Benchmarking Average Session Duration: What it Means and How to Improve It

There are tons of metrics that marketers track in Google Analytics to measure engagement.

Bounce rate, pageviews, new vs. returning users, goal completions: the list goes on and on.

So where does something like average session duration fall in terms of importance?

According to our research, average session duration is thefourth-most-tracked Google Analytics metric. Only users, bounce rate, and sessions ranked higher.

But like bounce rate, average session duration is one of those signals based on merit, meaning it’s hard to game it. You can’t improve it by advertising, by stuffing more keywords onto your page, or by writing more clickbaity headlines.

So to find out how youcanimprove your average session duration, we asked dozens of marketers to share how they keep users on their sites for longer.

Here’s what we learned.

Table of Contents:

• What Is Average Session Duration?
• How Does Google Analytics Calculate It?
• Average Session Duration vs. Average Time on Page
• Benchmark: What Is a Good Average Session Duration?
• 9 Ways to Increase Your Average Session Duration

What Is Average Session Duration?

Average session duration is a Google Analytics metric that reports the average amount of time users spend on your website. You can find your website’s average session duration in Google Analytics by navigating to Audience > Overview.

But to fully understand what average session duration means, we need to answer a few more questions.

What Is a Session in Google Analytics?

A session in Google Analytics is simply a visit to your website. A session starts when someone views a page on your website and ends either when they leave your website or after 30 minutes of inactivity. Everything a user does during that visit is counted as a single session.

If that same user comes back a few days later and visits your website again, that’s counted as another session. So if one person visits your site 15 separate times during a week, those 15 visits would be counted as 15 sessions.

When a session starts, Google Analytics begins timing the session. That timer stops when the user ends the session via leaving your site, or it stops when the user has been inactive for 30 minutes.

The reason the timer stops after 30 minutes of inactivity is to prevent your average session duration from being artificially inflated in cases where, for example, someone accidentally left your website open on his/her work computer all weekend.

How Does Google Analytics Calculate Average Session Duration?

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.

For example, say in one week you had three website visitors:

• Visitor #1 spent 180 seconds on your site.
• Visitor #2 spent 60 seconds on your site.
• Visitor #3 spent 360 seconds on your site.

To calculate your average session duration, Google Analytics would add together the duration of each session (180 + 60 + 360) and divide the sum (600) by the number of sessions (3) to get an average session duration of 200 seconds, or 3 minutes and 20 seconds (which is sometimes displayed in Google Analytics as 00:03:20).

However, there is one caveat that makes average session duration a tricky metric. In order for Google Analytics to calculate the time spent on the last page a user visits,the user must take an action on that page(clicking a link, playing a video, filling out a form, etc.).

For example, when a user clicks into one of your blog posts from search, the session timer starts. It continues when that user clicks on a link to another blog post. But unless the user takes another action on that second page, the time spent reading that second blog post isn’t counted as part of the session duration.

Instead, the session duration would only count the time between when the first page loaded and when the user clicked on the link to go to the second blog post. The time spent reading the second blog post (but not interacting with it), is not counted as part of the session duration.

For that reason, it’s often important to keep an eye on both average session duration and average time on page.

Average Session Duration vs. Average Time on Page

Average session duration in Google Analytics measures how much time—on average—that visitors spent on your website as a whole.Average time on page, on the other hand, measures how long—on average—that visitors spent on a specific page of your website.

While these are two different metrics, they can support each other to help you get a better sense of how long users are spending on your site.

For example, say you notice that a specific page of your website is a top exit page (meaning many sessions end on that page).

If you know that there isn’t an opportunity for users to take additional actions on that page (no videos to play, etc.), you can look at the average time on page metric for that page to get a better idea of if your average session duration might actually be longer than what Google Analytics is reporting.

Benchmark: What Is a Good Average Session Duration?

According to our research, a reasonable benchmark for average session duration is between 2-3 minutes.

A good average session duration, then, might be anything above three minutes. In fact, 55% of the marketers we surveyed reported an average session duration greater than three minutes, and 27% reported average session durations greater than four minutes.

9 Ways to Increase Your Average Session Duration

If you feel like your average session duration is too low, there are many ways to increase it and keep visitors on your website longer.

