick overview. Ensure that your fonts are large enough to read, content is easy to consume, and images aren’t cut off.

Time on page is just the tip of the iceberg

Paying attention to key metrics is crucial for getting the most out of your site. Connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics to unlock a wide range of metrics that can guide you in determining where to focus your efforts. There’s no such thing as perfect — continuous improvement is the key to success! 

Simon has worked in marketing and product development for over 10 years, previously at HubSpot, Workday, and now Automattic (Jetpack). He has a varied education, with a degree in chemical engineering and a masters in computer science to his name. His passion is helping people and their businesses grow.

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What is a page views: and what is the difference with visits?

Marie Jehanne

October 5, 2023 | 4 min read

Last Updated: Oct 5, 2023

Table of Contents

What is a page view?

What are page visits, comparing what is page views and page visits in website analytics, what are the differences in terms of user interaction.

In the context of website analytics, a fundamental understanding of key terms such as “Page Views” and “Page Visits” is crucial for effective digital marketing strategies. These terms offer insights into website traffic, essential for enhancing your online presence. Understanding the difference between these terms is paramount in interpreting Google Analytics data accurately, which in turn, influences your SEO strategies. Page views and page visits are not synonymous in the world of website analytics.

Each term represents a unique aspect of user interaction on the customer journey of them in your website.

Misinterpretation of these terms can lead to a skewed analysis of your website traffic, impacting your digital marketing decisions and online presence.

The following sections delve into the specifics of these two key terms.

The aim is to provide a comprehensive understanding of these metrics, allowing for an accurate interpretation of website analytics. This knowledge is crucial for creating effective digital marketing strategies and enhancing your online presence.

In the realm of website analytics , a Page View refers to the number of times a specific page on your website is loaded or reloaded in a browser. Page Views are generated by both new and returning visitors.

By tracking this metric in Google Analytics, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your SEO strategies. A high number of Page Views signifies that your website or a specific page on your website is attracting significant website traffic. However, it’s important to note that a single visitor can generate multiple Page Views if they reload the page or revisit it within a single session.

Therefore, Page Views is a raw measure of your website’s traffic. While it provides a broad picture of your site’s popularity, it does not offer a nuanced understanding of user interaction or engagement on your site.

For a more detailed analysis, it is necessary to consider other metrics, like Page Visits, bounce rate, and click-through rate, as well.

Know what drives engagement and abandonment on your sites and mobile apps .

When we speak about what is a page views, it’s necessary to talk about page visits! Page Visits, also known as sessions, refer to a series of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame. A single Page Visit can encompass multiple Page Views, events, social interactions, and ecommerce transactions.

A session begins when a user lands on your website and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, or at midnight. If the same user returns to your site after a session has ended, a new session is initiated, and it is counted as another Page Visit. Therefore, Page Visits provide a more comprehensive measure of user engagement on your site compared to Page Views.

They offer insights into how users are interacting with your site during a single session, which can be invaluable for understanding user behavior and optimizing your site’s user experience.

However, like all metrics, Page Visits should not be viewed in isolation but considered in conjunction with other relevant metrics for a holistic analysis of your website’s performance.

In the realm of digital marketing and website analytics , understanding the distinction between page views and page visits is fundamental. These two metrics are integral aspects of user interaction analysis, providing valuable insights into a website’s performance and user engagement. Page views, also known as page impressions in Google Analytics, refer to the total number of times a particular webpage has been interacted with or viewed by users. This figure includes repeated views of a single page during one internet browsing session, meaning if a user reloads the page or revisits the same page, each instance is counted as a separate page view.

Page visits, on the other hand, are synonymous with sessions or user sessions in Google Analytics.

A page visit represents the duration from when a user first lands on your website to when they exit your site or become inactive for a specific period, typically 30 minutes. During a single visit, a user may view multiple pages, contributing to the website’s overall page views, but it will still count as one visit in terms of website traffic.

Decoding the Retail Customer Journey: A Detailed Approach and Best Practices

The primary difference between page views and page visits lies in the user interaction they each represent. Page views are a more granular metric, focusing on individual pages and their popularity.

They can reveal which content is most engaging or attractive to users, offering insight into user preferences and the effectiveness of the content in enhancing online presence. Conversely, page visits provide a broader view of user interaction. They indicate the overall website traffic a site receives, irrespective of the number of pages viewed during a visit.

This metric is particularly useful in understanding the reach of a website and measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing strategies in driving traffic. In the context of SEO, both page views and page visits are critical.

High page views can suggest engaging content, which can improve a site’s ranking in search engine results and positively impact the click-through rate. Simultaneously, a high number of page visits can indicate a successful marketing strategy, driving more traffic to the site and potentially reducing the bounce rate. In conclusion, while page views and page visits are different metrics in website analytics, they are both instrumental in understanding user interaction and improving a website’s online presence.

Depending on the specific goals of a website, one may be more relevant than the other. However, a comprehensive SEO strategy should consider both to achieve optimal results and improve website traffic.

Stay updated

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Passionate about digital for several years, I am the Inbound Content Manager SEO at Contentsquare. My goal? To teach you how to improve the digital CX of your website and activate the right acquisition levers to generate more traffic on your site and therefore…more sales!

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What Is the Average Time Spent On a Website? [+ How to Improve It]

Published: December 22, 2021

According to a Pew Research Center survey , 85% of Americans say they go online on a daily basis, with 31% reporting that they go online “almost constantly.”

With people spending more time online than ever before, it’s important that your website is optimized for visitors to browse and stick around. But longer isn’t necessarily better. You want visitors to stay on your website because they’re enjoying the content and experience — not because they can’t find the information that they’re looking for or can’t complete a desired action, like making a purchase.

In this post, we’ll cover what a “good” average time on page and average session duration benchmark is, and how to improve these metrics on your website.

Average Time On Page Benchmark

According to Contentsquare’s 2021 Digital Experience Benchmark report , the average time on page across all industries is 54 seconds. While you can use that as a benchmark, meeting it doesn't necessarily mean your average time on page is optimal.

Like page views, bounce rate, and other website metrics , average time on page is contextual. What’s “good” depends on the type of website you have, the industry you’re in, and the web page you’re tracking, among many other factors.

For example, in their 2021 Digital Experience Benchmark report, Contentsquare analyzed data

from over 20 billion user sessions from across the globe. They were able to track average time on page across 10 industries, and found major differences.

Image Source

B2B, for example, had the highest average time spent on page with 1.37 minutes. This was at least 20 seconds higher than the other industries. The industries on the other end of the spectrum were grocery and energy, with an average time spent per page of 44 seconds. This gap emphasizes the importance of using an average time on page benchmark that’s specific to your industry.

A “good” average time on page also depends on the type of content. For example, you ideally want visitors spending more time on your product pages and blog posts. In fact, in a survey by Databox , 45% of respondents said that the average time on page for their blog posts is 3-5 minutes. A higher time on page indicates that the content is relevant, easy to read and understand, and targeted at the right audience.

On landing and checkout pages, however, higher time on page could mean that there are obstacles to conversion. The content, CTAs, or form might be confusing, for example.

Average Time on Page Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most widely used tools to measure average time on page, among other performance metrics. It’s therefore important to explain how Google Analytics calculates this metric.

Google Analytics tracks average time on page by measuring the difference between the timestamps of hits . That means if a user lands on a web page and then closes their browser window or tab, or types another URL into their address bar, their visit is not counted.

So average time on page is calculated from the non-exits and non-bounces only, which is a smaller percentage than the total hits for a page.

That’s why this average is typically higher than average session duration, which we’ll talk about more in the next section.

Google Analytics also keeps tracking time on page even if the user’s browser window or tab is hidden. So while this metric is not the most accurate, it is still a valuable indicator of how engaging and effective your content is.  

Now that we have a better understanding of how to calculate and benchmark the average amount of time users spend on individual pages, let’s take a look at how to figure out how long visitors are spending on your entire website.

Average Time Spent on a Website

Average time spent on a website, like average time on page, is dependent on a range of factors. Industry, the type of website, and even the device that users are on impact this average.

For example, Statista  calculated the 20 most popular websites worldwide as of June 2021, by time per visit. Users spent approximately 22 minutes and 44 seconds per visit on Google, the most popular website, and only .54 minutes on VK.com, the 20th most popular.

To calculate how long visitors are staying on average on your entire website instead of individual web pages, look at average session duration.

Average session duration measures the average length of sessions on a website. Google Analytics begins counting the length of a session from the time the user lands on a site until the user exits the site, or is inactive for a predetermined amount of time. (In Google Analytics, a session can last for up to 30 minutes without a user interacting with your pages.)

That means a session can consist of a user viewing a single page or viewing multiple pages, and can range anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours.

Average session duration is calculated as: total duration of all sessions (in seconds) / number of sessions.

This is a key difference between average time on page and average session duration. Whereas average time on page excludes visits that end in exits or bounces, average session duration counts all bounces as zero seconds. This can lower the average session duration significantly if your website has a high bounce rate.

The Google Analytics dashboard below, for example, is tracking the same website as above. So while its average time on page last week was 14 minutes and 50 seconds, its average session duration was 1 minute and 37 seconds.

To improve average session duration, or the average time spent on a website, try the best practices below.

How to Improve Average Time Spent on a Website

• Decrease load time.
• Optimize your navigation.
• Add internal links.
• Improve the readability of your posts.
• Add images and videos.
• Optimize for all devices.
• Use exit intent popups.

1. Decrease load time.

Decreasing load time can help reduce your site’s bounce rate, which can significantly improve average session duration.

In a study  commissioned by Google and conducted by 55 and Deloitte, decreasing mobile site load times by just one tenth of a second resulted in significant decreases in bounce rate: 0.6% for homepages, 5.7% for product listing pages, and 1.9% for product details pages.

Using a CDN , optimizing images, reducing redirects, and compressing files are just a few ways to decrease load time. To learn more, check out our full guide  on optimizing your website speed.

2. Optimize your navigation.

Website navigation  enables visitors to quickly and easily find the information they're looking for, like a blog post, and important information that they weren’t looking for, like pricing info. A good navigation system can improve the chances of visitors taking action and browsing your site longer.

When designing a navigation menu, follow these best practices:

• Put your most important items at the beginning of the navigation menu.
• Use navigation labels that align with your type of business and are SEO-optimized.
• Include a search box.
• Add navigation links in the header, sidebar, and footer of your site.

3. Add internal links.

Another way to enable visitors to easily find and read relevant content on your site is adding internal links. Internal linking  makes your site easier to navigate, which increases the chances that readers look at more content and stay on your site longer.

Here’s an example of a blog post with lots of internal links encouraging visitors to dive into these subtopics in more depth:

5. Add images and videos.

Adding multimedia content, like images, videos, and infographics, is another way to improve the readability of your content. Not only do they break up chunks of text — they can also illustrate complicated ideas (like APIs, for example) and appeal to different types of learners.

Images and videos enhance the overall user experience and encourage visitors to stay on the page longer.

6. Optimize for all devices.

According to a study by Perficient , 68.1% of all website visits globally in 2020 came from mobile devices and only 28.9% and 3.1% came from desktops and tablets, respectively. However, desktops drove 46.4% of total time on site globally and tablets drove more total time on site than mobile devices.

This emphasizes the importance of having a fully responsive website that’s optimized for all devices. Sizing and styling buttons, SVGs, images, and fonts are especially important when creating a responsive site. For more best practices, check out our complete guide to responsive web design .

7. Use exit intent popups.

Exit intent popups  appear when a visitor is about to bounce from a website. These contain an offer or message that’s designed to keep them on the page. Briogeo, for example, has an exit intent popup encouraging visitors to take their hair quiz before leaving the site.

While this won’t convince every visitor to stay, it may convince some, which will ultimately help improve your average session duration.

