In web analytics, the winning businesses will be the ones who know
which metrics are most important to the success of their site. Only certain
metrics will apply to your businesses current goals and knowing which to follow
most closely will help you manage your time and develop solutions more
effectively.
According to Kaushik (2010), “average time on site is perhaps the most
common web analytics metric on Earth.” Also known as dwell time, average session
length or visit duration; the metric measures “the length of time in a session
and the calculation is typically the timestamp of the last activity in the
session minus the time stamp of the first activity of the session” (Reed
College of Media, 2014).
Looking at your own average time on site and it seems low? Don’t dwell
on it! The way to look at the metric depends on your industry. If you are a
movie-listing site for the local theatre, such as the Fridley Theatre site
below, your average visitor may only stay a matter of seconds as they can
quickly find the times available for the movie they wish to view. However, an e-commerce retailer would want
longer visit duration as it would likely indicate more items in the shopping
cart.
Source: Fridleytheatres.com
Whether your goal is short or long visit duration, knowing what allows
you to get there is important in accurately analyzing your web metrics.
According to Poirer (2012), “when people find content that means something to
them, they keep going deeper, and we know that the trend leans towards them
sharing content they enjoy with their friends.” Find what drives these
Influencers and apply it across your site to improve the visit duration know
matter what referral a visitor comes through from.
Visit duration can also be utilized to evaluate changes made to a
process, especially in e-commerce. According to Haden (n.d.), “say you
streamline your checkout process; if sales remain steady or (hopefully
increase) while ASL [average session length] decreases that should indicate
transactions are taking place more quickly.” Transactions taking place more
quickly indicates a better customer service experience for your customers and
the less likely they’ll abandon their cart.
Measuring visit duration is a great metric to monitor consumer engagement.
Keep in mind to look at the metric in the way that most effectively helps you
to reach your business goals and ensure it is trending positively toward those
goals.
References
Haden, Jeff. (n.d.). Web metrics you should be watching all the time. Inc.
Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/web-metrics-average-session-length-vs-repeat-visitor-ratio.html
Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability
& science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing. ISBN#
978-0470529393
Poirier, Marc. (2012, July 27). 5 digital marketing metrics that
matter. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/07/27/marketing-metrics/
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