To uncover the best ways to increase average session duration, we asked dozens of marketers to share their top tips. Use these nine tips to give your site’s average session duration a boost.

1. Include Videos
2. Break Up Text With Engaging Images
3. Understand the Customer Journey
4. Track the Right Metrics
5. Make Sure Your Interface Is User-Friendly
6. Format Your Content so it’s Easy to Read
7. Link to Other Pages of Your Site
8. Build a Library
9. Publish Content That’s Worth Reading

1. Include Videos

“Broadly speaking, people tend to skim or to multitask as they consume content,” saysColibri Digital Marketing’s Andrew McLoughlin. “By leveraging video, you can present information more dynamically, allowing for more convenient multitasking.”

Many marketers agreed with McLoughlin. And a couple let us know that they’d seen impressive results by adding videos to their sites:

• Jimmy Chan ofPixelicioushad an average session duration of 30-60 seconds on his homepage. After adding video, it jumped to over three minutes.
• Blake Aylott saw an increase of over 100% in time-on-page forShape & Skin Medical’s homepage after adding a video.

If you’re not sure that you have the resources to add videos to your site, don’t worry.Lone Fir Creative’s Tyler Pigott says that “in most cases, the videos do not have to be highly polished and highly produced.”

Instead, Pigott says, “they can be talking heads of someone on your team describing a service or tactics more clearly, providing a more in-depth explanation.”

Related:3 Examples of Marketing Videos You Can Film Right From Your Desk

Two marketers also emphasized the importance of how you start and end your videos.

Karen Weider ofWeider Web Solutionsstarts her videos with a preview of the video’s content. “I make sure to focus on the benefits of hanging around,” said Weider. “For example, ‘watch this video to the end to understand the three reasons why you should…’”

So you should start by reviewing the value of the video. How should you end?

“At the end of your video, you want to reinforce your message by creating a strong call to action,” saysKobe Digital’s Arya Bina. “Whether that’s sending someone to a website, checking out your product, or signing up for a list, tell your viewers what to do next.”

2. Break Up Text With Engaging Images

Video isn’t the only way to add visual interest to your page.

“Populate your posts with relevant videos, charts, and infographics to dramatically increase the time people spend on the page,” saysJose Angelo Gallegos.

Chetna Singla ofGrazitti Interactiveagrees: “One effective tactic to increase the average session time on your website is to have high-quality images between the content. These images make the content more engaging.”

“Visual learning is necessary because it adds simplicity to content,” saysG2’s Alan Santillan. “A picture is definitely worth a million words. The content we produce with custom graphics that help visualize statistics performs better in terms of session duration.”

Related:22 Design Tools That Top Marketers Use To Quickly Create Beautiful Things

3. Understand the Customer Journey

你的客户正在寻找什么?什么阶段the funnel are they in? What will help them move to the next stage?

The answers to these questions will help you boost your session duration.

“When we’re creating and publishing a new article, we think about where it fits in the typical user journey—is it top-of-the-funnel content, or is it designed to convert returning visitors?” says Nelson Jordan ofThe Ecommerce Profits.

“That information dictates which path we try and steer our users to next. Taking this approach has increased our time on site by close to 20% so far,” Jordan adds.

Jennifer Lux ofLyntonWebagrees: “One of the best ways to increase average session duration is to truly understand your customer’s path to purchase.”

“When you map the typical customer journey with data and understand the typical touchpoints your prospects experience, you can build that natural progression on site pages and improve average session duration.”

Users need obvious next steps, Lux says. In-line calls to action, slide-ins, pop-ups, and exit-intent offers at the right stage of the buyer’s journey will improve your session duration.

4. Track the Right Metrics

So how do you know where your customers are in the buying cycle?

David Hoos ofThe Good, recommends a simple method. “One very effective strategy is to do frequent customer surveys asking about their challenges, then use that data (and sometimes language) to flesh out high-quality practical content around those challenges.”

Editor’s note:Would you like toview your most important metrics at-a-glance, anywhere you go? Track your current performance with the Databox mobile app and access any dashboard you’ve built from your mobile device too!

Cultivative’s Amy Bishop uses faster methods of data capture: “I use Google Analytics to understand common exit pages and which pages have the lowest average time-on-page to identify which pages need the most work.”