Encouraging Visitors to Stay on Your Site

Average time on page and average session duration are excellent indicators of how engaging and effective your content is and whether you’re attracting quality traffic. Now that you understand what these metrics mean and what benchmarks to use to evaluate your performance, you can focus on optimizing your site to have visitors browse for longer.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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What is a page visit?

A page visit (or visit) occurs when a reader clicks on your website from an external source. This could be from social media, another website, or from typing in your URL directly into their web browser. Once someone lands on your site from somewhere outside of your website domain, it officially counts as a page visit.

In theory, page visits can give you an idea of how many people are actually coming to your website. However, not all page visits are created equal. For example, let’s say someone clicks on your website from Twitter, reads one blog post, and then immediately leaves. This would count as one page visit. However, a website visitor who clicks on your website from Google, reads three articles, and then signs up for your newsletter would also count as one page visit.

Bottom line: While page visits can give you some sense of website traffic, they’re not going to give you the full picture.

Pageviews vs page visits

So, what’s the difference between pageviews and page visits? Differentiating between these two metrics is key for understanding audience behavior and how your audience is interacting with your content.

A pageview is defined as a request for a link on your website. If someone visits your website and looks at three different articles, that would count as three pageviews.

Technically, it’s true that every page visit is a pageview. But not the other way around.

Pageviews can also be a misleading  metric , because of bots, refresh rates, cookies, and multiple pageviews per visit. For example, if a visitor encounters an issue with an extension on your page and refreshes the browser, creating a page request, it now counts as a second pageview, inflating your pageview numbers.

Sessions, visits, and users in Google Analytics

Google Analytics , one of the original website analytics tools, has been around since 2005 and is still widely used today. With the  introduction of Google Analytics 4 , the search engine platform switched from a session-based data model to an event-based one. So visits and visitors are now “sessions” and “users”.

This change was designed to more accurately reflect how users  interact  with web content. A session is a visitor metric that groups together analytics activities taken by a single visitor (user) on your website. Sessions are time sensitive and end after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Sessions track user engagement with elements like:

• Ecommerce transactions

Why doesn’t Parse.ly track visits?

Now that we’ve established clarity around visits, let’s look at how Parse.ly thinks about them. We don’t track visits, except in a few specific cases. Much more of Parse.ly’s focus is on unique devices/users/browsers with the concept of ‘visitors.’

Here’s why:

Focus on real-time analytics

As a real-time analytics provider, visits rely too much on an extended session (typically, 30 minutes for a visit-within-the-day and 30 days for a returning-visit-within-the-month). Whereas, a “visitor is a visitor” whether it arrived at your site in the last 5 minutes or millions arrived at your site across any given time range. Visitors, a metric Parse.ly does track, generalizes better across real-time and historical time windows.

Multi-channel approach

Visits can only be measured reliably in the Website channel, and most Parse.ly customers these days do  multi-channel measurements  across at least 2 of our supported channels (Website, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, iOS, Android). Parse.ly prefers to use core metrics that can be measured across all channels and thus can be rolled up (even if with some caveats/limitations) across channels.

We also found that visits are simply confusing to our users (they can be measured quite differently depending on methodology), whereas “visitors” map better to a well-understood real-world concept like a browser, device, cookie ID, device ID, or person/user.

Engagement tracking

Visitors work better as a “context metric” with  engaged time  than visits do. We use visitors divided by total engaged time to calculate the average engaged time (per visitor) to given posts/pages, and this enables average engaged time.

Get better user insights with Parse.ly

At Parse.ly, we focus on offering 21st-century solutions to content creators with engagements as our primary metric. Successful digital marketing and content teams have shifted to a multi-channel approach to increase ROI and our real-time analytics platform is designed to use  core metrics  that can be measured across all channels.

Visits are an outdated and limiting metric because they can only be measured reliably in the Website channel. We’ve built an easy-to-use platform that collects better insights so that you can get better results.

If you’re looking for more meaningful ways to track your audience engagement,  talk to us today .

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How long do users stay on web pages.

September 11, 2011 2011-09-11

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How long will users stay on a web page before leaving? It's a perennial question, yet the answer has always been the same:

• Not very long.

The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute.

As users rush through web pages, they have time to read only a quarter of the text on the pages they actually visit (let alone all those they don't). So, unless your writing is extraordinarily clear and focused, little of what you say on your website will get through to customers.

However, while users are always in a hurry on the web, the time they spend on individual page visits varies widely: sometimes people bounce away immediately, other times they linger for far longer than a minute. Given this, the average is not the most fruitful way of analyzing user behaviors. Users are human beings — their behaviors are highly variable and are not captured fully by a single number .

In This Article:

Leaving web pages: the weibull hazard function, negative aging: leave quick or stay long.

Research by Chao Liu and colleagues from Microsoft Research now provides a mathematical understanding of users' page-leaving behaviors. The scientists collected data from "a popular web browser plug-in," analyzing page-visit durations for 205,873 different web pages for which they had captured upwards of 10,000 visits . Suffice it to say: these guys crunched a lot of data (more than 2 billion dwell times).

• The result: the time users spend on a web page follows a Weibull distribution .

99.9% of readers will now ask: What's a Weibull distribution?

Weibull is a reliability-engineering concept that's used to analyze the time-to-failure for components . The model's hazard function indicates the probability that a component will fail at time t , given that it has worked fine up until time t .

So, after replacing a spare part in a piece of equipment, Weibull analysis predicts when you'll have to replace it again. It also lets you conduct risk analysis beyond simplistic mean-time to failure. And, if you own a lot of equipment, you can use aggregate analysis to, say, manage your spare parts inventory.

Of course, when analyzing Web visits, we simply replace "component failure" with "user leaving the page." In their research paper, Liu and colleagues provide intensive statistical analysis to show that the Weibull model closely matches users' empirically observed behavior.

According to earlier research, there are 2 different kinds of Weibull distributions:

• Positive aging : The longer the component has been in service, the more likely it is to fail. In other words, the hazard function increases for larger values of t . This makes intuitive sense, because the longer stuff is used, the more it wears down. Thus, something that has been in use for a long time will be approaching its breaking point.
• Negative aging : The longer the component has been in service, the less likely it is to fail. Here, the hazard function decreases for larger values of t . This makes sense when individual components vary in quality: poorly made components usually fail early, so anything that has been in service for a long time is likely to be particularly robust and will usually survive even longer.

The researchers discovered that 99% of web pages have a negative aging effect . In human–computer interaction (HCI) research, it's extremely rare to get this strong a finding, and Liu and colleagues should be credited with discovering a major new insight.

Why negative aging? Because web pages are indeed of highly variable quality. Users know this and spend their initial time on a page in ruthless triage to abandon the dross ASAP. It's rare for people to linger on web pages, but when users do decide that a page is valuable, they may stay for a bit.

The following chart shows the hazard function — that is, the likelihood of leaving — for the median Weibull parameters fitted across the scientists' humongous dataset:

It's clear from the chart that the first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users' decision to stay or leave. The probability of leaving is very high during these first few seconds because users are extremely skeptical, having suffered countless poorly designed web pages in the past. People know that most web pages are useless, and they behave accordingly to avoid wasting more time than absolutely necessary on bad pages.

If the web page survives this first — extremely harsh — 10-second judgment, users will look around a bit. However, they're still highly likely to leave during the subsequent 20 seconds of their visit. Only after people have stayed on a page for about 30 seconds does the curve become relatively flat. People continue to leave every second, but at a much slower rate than during the first 30 seconds.

So, if you can convince users to stay on your page for half a minute, there's a fair chance that they'll stay much longer — often 2 minutes or more, which is an eternity on the web.

So, roughly speaking, there are two cases here:

• bad pages , which get the chop in a few seconds; and
• good pages , which might be allocated a few minutes.

Note: "good" vs. "bad" is a decision that each individual user makes within those first few seconds of arriving. The design implications are clear:

• To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds .

Reference and Related Reading

Chao Liu, Ryen W. White, and Susan Dumais. 2010. Understanding web browsing behaviors through Weibull analysis of dwell time. In Proceedings of the 33rd international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval (SIGIR '10)

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Identify Popular Content

Page Views helps marketers identify high-performing pages for further optimization.

Conversion Funnel

Quickly map out the user journey by examining Page Views on critical funnel stages, such as the pricing page.

Client Reports

Showcase increased Page Views in general or for a particular page as proof of agency-generated engagement.

Seasonal Trends

Analyze Page Views to identify cyclical or seasonal consumer behavior.

Why Tracking Page Views Is Important

Page Views are a fundamental metric for gauging website engagement. High counts signal that a website effectively attracts visitors, an essential first step in any conversion process.

When used properly–and in context–the Page View metric offers actionable insights, revealing whether a website's content or marketing strategies are drawing attention.

In addition, Page View data is crucial for trend analysis and optimization. An uptick in views of the same page could signify successful marketing campaigns or effective SEO efforts.

On the other hand, a downtick is an early warning sign, prompting quick action to tweak strategies or content.

Stop Wasting Time on Reports. Get Marketing Insights Faster & Drive Results.

How Page Views Interact With Other KPIs

Page Views is part of a wider ecosystem of web analytics that tell the story of acquisition and engagement. For example, high Page Views offer broader opportunities for conversions, although this not guaranteed. Without a healthy Conversion Rate, that traffic may lack quality or relevance. Optimizing page performance metrics using analytics tools is crucial for increasing the quality and quantity of visitors to a single page based on whether or not they take the desired action once they’ve reached the page.

Time on Page and Engagement Rate also share an informative relationship with Page Views. Increased engagement on high-traffic pages suggests that the content effectively reaches and engages the target audience. On the flip side, a high Bounce Rate and other engagement-based session metrics could indicate that the content is attracting–but not retaining–visitors.

Page Views are typically considered a means to an end, not the ultimate goal. Make sure you connect the dots between this metric and what the client wants to achieve with their campaign. Putting this data in context helps convert what some consider a vanity metric into actionable insights.

No two clients are alike. Some clients want to see rankings, others want to see Page Views, and others want to see the number of calls from Google My Business. The fact that we can create a dashboard and report template that’s unique to our clients is invaluable.

How To Set Page View Benchmarks and Goals

To establish robust Page View benchmarks, agencies often turn to historical data. Reviewing past performance for specific pages, analyzing trends, and identifying patterns in Google Analytics or Google Search Console gives agencies a nuanced understanding of what constitutes a "good" or "bad" number of Page Views for a particular website, page, or campaign. 

Data such as the total number of Page Views, the number of unique Page Views, and the number of pages viewed during user visits offer invaluable context.

To align with business objectives, back-calculate the required Page Views on priority pages by utilizing conversion rate and revenue per page. For example, if an eCommerce website has a set revenue target and budget, use the existing conversion rate to determine the number of Page Views needed to hit those revenue goals.

Page View Target Formula Example

Digging Deeper Into Page View Data

For a more granular look at Page Views, dig into metrics like user visit duration, referral sources, and the number of unique Page Views per source. Google Analytics records and reveals insights such as which channels drive the most Page Views or how different user segments engage with the website. 

Assessing Page Views in tandem with these associated metrics paints a more complete picture of campaign performance.

Report Smarter, Not Harder.

Better, faster & easier client reports are just a few clicks away, why page views matter to clients.

Page Views serve as a barometer for interest in a client’s content and offers. A high number of Page Views shows that a website is effectively drawing in the target audience, whether through organic search, advertising, or other means.

This metric offers a clear and concise snapshot of website traffic, pointing to increased reach and engagement. Clients often tie Page Views directly to ROI. For example, a blog post with high Page Views may lead to greater brand awareness, more sign-ups, and increased sales. 

