Session Duration
what is it?
how does this help us?
are there any problems?
yes!
session time (direct feeder) is riddled with problems
ppl who forget to end session skew data
last page returns no data UNLESS interaction events
what should we be aiming for?
google says anything over 30sec is ok
really depends on what you want visitors to do
how long people are looking at your site
compare it to:
- bounce rate ( High bounce rates create low session duration)
- check performance of local comparisons (if all the BIng traffic has high ASD, it's working...)
" total duration of all sessions (in seconds) / number of sessions."
If there are no engagement hits on the last page, then the duration is calculated as follows:
The time of the first hit on the last page - the first hit on the first page
If there are engagement hits on the last page, then the duration is calculated as follows:
The time of the last engagement hit on the last page - the first hit on the first page
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
Higher % Exit = Lower confidence in Avg. Time on Page
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.
does data sampling have an impact?
you can measure yourself to get a subjective ballpark
if we're happy to have it as a metric, what might it indicate, how might we improve it?
cannot use in a vacuum
if ASD is how, pages per session is low, and BR is high, there's usually a problem
used to be called "time on site"