Google Analytics data lets clients see the total number of Page Views and evaluate the page's performance. This data influences content creation, product offerings, and user experience design.

Why Page Views Matter to Agencies

Agencies dissect the Page View data to understand user pathways. For example, if the number of Page Views spikes after implementing a new advertising campaign, that's an indicator of its effectiveness. In the same session, agencies also analyze the source and flow of those Page Views to optimize future efforts. 

For agencies, Page Views represent a data layer indicating how well specific content or a digital campaign performs. A comprehensive analysis includes a blend of the number of unique Page Views, Total Page Views, and the specifics of each page visit.

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Best Practices for Analyzing and Reporting on Page Views

Effective digital marketing campaigns start with a thorough understanding of critical metrics like Page Views, and an in-depth analysis sets the stage for targeted improvements.

Prioritize Data Accuracy

Ensure data accuracy before deep-diving into Page Views in Google Analytics. Filters, correct tags, and domain settings are crucial in capturing the number of Page Views and unique Page Views.

Monitor Trends Over Time

Track the number of Page Views over different time frames. Weekly, monthly, and yearly views give unique insights into seasonality, helping to set realistic goals and adjust strategies.

Context is King

Though Page Views are important; they gain significance when juxtaposed with other metrics like conversion and engagement rates. Putting Page Views in a broader context provides a fuller picture of campaign health.

Align With Client Objectives

It's crucial to show how Page Views are not just numbers but contributors to achieving client-specific goals, whether it's increased brand awareness, sales, or lead generation.

Make it Actionable

End the analysis by providing actionable recommendations. These range from optimizing a landing page for better organic ranking and more page visits to retargeting specific visitor segments based on the pages they viewed.

Visualize the Story

A well-crafted dashboard includes graphs and charts that make interpreting the total number of Page Views and Unique Page Views much easier. Visual data speeds up decision-making processes for agencies and their clients.

Many of our client relationships require customized reports because we’re managing multiple marketing channels for them at once to run cohesive, integrated marketing campaigns. They don’t want to see 7 reports, one per platform: Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Email Marketing, Website Analytics, etc. They want everything condensed into one, easy-to-read report, where they can view all of their most significant marketing data in one place. The customizable marketing reports allow us to do just that. The clients love them and we do too.

Google Analytics 4 Reporting Dashboard

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How To Drive More Page Views

Getting more visitors to a client’s website is an ongoing effort, but the benefits are clear: higher user engagement and potential for conversions. Here are some actionable tips to improve Page View data.

Optimize Speed

Website load time makes or breaks user engagement. A faster site often leads to increased Page Views as users are more likely to browse website content. A slow site causes users to leave the site, even before the page tracking has kicked in.

Mobile Friendliness

Over 50% of global web traffic and more than 90% of internet users access the internet via mobile. Ensuring the site is mobile-friendly will lead to more Page Views and a better user experience.

Internal Linking

Adding relevant internal links guides the same visitor to more of a client’s content. This strategy helps in improving not only engagement but also Page Views. When the same people contribute multiple Page Views, it’s a win-win.

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See More KPI Examples

Event count.

Event Count in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measures how often users interact with specific elements on a website within a given time span.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through Rate, commonly abbreviated as CTR, measures the percentage of clicks received on online advertising or a link relative to the number of times it has been viewed.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who visit a page and leave without doing anything else.

Impressions

Impressions represent the total count of times digital content, such as an ad, web page, or social media post, is displayed on a user's screen.

Clicks measure how users actively engage with an ad or link.

Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is a measure of how many people interact with specific content.

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Table of Contents

Website Analytics

Let’s Make It Clear: Pageviews, vs. Visits vs. Sessions

The Internet community and the number of websites are vast, only to be outnumbered by the plethora of web analytics-related terms that sound similar but have different meanings. Have you ever felt lost between terms like pageview, visit, and session? We are here to help you out on this one.

In this article, we clarify what pageview, visit, and session means. We will highlight the similarities and differences and then dive into the endless possibilities of session analysis. We will cover everything you need to know about session replay , from its meaning, through its benefits, to its usage. What’s more, we have gathered some tips to take session replay analysis to the next level. Finally, we also look ahead to future opportunities for improvement.

Want to know more? Keep on reading.

Glossary of Web Analytics Terms 

When someone loads your website in their browser, it is called a page view. Let’s imagine a visitor comes across your blog post using a search engine. However, one of their browser addons stops some of the content from displaying properly, necessitating a page reload. In that case, your analytics report will show two page views, even though they were created by the same visitor (and in a short period of time).

A page visit, on the other hand, occurs when someone comes to your site from somewhere other than your website’s domain. For example, a visitor who finds your content online and then reloads the page is still considered one visit. This is often complemented by the word unique, as in unique visits or unique visitors because users are identified by the cookie used on the computer. If a visitor comes to the site five times in a month, for example, this measure will count as one person regardless of the number of visits. In website analytics, users are a critical metric.

This figure depicts the number of visitors who engage with your website over a given period of time. When someone visits your website, a session begins, and it normally ends a few minutes after he or she stops doing so. A Google Analytics session normally terminates after 30 minutes of inactivity.

An action can take many different forms, such as visiting a website, downloading a file, or filling out a form. Another scenario is when a visitor decides to buy a product, adds it to their shopping cart, and then returns to read the product description. Although there were two page views, the number of sessions remained the same because it was the same user.

In summary, a session is the total amount of time a user spends on your website over a period. Typically, your analytics tool will track all activity such as views and engagement with items or forms within a single session. It is an important metric to keep track of because it adds context to your views and visits.

Sessions and their analysis provide a wealth of opportunities for website owners to improve. If you don’t want to be left behind, this is what we are going to talk about below.

Everything You Need to Know About Session Replay as a Web Analytics Tool

Session replay, session recording, customer experience analytics, in-page web analytics, mouse recording tool, user replay, user session replay, user experience replay, visitor session replay, visitor replay,  visitor recordings, visitor playbacks, visitor behavior analytics, visual session recording, visual analytics, website session replay, website video replay are all synonymous with what we are about to discuss. 

Although the names are quite revealing, let us tell you a little more about the topic.

What is Session Replay in Web Analytics?

Session replay, in a nutshell, is a solution or a qualitative web analytics tool which also known as session recording, and that allows digital teams to review footage of real, anonymous consumers interacting with their websites or apps.

This tool actually allows you to track every activity on your website for each of your visitors. It’s like looking over their shoulder, but you can do this without disturbing them with the fact that you are actually watching, so they can behave naturally. 

Session replay allows you to track visitor mouse movements and clicks to identify conversion funnel pain points. It is identical to studying video footage to determine what a single visitor is looking for, what visitors have not found, what frustrations might cause them to turn back, or even quit.

Who Uses Session Replay? 

The tool itself does not require significant expertise, so even novice website owners can use it with confidence. Furthermore, because it provides fully website-specific qualitative data, it can be a powerful web analytics tool for website analysis for large enterprises. 

Significant results can be obtained through session replay if we combine the analysis to basic qualitative metrics (the traffic source, new visitor conversion rate, bounce rate, return visitor conversion rate, interactions per visit, value per visit, cost per conversion, exit pages, etc) and are aware of the logic behind each metric.

In summary, session replay is a great partner in the website optimization process for all e-commerce players, including web analysts, customer support managers, e-commerce specialists, digital marketers, optimizers, product managers, and UX designers.

Advantages of Session Replays

Even though web analysis with session replay is very time-consuming and demands significant focus, it has numerous advantages. Without being exhaustive, we have collected a few that clearly highlight session replays as a tool among simple quantitative metrics. So the session replay:

• Recognize and empathize with your visitors’ feelings and user experience
• Provides a clear picture of the user journey
• Examine how visitors engage and interact with various website features.
• Identify bugs , issues, and obstacles
• Uncover why visitors are leaving your website
• Help team members and clients make decisions by visualizing findings
• Answers what quantitative metrics leave open
• Prevents guesswork through reliable, real user data.

Nevertheless, some people have concerns about private information. This personal initiable information (PII) can be names, phone numbers, emails, or even other account data. However, most session replay vendors use selective or full masking to prevent such data from falling into unauthorized hands.

How to Use Session Replay

Once you have found the most useful web analytics tool on the market to provide you with a complete analysis, you can get down to the real work.

The first thing you should do is segment your visitor group. Determine which visitors are returning and which are new. The reason for this is that returning users are already familiar with your website, so they can navigate it as if nothing were wrong. This may lead to incorrect conclusions, so take your time and do not rush through the process.

Do not try to repair all the flaws at once after you uncover them — you’ll be shocked by how many you may find in a single session. Make a hierarchy list and take notes. Select the issues that have the greatest influence on the overall user experience and address them while running usability tests until you are happy with the results of your conversion rate and user interface. Then move on to the less important concerns and repeat the process.

Tips to Get The Most Out of Your Session Replay Analysis

Owning a powerful analytics tool like session replay does not mean you have a winning case for undiscovered customer journeys, low conversion rates, or high bounce rates. If you know what to look for and how to look for it, you are on the road to an optimized website. That is why we have put together a list of tips that can bring decisive results to your session replay analysis with little investment of time and energy.

1. Focus on what’s important

“Data are just summaries of thousands of stories – tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.” – Chip & Dan Heath, Authors of Made to Stick, Switch.

As a website owner, it is understandable to want to look into every session and solve the problems or frustrations of every visitor, but this usually results in a long, endless, and often fruitless analysis. Instead of watching random sessions, go over the most important ones and their timestamps. But how will you know which sessions are important? – You may ask. Today, most session recording tools, such as Capturly, have add-ons that provide a solution to this very problem. By using artificial intelligence to highlight the most essential sessions and timestamping critical user events, you can focus on the key events and important sessions.

2. Follow the trails

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina

Once you have narrowed down the myriad of sessions to review, you can start the actual analysis. You can even begin the examination with some preliminary assumptions as a hypothesis , but after a few sessions, a key user problem may emerge. Further analysis should be built on this particular problem, looking for indications of it. The issue may only occur on a specific operating system, device or browser, so you need to optimize your website based on this information.

3. Complete the analysis with heatmaps

“Visualization gives you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.” – Ben Schneiderman

For a fully optimized website, it is worth combining your session replay tool with other qualitative web analytics such as website heatmaps . So we recommend it choose a tool that gives you both options. Capturly offers three types of website heatmaps for a completely optimized result: click heatmap, scroll heatmap, and segment heatmap. Unlike a session replay, heatmaps show an aggregated view of individual subpages of your website, such as the main page or a product page. Different heatmaps focus on different analytical aspects of your website.

Click heatmap

Click maps visualize the most commonly used elements of your page by showing you which buttons are clicked, analyzing the effectiveness of the structure, finding out what motivates your visitors.

Scroll heatmap

Scroll maps show you how far your visitors scroll down on each page. This is useful because it makes it easier to decide where to put your main call-to-action on different platforms like mobile and desktop. It is also helpful when it comes to deciding on how to optimize the position of the elements.

Segment heatmap

A segment map is a less common type of website heatmap. It allows you to segment your visitors in several ways. You can use it to compare new vs. returning visitors, visitors arriving from certain operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Linux, Android, and Apple’s iOS, etc), and browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera), and visitors arriving from different devices (desktop, laptop computers, mobile phones, tablets).

4. Do not forget about the big picture, aka conversion funnel optimization

“The big picture doesn’t just come from distance; it also comes from time.” – Simon Sinek

With a thorough understanding of the bugs and issues with the user experience on each site, and the strengths and most popular elements of the user interface revealed, it is time to look at the conversion funnel . After all, this is how visitors, leads, and potential customers will encounter our website. Leaks may occur in the funnel after some pages have been optimized. Session replay and heatmaps are excellent tools to optimize your conversion funnel which decreases bounce rate, boosts your sales, and this way increases your profit. Not worth missing, is it?

The Future of Session Replay

Nowadays, although the world of numbers, i.e. quantitative metrics, dominates web analytics, qualitative solutions such as session replay or website heatmaps are also very popular, as they offer websites an unmissable opportunity to stay ahead of the competition. 

That’s why most session replay tool vendors already provide users with monitoring all digital channels like websites or mobile app on a single platform, reducing the impact on the performance of channels while still getting data, and sharing access with business users throughout the enterprise to reduce reliance on IT and business analysts.

​​However, if it has not already been done, greater importance is attached to creating visual maps of all customer journeys, funnels, and individual sessions, also no need for pre-configuration or tagging to accommodate any application changes in real-time will be typical. Compressing high volumes of data, importing and exporting data at a lightning speed, masking PII, and meeting the highest security standards of the industry will be essential properties. 

However, one thing that will change hugely will change the entire session replay analysis. And it is something that is weaving its way into our everyday lives ever more imperceptibly and rapidly. It is nothing other than artificial intelligence, or AI. Artificial intelligence will bring big changes to the lives of website analysts, as they will no longer need to analyze hundreds of sessions because AI will examine them, discover patterns, link them, analyze them, and make recommendations. 

While thousands of developers are working on this, it is worth experiencing the power of session replay analysis for yourself. 

The Internet community and quantity of websites are enormous, but they are dwarfed by the variety of web analytics-related phrases that seem the same but have diverse meanings. We defined pickoff, visit, and session in this post and explored the unlimited possibilities of session analysis. 

Session Replay is a web analytics solution that lets digital teams examine footage of real, anonymous users interacting with their websites or apps. Because the tool itself does not require a lot of knowledge, even inexperienced website owners can use it with confidence. It’s akin to analyzing video footage to figure out what a single visitor wants.

It is a great partner in the website optimization process for all e-commerce players. Since it has many advantages, including helping team members and clients decide by visualizing findings. 

Heatmaps can aid in the optimization of your website depending on data from your analytics tool. Check to see if you have a compelling case for untapped customer journeys. You can improve your user experience by looking at the most popular elements of your website. Click heatmaps, scroll maps, and segment maps can all help you figure out what makes your visitors tick. But do not lose sight of the bigger picture, often known as conversion funnel optimization. 

Artificial intelligence will drastically alter the life of website analysts. Thousands of developers are working on it, but you should see for yourself how powerful session replay analysis may be.

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Session Duration: How to Measure It and What It Reveals

Measuring average session duration often raises more questions than it answers. That’s precisely what makes it so interesting.

As every marketer or analyst knows, any analysis starts with questioning. You just have to figure out what to ask to get the answers you need. With session duration, there’s no reason to bust your head, the questions pop up naturally:

How did visitors spend their time on my site or app? Which pages did they visit and in which order? How many pages did they browse through per visit?

In this post, we’ll discuss how to use session duration in conjunction with other key engagement metrics , as well as how to evaluate it, and improve your average session duration. First, let’s understand what it means.

What Is Session Duration?

A session begins the moment a visitor arrives at your website and ends when they exit or remain inactive for a predetermined time span. As long as the visitor interacts with your site, the session continues.

To determine session duration, Google Analytics – the industry standard for tracking on-site data – relies on page visits (or ‘hits’) within your site. This means that if a user didn’t interact with the page last visited, the time spent on that page is excluded from the session. Keep this in mind when you analyze your metrics.

The average session duration accumulates all sessions within a given period and calculates the average.

How Does Google Analytics Calculate Average Session Duration?

Google Analytics displays session duration in seconds. To calculate the average, Google totals up the lengths of all sessions within the given timeframe and then divides that number by the number of sessions.

Average session duration = total duration of all on-site sessions/number of sessions

For example:

1) Visitor A spent 45 seconds on your site.

2) Visitor B spent 255 seconds on your site.

3) Visitor C spent 180 seconds on your site.

This brings us to a total of 480 seconds . When we divide this by three visitors, we learn that they spent an average of 160 seconds on your site—or 2.6 minutes.

What Is a Good Session Duration?

According to Databox , most digital marketers report an average session duration of 2-3 minutes. One could conclude that anything above three minutes is a good average. But is that a relevant benchmark for you? It feels more like comparing a Formula 1 race car to the entire car industry to figure out how well it performs. The outcome would be useless. A race car is a different class than a microcar or a four-by-four and each has its purpose.

The same goes for your website or app. To evaluate performance, you need to benchmark your digital performance against competitor’s businesses pursuing similar goals. A local store does not want visitors to hang around on their site; they want to get contacted. A content-heavy site with professional articles and videos (such as journals.sagepub.com ) can expect a much longer session duration than a brand awareness site for a physical retail store like pg.com . An interactive app is a different story altogether.

An online survey in 2017 of 181 companies revealed that visitors to business-to-consumer (B2C) companies spend on average 42.3% more time on site than visitors to business-to-business (B2B) companies.

They also found that people spend significantly longer on healthcare and hospital sites . The average there lies at 3:38 per session. Next are financial services with 2:18 and pharmaceuticals and medical devices with 2:16. All other major industries show an average lower than two minutes.

Here’s a look at the average visit duration per key industry, according to Similarweb data:

How Can I Measure My Visitors’ Session Duration With Similarweb?

Website visitors behave differently from app users. Similarweb’s analytics software, therefore, offers separate metrics for websites and apps.

‘ Visit Duration ‘ is the equivalent of Google Analytics’ session duration, but with a small advantage. Similarweb puts data into context to provide you with ready-to-use data for your business decisions.

First, you get to choose your business category, so you can compare your numbers to those of similar businesses.

View the average visit duration for traffic from a country you choose or calculate globally. This helps you understand your audience’s geography and adjust region-specific marketing strategies accordingly. Also, select the period for which to calculate your average.

‘ Time per User ‘ is session duration for app users and lets you measure average app time per user. A session begins when the user logs in to your app and lasts until they close the app or move it to the background for longer than 30 seconds. The next time the app is opened, the software counts a new session.

You can either select a country you want to focus on or get a global average. If you’re getting most of your traffic from app users, then app engagement metrics offer valuable insights into how your app is being used.

What Is the Difference Between Session Duration and Pageviews?

Google counts a pageview each time a new page loads. A session can—and usually does—include multiple pageviews . Now’s the time questions should start popping into your head: How many pages do visitors view during a session? How much time do they spend on each page? How many are unique visitors and how many returning viewers? You got it! Now you’re using session duration as a springboard into your analysis.

To get answers, you need to look at additional metrics. On the platform , you will find the related data displayed compactly. You get all key engagement metrics in one place, making it easy and intuitive to dive into your website performance analysis .

If you are happy with your average session duration, look at your engagement rate . This will tell you if people are active on your site or just window shopping. Similarweb lets you benchmark against your competition and get industry averages per category. For example, eCommerce , digital publishers , and financial services companies have different benchmark averages.

Which Other Engagement Metrics Should You Consider?

• Visits / Unique Visitors – Check the number of visits by unique visitors to understand the scope of visitors on which your average session duration is calculated. If the average session duration is 5 minutes, for example, but you only had two visits from one unique visitor, you can hold off on the celebratory champagne for a bit.
• Daily Active Users – Look at your Daily Active Users (DAUs) to understand real app usage. DAU is a popular metric with Android and iOS app owners to understand the average daily number of users running the app. It allows you to calculate your competitors’ and your market size and growth potential (especially in terms of mobile app monetization ).
• Pages per Visit – Discover how many pages your users visit regularly. This indicates how effective your content is. See which pages get more hits. Check where visitors spend the most time and how they move from page to page. Keep in mind that on Google Analytics, the exit page is excluded from session calculation, unless your visitor interacted. A visitor who spent 20 minutes reading a fascinating 3000-word article and then left, counts as “0”.
• Bounce Rate – Likewise, pages that users bounce off of without continuing to additional on-site pages are not calculated in the average session duration. Because the user did not take any action, a bounced session counts as “0” as well. Make sure to keep a close eye on your bounce rate .
• Desktop vs. Mobile Web Split – Learn which devices – computers or mobile devices – have a longer average session duration and try to understand why. Also, identify potential issues with mobile or desktop display and UX .
• Traffic Sources (Marketing Mix) – Find correlations between traffic sources and average session duration. Do your visitors from email marketing spend more time and view more pages? Is it a profitable marketing channel you should consider expanding? If visitors from organic search have a relatively short session duration and a high number of page visits, they probably zapped through your site looking for something they couldn’t find. It’s time to rethink your SEO content strategy; your keywords may not match the content on your site.

5 Tips to Increase Average Session Duration for Your Website or App

Tip #1: use videos, infographics, and images to make your web pages and blog posts more appealing.

Graphic content draws more attention and is often easier to consume than text. Intro videos and recorded interviews work better than written content. Animated product graphics are highly popular on commercial sites.

Tip #2: Improve your website’s UX for easy navigation

Navigation on your website needs to be smooth and simple. Don’t overwhelm visitors with buttons and graphics. Help them discern calls-to-action, navigation panels, and content at first glance. It is crucial that you understand your customers’ journey and know what might interest them next.

Tip #3: Showcase your best-performing content (in terms of engagement) to raise curiosity

Start by linking the most-read posts, most-watched videos, or most-bought products on your homepage and other pages where people enter your site. Also, add links to related content on the bottom of each page. Plan how you interlink your pages based on your customer journey.

Tip #4: Break up your content to make it accessible and easy to read

Use a readable font and don’t pack the page with text. There should be enough white space to encourage effortless reading. Short paragraphs with headers and subheaders make wordy content easier to digest.

Tip #5: Educate and inform customers with content that has value to them

Make sure all your content is useful to your audience and addresses your customers’ intentions. Present specific information and provide updates to stay current. Educate your readers through tips, reviews, data, insights, and training. Engage users by adding interactive sections and requesting feedback.

Your Turn to Start Questioning

Do you know how your numbers measure up to others in your category? This is one more question that should always pop up in your mind when you check your site metrics. The data you receive through Similarweb’s analytics software puts you one or more steps ahead of the competition. As a result, you won’t be monitoring your average session duration and other metrics in a vacuum, but always within your industry’s landscape.

To learn more about how Similarweb can help you boost your digital presence, download our eBook, How to Build the Perfect Marketing Strategy.

What is session duration?

Session duration is the timeframe in which a user arrives, interacts, and exits your site.

What is a good session duration?

Anything over 3 minutes is generally considered a good session duration.

How is session duration calculated?

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Home » Building Online Stores » The Average Time Spent On a Website: Increase Visitor Engagement

The Average Time Spent On a Website: Increase Visitor Engagement

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The average time spent on a website by website visitors is an awesome clue into how your visitors are responding to your site. It’s believed that the longer time they spend, the more they love your content, the better your website will rank in organic search. But according to SEO experts, that’s actually not true!

High bounce rate, on the other hand, is not what you want. This is when your visitors go to your page and quickly leave again because your website doesn’t have what they’re looking for.

Adobe stated that 38% of people won’t engage with a website due to an unattractive layout or content, highlighting the importance of having a visually appealing website . So, let’s look at average time spent, how it is measured, and how to increase your visitor engagement.

Session Duration: What Is The Average Time Spent On a Website?

The average time spent on a web page ranges depending on the type of web page. For example, ecommerce pages can range from 44 seconds to 1 minute and 22 seconds. While blog posts can range between 2 to 5 minutes.

But the general sweet spot for good average time on a page, across industries, is around 53 seconds. 

According to Gary Illyes, Google’s Trend Analyst, “Dwell time, CTR, whatever Fishkin’s new theory is, those are generally made up crap.” Our in-house SEO experts also said that average time spent on a web page isn’t a ranking factor, stating “Time Spent on Page can be an imperfect metric too, as a ‘Bounce’ will trigger a Time Spent on Page as 0, yet there are a lot of legitimate reasons why a user may only visit one page on a website and therefore be recorded as a ‘Bounce’ when leaving.”

So why is it important? Well it is an important factor for measuring visitor engagement — which can lead you to understanding and reducing your bounce rates.

The average time spent on a website changes due to certain factors that influence a visitor’s behavior , and factors on your web page will either have them scrolling through or clicking away.

Website visitors already have an idea of what they are looking for when they get to your website. Elements like how professional your website looks , how informative it is, and how quickly it loads up are all things that can increase time spent on a website if done right.

Looking at the time spent on your page can lead to discovering what visitors are really looking for, and help you improve your site for them.

Average Time Spent Per Industry

Not only does the average time spent change per website but by industry too. A clothes ecommerce store has an average time on page of around 45 seconds, while a B2B website has over 80 seconds.

Those who come to spend money, like to buy clothing or groceries, will usually know what they want and spend less time on site. Whereas, in industries where visitors come to learn something, they’ll tend to spend more time on your website.

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How Time Spent On a Page Is Measured

The best way to discover how much time people are spending on your web page is through Google Analytics .

But a fun way to start is by downloading a web activity time tracker extension on Chrome, to see where you spend your time most each day — to first understand your own activity online.

How Google Analytics Calculates Time

When someone loads up a web page, data is sent to Google Analytics, and if they move through your website to other pages that time is also sent.

Then navigating through Google Analytics to “Site Content,” and “All Pages” you’ll be able to see an overview of all the times logged on every page. Then, looking at “Avg. Time on Page” shows you how engaging each page is for visitors.

Website Factors That Affect a Page’s Visits

So, you may wonder, what is it that causes a potential lead or reader to leave your website. Here are some of the reasons for high bounce rates we’ve discovered:

• Your site takes too long to load
• Your page is difficult to navigate
• Your content is not what they were looking for
• The content is too overwhelming and not easily digestible
• CTA (Call To Action) buttons are not obvious.
• Pop-ups and ads are irritating for the user
• The site doesn’t seem trustworthy or professional enough
• Font and layout make it hard to read

These are among the main reasons people exit a page quickly. It’s a great plan to look through your competitors’ websites and see what aspects make you want to keep reading or exit altogether.

Best Ways to Increase the Time Spent On Your Page

Increasing time spent on your website can be easily done once you know what’s keeping your particular audience engaged. Each audience is different, and want different information — but here are some ideas to get you going.

Know What Your Audience Needs

Before you can begin to make your website more engaging it’s best practice to get clear on your target market wants and needs. What information do they come to your website for? What has previously gotten good engagement? What articles have the most comments or which products sell well?

Once you know what they want, it makes the rest a lot easier! But even if you’re just starting out and don’t even know how long your website visitors are sticking around, putting the rest of these into practice will give a good chance right from the start.

Add Value In The First Paragraph

When you website visitor arrives at the web page, the two things they likely look at first are your heading and your first chunk of text. This is make or break: if your heading and first paragraph aren’t right, visitors may bounce off the page right away. Make it incredibly clear what value you’re offering, or what question you’re answering if it’s a blog post — and think of it as a trust building exercise.

If you’re able to give them valuable information right away, they’ll likely trust you and stay for more.

Make Content Easily Scannable

This is key in keeping visitors engaged. If they see a blob of text without headings, bolded key information , or a sidebar menu to easily access sections, then you might lose out on potential customers or readers.

Be careful not to bold out all of your text though, as Google’s algorithm won’t see that as being helpful for your visitors. Instead aim to make it as practical as possible for people who arrive on site.

Use Bullet Pointed Lists

Website visitors value chunks of information that is presented in bullet points, since it’s easier to read. And Google will also notice your efforts to make information more digestible, rewarding you with higher ranking.

Make It Easily Digestible With Video, Images & Graphics

Especially for blogs, ecommerce stores, and most websites really, images and videos are essential for engagement. Just adding video to a blog can see a 4x lift to most engagement metrics.

We recommend hiring a creative team to handle your video production, but if you don’t have the budget yet you can create quick product explainer videos using a good phone these days. Then you can test to see if the video increases your engagement on the page.

In our research testing newsletter templates, we found a reduction in bounce rate of 34.09% just by adding images and icons, to help visualize our points. Plus people were reading through to the bottom of our emails where they hadn’t before.

The best way to add images or graphics to your website is to get a graphic designer to create custom images, icons, and graphics in your branded colors for your site.

But if you’re just starting you can always use free stock images you can find online at sites like Unsplash , just remember to check the copyrights to the image you use and give credit where credit is due.

Follow A Set Structure

Depending on what kind of website you have, the structure of a web page changes — even the same website’s different pages will change. Before that gets too confusing let us explain.

Say you have a fitness website where you sell fitness products, and you have a blog on fitness topics too. A blog article page will be different from your products pages. A blog article typically follows a format like:

• Title (or H1)
• Introductory paragraph
• Heading (H2)
• Paragraph expanding on the heading

And that continues, sometimes adding smaller headings to get more in-depth on the topic. While a product page will usually have a large image on one side of the product, and only a small description paragraph of the product, and a price.

The best thing to do if you’re unsure of how to structure your page, is to do some competitor analysis , and scope out what they do well, and see how you might apply your findings to your page.

Optimize Your Web Page for Load Speed & SEO

LoadStorm and Econsultancy noted 1 in 4 visitors abandon a web page when it takes over 4 seconds to load. There’s a lot that goes into optimizing for speed and SEO, from image file sizes, to video formatting, to choosing the right hosting provider. We will put the links to take you through everything below but first, here’s a quick checklist.

• Make headers and footers smaller
• Keep form fields short
• Use a photo resizer to make image file size smaller
• Use JPG or PNG format for photos
• Choose the right format for video
• Opt for a variable bitrate video (lower quality but higher speed)
• Pick a hosting plan that offers plenty of storage, bandwidth, and a high CPU count

If this isn’t making any sense, it’s worth going through the list of articles on the topic we’ve written, as it will explain it fully.

Further Information

• Image Optimization Guide — need to know how to optimize images for your website? We can help!
• Video Optimization Guide — want your videos to load fast on your website? This is the guide for you.
• Checkout Page Optimization Tips — want guidance on how to optimize your checkout page for customers?
• Best Web Hosting Providers — need to know what hosting provider will give you the most speed?

Mobile Optimization

Plenty of website builders offer templates that are mobile optimized, like Wix for example. Learning to make your website mobile friendly is more important than ever. Last year, people spent 39.3% more time on mobile devices in the US than three years ago.

Remove Unnecessary Ads & Forms

Have you ever opened a website and been bombarded with ads, forms, and other pop-ups . It rarely inspires trust or a willingness to explore the website. In some cases you’ll need to run ads to make money from your website, but it’s about insuring they don’t interfere with the visitors search.

It’s good to keep in mind Core Web Vitals CLS (cumulative layout shift) where basically Google penalizes pages when the content jumps around while the page is loading. Have you ever started reading an article and then suddenly an ad appears and the content jumps down and you lose your where you were reading? This not only annoys users but flags negatively for SEO too!

According to SERP Watch, 155% of customers that have seen display ads are more likely to search for brand-specific terms. So they are important in building brand awareness, but around 70% to 80% of people ignore digital ads — so ensure they’re placed in a way that doesn’t cause your bounce rate to increase.

Conclusion: The Average Time Spent On a Website

The general average time spent on a website is 53 seconds,  and hopefully now you have some idea of how to improve your website visitor engagement. Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve gone over:

• Use Google Analytics to see your average time spent
• Optimize site loading speed
• Know your target market and what they’re looking for
• Add value straight away in your title and first paragraph
• Create easily scannable content
• Add videos, images, and graphics
• Follow the right structure for your web page
• Get a fast and roomy hosting provider
• Keep it mobile optimized
• Remove any unnecessary ads or forms

Although average time spent on a website isn’t a ranking factor for Google or other search engines, by continuously working to improve these on your website your visitors will thank you! And ultimately SEO is all about making your website as user friendly as possible, so it’s always a good idea to put the user first.

Let us know if you agree or have any of your own time spent optimizations, in the comments below!

Average Time Spent On a Website FAQs

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7 Website Analytics That Matter Most

Published by Spinutech on October 13, 2015

If you have a Google Analytics account or web metric reporting of any kind, you probably know how easy it is to feel overwhelmed by all the data provided. Sure, there’s lots of information, but is all of it meaningful? And how can you tell if your website is successful? In this post, I’ve outlined 7 universal key performance indicators, their benchmarks, and how to use them to turn your analytics reports into an analytics story you can attribute meaningful and actionable information to. 

There are many other metrics that you should be using for in-depth analysis, but for now I recommend starting with these for evaluating initial site performance. Please note, average based metrics can be very dangerous. For meaningful analytics, segmentation is necessary, and I encourage you to view the following metrics by traffic source.

The number of visits and visitors to your website, reported as sessions and users. Most often referencing the number of visits (sessions) to your site.

Traffic, specifically number of visits, is a fundamental measurement of site reach and growth. It’s helpful at gauging how well your marketing efforts are working, and helps to give a great overall snapshot of site performance. You spend all this time figuring out how to get traffic to your website, but the key is to make sure it’s the right traffic.

How Much Traffic Should Your Website Get?

That depends. Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic number or range for website visits.

Site goals based on a number or range of visits should not be used as an indication of success. Your only goal should be to do better than you did this time last year.

When setting your blog or website traffic goals, start by asking yourself why you want to grow your traffic to begin with and what you intend to do for that audience. Your goal shouldn’t be to grow the number of visits simply for the sake of growth or based on arbitrary numbers, but to grow a dedicated audience that supports your digital business goals. Although I don’t recommend setting goals based on traffic, it is important to know healthy ranges to expect and how you stack up to other similar sites in your industry and region. For a general benchmark, you can find comparisons in the benchmarking report in Google Analytics.

At a general site level, there’s very little value in measuring / pursuing goals in overall site traffic without context from traffic channels and location (if you’re a regionally based business). Additionally, although I do recommend monitoring your month over month traffic performance to look for trends and changes, this isn’t an accurate measure of success due to seasonal traffic fluctuations and other factors. The best measurement of success when it comes to traffic is a year over year performance comparison and growth progression. 

2. Bounce Rate

The percentage of single-page site visits. 

At the site level, bounce rate is useful as a general signal of user engagement and the state of content quality, and helps to identify when problems exist on your site. However, bounce rate is very dependent on the site, and unreliable on its own, and must be used alongside other engagement metrics such as average session duration and pages per visit. 

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

This will honestly depend, as there’s no hard and fast rule. 50% is an industry indicator, but this number should always be taken into consideration with other metrics, the nature of your business and industry. I often see bounce rates that range from 25% - 65% across different industries.

An abnormally high bounce rate is generally a warning that people are leaving your site, and aren’t willing to stick around to explore the rest of your website. 

Bounce rate is often unfairly flagged as a ‘bad’ metric, but it’s not inherently good or bad. It simply states how often site visits stay on the same page from their initial entry. Standard bounce rate (in Google Analytics) has nothing to do with time on site or how quickly a user leaves the site, so if you’re judging the success of your site on a high bounce rate, you’re missing key information about how users are actually interacting. For instance, consider a user that clicked on your site from a search result, spent 5 minutes reading the content on your landing page, then leaves or completes an off-site call to action. In Google Analytics, that’s technically considered a bounce, even though it lead to an interaction. 

A number of factors can be responsible for high bounce rates. Anything from the ease of navigation, slow page loads, poor aesthetics, low or irrelevant quality content. Once you can identify there’s an issue, dig a little further with segmentation to determine why your visitors are leaving.

3. Pages / Session

An average of the number of pages viewed during a visit on your site.

Pages per session broadly gauges how compelling users find your content and the ease of access. 

How Many Pages Per Session Should I Aim For?

The unofficial industry standard is 2 pages per session.

For most sites, the goal is keep users engaged, nurture their interest, and get them to take the next step. More pages per session often indicates that your users are highly engaged and willing to explore more of your site. This is an excellent way of measuring interest and curiosity about your company. Use the behavior user flow reports to follow their click trail.

Additionally, while some would suggest that the greater the number of pages per session, the better, this isn’t always the case. Again, I must stress the importance of considering metrics together to avoid making inaccurate judgements. Consider the average time on site and bounce rate to piece together a better idea of what’s happening at large. A site with a high number of pages per session, low session duration, and a high bounce rate can indicate page flipping behavior due to irrelevant content, poor accessibility, or disinterest. Similarly, a site struggling with low number of pages per session coupled with low session duration, and a high bounce rate can indicate low quality content or user engagement. However, it’s best to always consider your goals. In some instances, this might be exactly what you want for your marketing campaign.

4. Average Session Duration

The average length of all site visits combined.  

Alongside bounce rate and pages per session, average session duration contributes to the user engagement story by illustrating how long users stay on your site. At the site level, it’s a helpful metric for indicating engagement the true value of your site content (time is money, right?). 

What Should Your Average Time on Site Be?

For a good average session duration, the industry standard is 2 - 3 minutes. 

What can happen in two minutes? Two minutes might not seem like much time, but it’s enough time for users to read content and interact with your website. And for this reason, longer sessions indicate more engaged visits. Time is the most precious resource we have as human beings, and this number shows us how much of their time users are willing to sacrifice for your content. 

However, because this number is an average based metric, we must be careful at trusting this number without further context.This metric is most helpful when looking at segmented views, traffic sources and in consideration with other engagement metrics.

5. Conversions

The quantifiable measurement of expected or desired site outcomes, reported as goal completions and conversion rate.

When evaluating overall initial site performance, conversion rate tells us about the effectiveness of your site and marketing efforts. Used with other engagement metrics, goals also contribute to your site’s analytics story by highlighting value as they relate to your business goals.

What is a Good Conversion Rate?

Industry standard conversion rate is 2%.

Goal completions and conversion rate allow us to determine the events on your site that are most important to your business and should be connected in some way to your company’s objectives. 

Not to be confused with events, conversions are the outcomes mentioned in the definition and signify the reason why your site exists. Although events are incredibly important to measuring engagement, events are could be classified as secondary site interactions that are not tied to business objectives. 

This benchmark varies by industry and will completely depend your business goals and the the intention of your site. Generally, a lower than average conversion rate may indicate issues with accessibility, calls to actions, low quality content, and general disinterest. However, if your site engagement is suffering, it’s likely the case that your conversion rate will suffer as well. 

Because this is one of the few digital marketing metrics that reflects your business goals most, conversions are truly most powerful in a segmented view to identify areas on the site that hold the greatest amount of value and where improvement is needed most.

6. Percent of New Sessions

An average percentage of first time visits to your site.

This metric measures how many of your site visits are from first-time visitors or returning visitors, and indicates the efficacy of your marketing efforts at driving new site traffic. However, this is an important KPI to for measuring the ‘stickiness’ of your site, or whether your site is worthy of multiple visits from users. 

What Percentage is Ideal for New Sessions?

No benchmark. I often see a range of 45 - 75%, but maybe the 80/20 rule works for you. 

A good site will have a healthy mix of new and returning site visitors, and this mix will vary depending on your site goals, business and industry. If your goal is to generate leads from your site, you’ll want a healthy number of returning visits as it often takes multiple interactions with your site for users to convert. 

However, don’t get so lost in acquiring new visits that you neglect your existing audience base. Additionally, it’s important to note that not ALL site visitors are worthy of retention. 

7. Click Through Rate

The percentage of clicks resulting from a search impression.

CTR is important for paid advertising and organic listings alike. However, in this post, I’m referring specifically to CTR from organic search.

Click through rate (CTR) helps us understand how well your site is performing from search engine results pages as it measures how many people click your site’s listings. This metric indicates how compelling and relevant your search results are, and the impact of your improvements to search results. 

What is a Good Click Through Rate?

The industry average CTR for all sites is 2%. The average CTR will vary depending on the nature of the query and your industry. 

Click through rate is a powerful metric that allows us to evaluate how well your indexed search result is driving users to click. If your site has a lower than average click through rate, it may indicate that your indexed results may need some work. This could be due to poor keyword targeting, irrelevant content for the user’s search, or you’re missing compelling descriptions or rich snippets. 

Although rankings and impressions are important to understand to monitor overall growth in search results, click through rate offers a better measure of performance from organic search. When paired with bounce rate and other engagement metrics, this metric is also incredibly helpful for identifying issues content efficacy and user engagement. If you’d like to get into more detail, I suggest looking at CTR of the top queries for which your site appeared in search in Google Search Console. Because branded searches typically result in higher CTR than non-branded search, I would add that a true measure of effective marketing using click through rate would be to monitor CTR by non-branded search queries only.

What Metric Should I Use to Determine if My Site is Successful?

All of them. Not any one metric should be used alone to indicate performance success. Each metric presents only a piece of the puzzle, and the full situation can only truly be understood when used together. If you were to focus on only one metric, instead of letting them lend to the story together, you’re missing the bigger picture. This can lead to some dangerous judgments and decisions.

There are hundreds of ranking factors for which Google considers your website, and this post by no means even grazes measurement of these factors. However, as stated before, the seven areas highlighted above simply represent the overarching scope of your site performance and initial engagement with your site. Once you understand your general site metrics, by traffic source, I encourage you to dig further into behavior and page level analysis. Further, always consider your goals when reviewing these metrics, as this provides context for your site’s analytics story.

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Website Traffic Benchmarks by Industry

Table of contents

What if you could unlock the secrets to your industry’s online performance and gain a competitive edge? Our comprehensive report on website traffic benchmarks offers just that, providing valuable insights across various industries to help you navigate the digital landscape with ease. Take a closer look at six critical metrics which present a clear picture of your industry’s current performance.

We examined sessions, users, pageviews, bounce rate, new users, and time on page across 15 industries, considering the unique factors that shape each one. From business types and seasonality to marketing strategies and industry trends, we’ve got you covered. And for an even deeper understanding, our Benchmark Groups offer additional metrics and insights, which companies can join for free.

Are you ready to seize the opportunity and elevate your business to new heights?

Let’s dig into the detailed breakdown of website traffic benchmarks by industry:

Bounce Rate

Average time on page.

• Resources: Website Traffic Industry Benchmark Groups

Across all industries, the median value of website sessions for April 2023 was 3.93K.

Let’s take a closer look at sessions across different industries:

The Apparel & Footwear industry is the standout performer with the highest number of sessions, reaching 18.16K, which is nearly five times the overall median of 3.93K. Automotive, Food, eCommerce and Marketplaces, Education, and Travel & Leisure industries also excel in user engagement, significantly surpassing the median value. In contrast, Construction and Consulting & Professional Services report fewer sessions, indicating lower engagement. Other industries, such as Health Care, Health & Wellness, and Technology, align closer to the median, demonstrating average user interaction.

PRO TIP: To increase the number of sessions , create tangential content that targets low-hanging fruit keywords. Focus on topics related to your industry or niche, but not directly about your core offerings, and optimize for specific, long-tail search queries. This strategy enables you to reach a wider audience, tap into less competitive keywords, and drive more targeted traffic to your website. Additionally, ensure that your content is well-optimized and includes internal links for SEO to improve search rankings and user engagement.

To learn about growing your traffic , Brendan Hufford, the founder of Growth Sprints, shares how he grew ActiveCampaign’s traffic by 20% in just 30 days in our recent podcast episode.

Across all industries, the median number of users for April 2023 was 3.02K.

Let’s take a closer look at the number of users across different industries:

The users benchmarks really shine a light on notable imbalances across industries. The Apparel & Footwear industry outpaces all others in user counts, boasting 21.41K users, more than seven times the median of 3.02K. Automotive, eCommerce and Marketplaces, Education, Food, and Travel & Leisure industries also exhibit strong user counts, well above the median, indicating strong user bases. In contrast, Construction and Consulting & Professional Services record fewer users, while the remaining ones align closely with the median.

PRO TIP: To effectively track users on your website , focus on the ratio of new vs. returning visitors. This helps you understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns in attracting new users and the success of your content in retaining current ones. Analyze user demographics and behavior to refine your marketing strategies, and use this information to optimize user experience, increase engagement, and drive conversions.

Across all industries, the median value of pageviews for April 2023 was 8.82K.

Let’s take a closer look at the number of pageviews across different industries:

The pageviews benchmarks also show incredible variance between industries. The Apparel & Footwear sector stands out with an impressive 192.86K pageviews, more than 20 times higher than the median value. In stark contrast, the Consulting & Professional Services sector has the lowest number of pageviews at 4.24K, which is less than a third of the median. Industries such as Automotive, eCommerce & Marketplaces, and Education exhibit significant above-average Pageview counts, while the Construction sector falls below.

PRO TIP: Track your website’s pageviews using a cumulative line graph to easily monitor growth or declines month-over-month. This helps you spot trends quickly and make any necessary adjustments to improve performance. Additionally, identify and leverage your website’s top-performing pages by using table visualizations. That way, you can concentrate your efforts on high-performing content, which can drive further engagement and conversions.

Across all industries, the median bounce rate for April 2023 was 60.78%.

Let’s take a closer look at bounce rates across different industries:

The bounce rate metrics exhibit a relatively narrow range of values among industries, with most clustering near the overall median value. The Construction industry experiences the highest bounce rate at 67.24%, only about 7% higher than the median. On the other hand, the Real Estate and Apparel & Footwear sectors enjoy the lowest bounce rates, both at roughly 14% below the median. The remaining industries have bounce rates that closely align with the median value, demonstrating a general trend towards similar bounce rate levels across industries.

PRO TIP: The best ways to improve your bounce rate are to improve the user experience of your website and to ensure your content aligns with user search intent. Optimizing load times and interlinking content are all basic steps. Faster sites are more pleasant to browse through, and speed definitely helps with search rankings. Optimize file sizes, eliminate code bloat, and streamline the design to ensure that visitors who visit your website stick around. 

Across all industries, the median number of new users for April 2023 was 3.66K.

Let’s take a closer look at new users across different industries:

The new users benchmarks show significant disparities among different sectors. Apparel & Footwear leads the pack with 30.49K new users, more than eight times the median value of 3.66K. On the other hand, the Health & Wellness sector has the lowest number of new users at 1.43K, well below the median. The Construction sector is close by with 1.7K new users. Industries such as Education, Food, and eCommerce & Marketplaces show above-average new user counts, while the remaining sectors cleave closer to the median.

PRO TIP: The first step is to look closely at your analytics and find solutions that draw targeted new users . Then, based on your findings and goals, you can consider design changes, SEO or marketing strategy updates, and generating more backlinks. Identify what your target audience needs help with and dial in your content to provide it.

Across all industries, the median value for the average time on page for April 2023 was 1m 31s.

Let’s take a closer look at the average time on page across different industries:

The average time on page varies marginally across industries, with most adhering closely to the median of 1m 31s. The Construction, SaaS, and Technology industries exhibit the longest engagement, all around 15 seconds above the median. In contrast, the Food industry records the shortest time on page at 1m 8s. However, data is missing for the Apparel & Footwear, eCommerce and Marketplaces, and Travel & Leisure industries, limiting the scope of the analysis.

PRO TIP: The best way to ensure visitors spend more time on your site is to make your website easy to navigate and mobile-friendly. You can also add interactive multimedia elements like videos, polls, quizzes, graphs, or infographics to make your content more engaging and encourage visitors to spend more time on your website.

Website Traffic Benchmark Groups for All Industries

The data presented in this article is sourced from Databox Benchmark Groups , which are organized by industry. These groups allow companies to anonymously share their performance data, helping everyone gain insights and improve their strategies to drive more traffic to their websites.

To make this data even more valuable, we encourage you to join the relevant Benchmark Group for your industry or the group for all industries and contribute your own data. The more contributors we have, the more valuable the data becomes for everyone.

Below is a list of Universal Analytics Industry Benchmark Groups we used to create this research report. Simply click on the link for your industry to review the group and join it.

• Apparel & Footwear
• Construction
• Consulting & Professional Services
• eCommerce & Marketplaces
• Health Care
• Health & Wellness
• Information Technology & Services
• Industrials & Manufacturing
• Real Estate
• Travel & Leisure

Leveraging Benchmark Groups to Drive Traffic and Growth

Harnessing the power of website traffic benchmarks can make a significant impact on businesses seeking to fine-tune their online presence and make informed data-driven decisions. By assessing your website traffic metrics against industry benchmarks, you will uncover crucial insights about your position relative to competitors, pinpoint opportunities for growth, establish realistic objectives, and ultimately refine your online strategy for better performance.

When you join a benchmark group , you’re not just helping us expand and refine our data – you’re also unlocking valuable insights that can help your business thrive. Benchmark Groups offer a range of benefits for users, including:

• Identify emerging trends and opportunities: Benchmark Groups provide valuable information that can help you spot new trends and opportunities within your industry, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on these insights.
• Optimizing resource allocation: By understanding how your performance compares to others in your industry, you can make more informed decisions about where to allocate resources to achieve the best possible results.
• Improving client and investor relations: Sharing benchmark data with clients and investors can build trust and credibility, showcasing your company’s competitive edge and commitment to excellence.

And that’s not all.

Are you ready to take your digital performance to the next level? Join our Benchmark Groups today to unlock the full potential of website traffic benchmarks, and contribute to the growth of a vibrant community. Your participation not only enhances your own business performance but also enriches the data and insights available to everyone. Let’s work together to make better, data-driven decisions for the future of our businesses.

Marketing Research Analyst at Databox. Being an experienced Strategic and Creative Planner, with more than 15 years of practice, Nevena is passionately dedicated to untying the knots and entanglements of marketing, sales, and human behavior in order to deliver understandable, useful, and actionable insights for businesses.

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Misunderstood Metrics: Time on Page / Average Session Duration

Lost Time in Google Analytics

Google Analytics Time on Page and  Google Analytics Session Duration are typical examples, until you discover one not-so-obvious fact: Google can’t measure the time a user spent looking at the last page of their visit to your site .

This happens because Google uses the time of the  next  page view to determine the time you spent looking at the current page. On the last page, there is no  next  page recorded, so the Time on Page is unknown (recorded as 0) and the Session Duration ends when they opened the last page.

Myth: Bounces Didn’t Read Your Page

For sessions where the user only looked at one page (a “bounce”), as in the Visitor 2 example above, the Time on Page and the Session Duration is 0. This isn’t because Google knows they left right away — it is because they have no idea of when the user left so they couldn’t calculate the Time on Page , and they consider the lack of a value   means   0 .

It could have been 10 seconds or 10 minutes; they don’t know, so they say 0 . Did the user read your web page? They don’t know . Maybe. Maybe not. All we know is that they didn’t look at another page on your site within the next 30 minutes (that’s how long a default session lasts).

There are some techniques ( read Measuring Time On Bounce Page ) you can use to see if people are actually reading your pages, even if they bounce. For example, a particular landing page with a high bounce rate like this one (87%), I discovered that 75% of users were still reading the page after 60 seconds; 43% were still reading   after 5 minutes ! These “bounces” were highly engaged with the content on the page! But 87% of them had a session duration of 0.

(Approximately) Average Time on Page

What does this lack of data do to our metrics? With Time on Page , if the page is not the last page in the visit, the time is accurate. The problem is with exit pages: the Time on Page is zero. Google Analytics actually takes this into account when calculating the Avg Time on Page ( ref ), removing the influence of the lack of exit page data:

If a page does not have a high exit rate ( % Exits ), then the Avg Time on Page is a pretty good reflection of the real average. With a higher exit rate, you should have less confidence in the average metric because the average is based on only the portion of total users that went on to visit another page.

Higher % Exit = Lower confidence in Avg. Time on Page

(Questionable) Average Session Duration

The Session Duration metric does not have the same capability to ignore the effect of exit pages. Every session has an exit page, and if there aren’t many pages in the visit, the loss of that last page timing can have a massive impact on the total. In the extreme case of a “bounce” visit that has only one page viewed, the Sessions  count is 1 but the Session Duration is 0!

In calculating the Avg Session Duration , Google uses a simple calculation ( ref ):

This simple calculation is heavily influenced by the lack of timing on the exit pages, especially for sites with low Pages / Session values. For this reason, using  Avg Session Duration  as a key performance indicator is not recommended as fluctuations in the number of pages viewed per session, the number of bounces, and the number of sessions can all influence the metric.

If you have a high Bounce Rate , the Avg Session Duration will drop significantly — even lower than the Avg Time on Page ! This confuses a lot of people — the  Avg Time on Page  calculation removes the effect of Bounces ( Exits) ,  but the Avg Session Duration  calculation includes the Session count for those Bounces which reduces the average.

The Effect of Events on Session Duration

If you track events in your webpages, Google’s calculation of Session Duration gets a little different; the end of the session will shift to the last interaction hit. This means if you track things like file downloads with events, and if a visitor downloads a file at the end of the last page, then the session duration is calculated to the time of that event (note: This does not happen if the event is a non-interaction type).

The overall effect is to alter Session Duration for sessions with exits on pages where events occurred — something you can’t always predict. Unless you can trigger the event on all exit pages, this actually makes the measurement less consistent and therefore less useful as a key performance metric.

Bottom Line

The Google Analytics metrics for Avg Time on Page are a good indication of the time users spent looking at a page on your site if the page has a low % Exit .

Do not use the Avg Session Duration as a key performance indicator as it is heavily influenced by Pages / Session , Bounce Rate and Sessions count.

Explore Your Own Data in Microsoft Excel

See how Google Analytics measures the time on your own website pages. Verify that the Time on Page is only recorded for pages that are not the exit page. There is a free add-in for Microsoft Excel that can download your Google Analytics data; no credit card required.

Download the Analytics Edge Core Add-in for Microsoft Excel   ( learn more ) and the workbook:  Google-Analytics-Time-on-Page-Exploration.xlsx

Look for groupings of the values in City+Service Provider+Session Duration+Count of Sessions — rows with the same values in each of these columns are most likely part of a single ‘session’, or a single user’s website visit. Each page visited will be shown in separate rows. The first page is identified as an ‘entrance’ and the last page of the session is an ‘exit’.

Discover Other Misunderstood Metrics:

• Next Page Path
• Sessions for Pages
• Unique Events
• Custom Dimensions
• Count of Sessions
• Time on Page/Session Duration
• Bounce Rate

Blog / Analytics / AVERAGE TIME-ON-PAGE VS. AVERAGE SESSION-DURATION IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

AVERAGE TIME-ON-PAGE VS. AVERAGE SESSION-DURATION IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Posted by gmi blogger posted in analytics.

As more and more successful companies enter the data-driven digital growth phase, metrics that measure how visitors interact with a website and how many visitors interact with a website are gaining importance as a KPI or a measurement of the success of a brand website.

Tools like Google Analytics can help measure these attributes. In this blog, we will focus on two prominent metrics associated with web analytics: average time-on-page and average session duration. We will discuss what they mean, how they are measured, and the kind of information they can provide about a website’s performance. To begin with, let’s start by defining the terms “time-on-page” and “session-duration.”

TIME ON PAGE

The time-on-page for a web page is calculated by the time difference between the point when a person lands on the page and when they move on to the next one. Clicking a link to another page on the website is the trigger that causes the time spent on the previous page to be calculated. If the person exits the website without going to any other page, then the time-on-page is zero.

SESSION DURATION

Session duration is defined as the time frame during which there are regular active interactions occurring between a user on a website. The session is timed out when there is no activity from the user for a predefined time duration (30 minutes by default). Session duration takes into account the entire time that a person spends on a website. It is effectively the sum of the time-on-page for the different pages that a person visits on a website during a single session. The time-on-page for the last page, from where the visitor exits, will be zero.

Where to find Average Session Duration in Google Analytics?

You can find your website’s average session duration in some of the reports in GA that are related to how users view your website and pages, such as:

• Landing page report

Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages report, which shows  Avg. Session Duration of each landing page  

• Channels Report

Acquisition –> All Traffic –> Channels Report, shows Avg. Session Duration of each channel.

Those mentioned above are a few examples. Other than these reports, you can see the metrics Avg. Session Duration in Audience Overview report, Mobile report, Demographics report, Geo reports, etc.

Where can you find the Average Time on a Page in Google Analytics?

You can find your website’s average time on the page in a few reports, like

• Behavior Overview Report

Behavior > Overview report, which shows overall Avg. Time on Page of the website

• All Pages Report 

Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report, which shows Avg. Time on Page of each page

THE AVERAGES

Now that we are aware of the meanings of the terms “time-on-page” and “session duration,” let us move on to “average time-on-page” and “average session duration.”

Average Time on Page

Average Time On Page is used for measuring the average amount of time spent by all users on a single page of a website. It is restricted to the time spent on non-exit pages and does not include exit pages or bounces. 

Average Time On Page Calculation Formula

Average Session Duration

Average Session Duration is used for measuring the average amount of time spent per session on a website. The total time spent across sessions is divided by the total number of sessions to get the result.

Average Session Duration Calculation Formula

Wondering Why the Average Session Duration is much less than the Average Time-on-Page?

While the time-on-page can never be greater than the session duration for a single session, we can often observe the opposite when considering the averages for multiple sessions. This is because we exclude the number of exits when calculating the average time-on-page, whereas all visits are taken into account for calculating the average session duration. Average session duration is the total duration of all sessions divided by the total number of sessions.

This means that all of our 0-second sessions that were the result of bounced sessions will weigh down the average session duration across all of our sessions. As a result, the higher your bounce rate is, the lower your average session duration will be. 

The Session Duration metric does not have the same capability to ignore the effect of exit pages. Every session has an exit page, and if there aren’t many pages in the visit, the loss of that last page timing can have a massive impact on the total. In the extreme case of a “bounce” visit that has only one page viewed, the Sessions count is 1, but the Session Duration is 0! 

For this reason, using Average Session Duration as a key performance indicator is not recommended, as fluctuations in the number of pages viewed per session, the number of bounces, and the number of sessions can all influence the metric.

What’s the Difference between ‘Average Session Duration’ and ‘Time on Page’ in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics calculates average session duration by dividing the total duration of all sessions (in seconds) during a specified time frame by the total number of sessions during that same time frame. While the ‘time on page’ metrics measures the amount of time a user spends on a single page during a session.

The following example will help you to understand the metrics average session duration, average time on page and time on each pages.

How Is Session Duration & Time On Page Computed On A Single Page Visit?

The Total Session Duration is calculated as the time difference between the last interaction hit and the first interaction hit in a single session. In the below demonstrated scenario, the person exits without any hit, so the last interaction is zero.

The time-on-page is simply the time difference between the pageview hit of the next page to the current page. In this scenario, the time-on-page will be “0” seconds since the person did not go to any other page.

In short, session duration and time on the page will be zero seconds for single-page visits.

To better understand these terms, we have taken three different cases of how a visitor can interact with a website.

• A person lands on Page A
• Spends 30 secs there.
• Exits the page

The  time-on-page and session duration will both be “0” secs  since they  did not go to any other page .

• Spends 30 secs there
• Clicks on a link to go to Page B
• Spends 20 secs there

The time-on-page for Page A is 30 secs, and 0 secs for Page B. The total session duration is 30 + 0 = 30 secs.

• Spends 30 seconds there
• Spends 20 seconds there before going to Page C
• Spends 10 seconds on Page C
• He clicks on an external link on Page C to moves on to another website

The time-on-page for Page A is 30 secs, for Page B is 20 secs and for Page C is 10 secs. Since the user clicked on an external link on page C after spending 10 seconds there, it  will be recognized as a hit  rather than an exit.  Clicks are viewed as interactive events . Since the  last known interaction  with the page is after 10 secs, the time-on-page for Page C will be 10 secs. The total session duration therefore is 1 minute (30 secs (Page A) + 20 secs (Page B) + 10 secs (Page C)).

  FALLING SHORT

You’ll notice that two of the three cases we explored above don’t offer us an accurate picture of the time that our visitors spent on the website. This is true for both the time-on-page and the session duration. A person could spend 5 minutes on a page, and it would count for nothing if they were to exit directly from there.

Top 10 Tips to Improve Average Session Duration

An increased average session duration indicates an improved conversion rate and reduced bounce rate. Here are a few tips to improve the average session duration:

1. Interactive content 

Interactive content such as videos, GIFs, infographics, calculators, quizzes, etc. helps to improve average session duration as they can hold user attention much more than texts. Videos and other interactive tools keep users on a page for at least a few minutes. And by reinforcing such content with a strong CTA, users can be encouraged to spend more time on your website.

2. Internal linking

When people are interested in a topic, they make an effort to know more about it. By strategically providing internal links to other content on the website, you can direct users to other pages, increasing session duration. Using compelling anchor text will prompt the users to click and explore.

3. Relevant titles

Clickbait titles are a common strategy content creators use to catch user attention. While it is a great idea, it often backfires if the content does not match the title. Users who take action after seeing an interesting title and are met with totally unrelated content will abandon the action. This leads to a high bounce rate and low session duration. So, use relevant titles and give your users what you promise. 

4. Quality copy

A copy should be simple and effective. Properly structured content with a clear introduction, subsections, small paragraphs, and common words helps create a good impression on readers. Good formatting is essential as most readers scan the content rather than read every word. Use punctuations, bullet points, and headers and create content that is easy to read.

5. Content updation

Updating old content, such as blogs with high traffic, can increase the session duration. For example, if your website has a 1000-word blog that drives traffic, by refreshing it and making it 2500 words, you will be able to keep your readers on the website for a longer duration.

6. Search intent

Understanding user search intent can help you create content that meets the requirements of your target audience. Identifying what people are searching for, how they land on your website, and what actions they take from there can help you figure out if your content is in alignment with users’ search intent. If it is not, the bounce rate will be high and session duration will be low. 

7. Clean UI

A cluttered UI adversely affects the users’ focus and drives them to leave the website. Unnecessary imagery, difficult navigation, multiple ads, frequent pop ups, etc. will distract the user and cause them to abandon the website even if they find the content engaging. 

A summary at the top of a page that describes the essence of an article in a few words can hook the readers. Getting an idea of what is included in the article right away motivates readers to stick and read through it. The summary helps to create interest and also gives the readers an idea about the uniqueness of an article. 

9. Informational articles

Even though the internet is filled with information, investing in informational articles never fails. They help to build the credibility of your business. Moreover, most informational articles are lengthy, with an average read time of more than 5 minutes. Thus, it is a great way to enhance session duration. 

10. Image links

Creating image links and directing users to a different page when they click on the image, from where they can get more information, is a proven tactic to improve session duration time. Moreover, if the image link is related to the products/services your business offers, it can also help to increase your sales. 

Top 10 Ways to Improve Average Time On Page

The average time on the page is an indicator of the effectiveness of your website’s content. To improve the average time on page metrics, you can utilize some strategies, which we are going to discuss in this section.

1. Table of contents

A table of content helps users get a quick overview of the entire content and go directly to the section that speaks to them the most. This holds particularly true for lengthy articles. If readers have to strain to find a relevant section, they may not be interested and wouldn’t engage with the content. 

2. Direct writing style

If the content is direct and straight to the point, there are more chances of people reading it. Jargons, fluff, and unstructured content will shoo away readers. Purposeful content with a natural tone and effective writing style improves the time on the page.

3. Open in new tab

By setting all links to open in a new tab, you avoid the risk of losing readers from a page whenever they click on a link. This means after exploring the new page, the reader will go back to the initial page as it will still be open on another tab. This will increase the average time on the page. 

4. Exit intent

When a user leaves a website, using pop-ups will give users the chance to change their minds and continue browsing the website. It could be information regarding offers, discounts, subscriptions, etc. You can target abandoning users and retain them by properly using exit intent.

5. Unique data

Hooking readers with data is a well-used strategy by content creators. While it is a great tactic, most of the top-ranking pages for a keyword on Google have the same data. To make your content stand out, you can conduct your own research through surveys, polls, etc. and publish the unique data in your article. Thus people will spend enough time exploring your unique content. 

6. Added value

Providing additional value with your blog posts such as presentation templates , checklists, etc. can help to keep people engaged. Tell the readers how they will find a bonus for them in the middle of the article or at the end. Chances are that they will read the article and interact with it. 

7. Curious language

Talking to your readers in a language that inspires curiosity does wonder. Phrases like “Want to know an example?” or “What’s more” instills an interest in the readers, prompting them to continue reading. Creating a curiosity gap is a psychological trick that helps to maintain attention. 

8. Actionable content

Creating content that provides step-by-step information towards taking action will really keep readers glued to the content. When you give users such detailed, actionable guidance, they get so much value out of it, so they spend more time on the page.

9. Multiple formats

When it comes to consuming content, people make different choices depending on the context. So, by providing content in multiple formats, you cater to all their needs, thus improving the time on the page. A blog post can also be offered as audio, video, and slides, and people can choose which format they want to consume.

10. Credibility

Users stay on websites they feel they can trust. To create this trust factor, you need to build credibility through your website content. This can be done by showcasing your story, client lists, awards, testimonials, etc. Providing social media profile links and human images (of team or clients) also plays a positive role in building credibility. 

A COUPLE OF ALTERNATIVES TO MEASURE USER ENGAGEMENT

A key point we can derive from this is that marketers and businesses should stop focusing on just these time-based metrics to judge the performance of a page or a website. Thankfully, Google Analytics offers multiple alternatives that can provide a much better picture of a website’s performance. Let’s explore two of these below:

Google Analytics allows us to monitor a user’s actions on a page, like clicking a menu button, opening an accordion, etc. These can also be used to understand how the visitor interacts with the page and are a much more reliable measurement than time-on-page. This is shown in Case 3 above.

Virtual Pageview

Google Analytics offers us the provision to create custom events. Custom events can be used to set a trigger at a specific time point. If you have set your trigger for say, 1.30 mins, and the visitor was to stay on the page for 1.30 mins or more, it could be counted as a pageview. This is better known as a virtual pageview. Any time below 1.30 mins would be counted as zero, and any time above it would be counted only if you were to click a link on the page. This can be especially useful when you have specific conversion goals.

Bounce Rate

A “bounce” occurs when someone visits your website and leaves without interacting further with your site. Your bounce rate shows the percentage of your visitors who bounce off your site. By default, Google Analytics considers visitors to have interacted with your site if they visited at least one additional page. High bounce rates (when calculated correctly) are often symptoms of deeper problems like user experience issues or poor targeting.

Pages Per Session

Pages per session is the average number of pages a person views in a given session. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of pageviews by the total number of sessions. This metric can be helpful for gauging how sticky and engaging your website is. For example, if your website has an average page per session of 3, this means the average user visits three pages before leaving your website. 

This metric is a standard option in Google Analytics that can be used to understand visitor behavior and optimize the site with the knowledge gained. Low page depth values are an indication of an information architecture that does not draw users far enough into the offer. But having a lot of page views does not necessarily mean that the information architecture is good. The decisive factor is what the website is supposed to achieve and whether readers can find what they are looking for.

We hope that we’ve helped you gain a better perspective of these terms and how they can be leveraged to better understand your website’s performance. 

It’s important to note that even with their limitations, average time-on-page and average session-duration are not completely unreliable metrics. In fact, they can be fairly accurate if the exit rate is low. Further, when used as part of the whole spectrum of metrics available on Google Analytics, they can provide valuable insights towards improving a website’s performance.

Avg. time-on-page and session duration data helps you accurately identify the user engagement story of your website. It’s a valuable metric, as you can be aware of the value of your website content. After all, time is money! GMI has been offering result-oriented Google analytics consulting services for all kinds of businesses in the Middle East since the early 2000s. Give us a call now , and let us accelerate your growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are sessions in google analytics.

A session refers to all the interactions that a user has with your website during a particular period of time. Whether he spends 2 seconds on a page or 2 hours browsing different pages of your website, it is considered one session. However, after 30 minutes of inactivity, the session ends and a new one begins.

What is a good average session duration?

According to contentsquare.com the average user spends 4 minutes and 24 seconds per visit across all industries and for databox.com, a reasonable benchmark for average session duration is between 2-3 minutes. A good average session duration might be anything above three minutes.

What is a good average time on page in Google Analytics?

According to Contentsquare’s 2020 Digital Experience Benchmark report of 20+ billion user sessions in 25+ different countries for 11+ industries, the Average Time on Page across industries is 62 seconds.

Why is the average session duration less than time on page?

This happens because 0-second sessions that were the result of bounced sessions will weigh down the average session duration across all of our sessions. This means that exit and bounce pages are excluded from the average session duration metric.  As a result, the higher your bounce rate is, the lower your average session duration will be.

Why is the average session duration greater than time on page?

Average session duration could be greater than time on page if a non-bounce session starts on the landing page or if the session starts on a Page A and has more pageviews of page A.

What does it mean when your average session duration is zero in Google Analytics?

When your average session duration is zero, it simply means your visitors have only visited one URL on your website. It doesn’t imply they are not interested in your website at all. For example, if someone lands on any particular page of your website and then exits without clicking on any link or video, etc., then your average session duration will remain zero.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Statement from President Joe   Biden on Iran’s Attacks against the State of   Israel

Earlier today, Iran—and its proxies operating out of Yemen, Syria and Iraq—launched an unprecedented air attack against military facilities in Israel. I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms.

At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week.  Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles. 

I’ve just spoken with Prime Minister Netanyahu to reaffirm America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel.  I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.

Tomorrow, I will convene my fellow G7 leaders to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.  My team will engage with their counterparts across the region.  And we will stay in close touch with Israel’s leaders.  And while we have not seen attacks on our forces or facilities today, we will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl. After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl. After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl.

• Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
• Tyler Gillett
• Stephen Shields
• Melissa Barrera
• Dan Stevens
• Alisha Weir
• 11 User reviews
• 47 Critic reviews
• 63 Metascore

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Angus Cloud 's final role before his passing in July 2023. Although production wasn't completed until months after his death due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Cloud still managed to film all of his scenes before production was shut down.

Abigail : [from trailer] What can I say? I like playing with my food.

• Connections Features Pantry Panic (1941)

User reviews 11

• Apr 13, 2024

New and Upcoming Horror

• How long will Abigail be? Powered by Alexa
• April 19, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official Instagram
• Project X Entertainment
• Radio Silence Productions
• Wild Atlantic Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 49 minutes

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