But Bishop doesn’t stop there. “I like to track visitor behavior with heat mapping, click-tracking, and pop-up surveys. This provides a sense for how users engage with each page—what they like, what seems to be missing, and the paths that they take.”

Editor’s note:Go deeper by tracking your average session duration by channel to see which campaigns and initiatives are driving more engaged website visitors. Grab the freeGoogle Analytics Traffic Breakdown dashboardbelow to visualize your data in minutes.

5. Make Sure Your Interface Is User-Friendly

How clean is your user interface (UI)? If it’s not clear and easy to use, your visitors might leave your site fast.

“All users should instantly see the useful part of a page when they land on the homepage,” says Andrew Ruditser ofMAXBURST. “If there are fewer things to look at, then users are more likely to focus and stay longer.”

There are all sorts of distractions you can remove, saysUNINCORPORATED’s Ian Evenstar. “A distraction-free experience focuses a reader’s attention on the article or web page instead of on closing pop-ups, ignoring ads, or exploring your sidebar.”

Ian Revling ofEvolve Digital Labsputs it this way: “If your website’s UX is too complex—full of unnecessary graphics or CTAs, difficult to navigate, etc.—the chances of user abandonment are quite high.”

Revling suggests testing a simple landing page against a longer-form landing page with the same messaging. If the simpler page performs better, you’ll have a sign that your site may be too complicated.

6. Format Your Content so it’s Easy to Read

Your UI and visuals should make it easy for visitors to read your content, but so should the content itself.

Andy Crestodina ofOrbit Media Studiossums it up this way: “Many subheads. Short paragraphs. Long pages. As soon as they land, they start scanning. They often have something in mind, and they’re trying to find it.”

“If it looks like it’s easy to scan through (descriptive subheads) they’ll spend a few seconds scrolling down. If something grabs their attention and the content looks easy to read (short paragraphs) then they’ll slow down and start reading. If the page has a lot of information (long copy) they may stay for several long minutes.”

It’s a simple recipe, but effective.

You can also write an overview of what the reader will learn on the page, says Blair McKeeofConstellixwho recommends including a linked table of contents at the top of the page.

Lasting Trend蒂姆Absalikov也强调的开始the page. “We utilize the inverted pyramid strategy, also known as Lead > Details > Context strategy.”

Here’s how that works:

• 给一个版本y brief overview of the content right away.
• Go into interesting details that grab readers’ attention.
• Provide in-depth information and context on the topic.

Focusing on generating interest first and then provide the details. Your average session duration will benefit.

7. Link to Other Pages of Your Site

You might not think about links as an important part of increasing session duration, but several marketers told us that they are. Even just making sure to provide internal links can make a difference.

SinceFisher Unitechstarted using more internal links, their average session duration has increased by 10%, Jackie Tihanyi says.

Why is this so effective? James Pollard ofThe Advisor Coachhas an idea: “If people are interested in a topic, they will keep reading. Don’t let them stop.”

It’s that straightforward.

“Take a look at some popular websites and pay attention to their interlinking strategy—how they link enticing words that make you want to click on them,” says Laura Cabrera ofOutcry.

AndBox Marketing’s Ashleigh Peregoy recommends adding internal links lower on the page. “If you are trying to build SEO and ensure that all information on a page is read, make the information on the page direct and place any links toward the bottom of the page.”

Related:How to Use Internal Links to Boost SEO and the User Experience

8. Build a Library

Derek Gleason ofConversion XLgave some great advice: “The content marketing agencyAnimalzhas a great analogy: create libraries, not publications,” he says.

“Blogs are publications—one-off, scattershot posts that span a wide range of topics. For many visitors, that means coming to your blog from a search engine because you have one—and only one—article that’s relevant.”

So what’s a library?

“It’s ahub-and-spoke modelthat identifies a relevant, high-level topic then builds out articles on all related topics.” These libraries, Gleason says, prove to your readers that you have expertise and supply related information to keep them reading.

9. Publish Content That’s Worth Reading

You can use all the session-duration-increasing tactics you want, but if your content isn’t worth reading, they’re not going to help. In the end, interesting and engaging content is what keeps people on the page.

“如果你想让人们在你的网站上了, you need to make sure you are satisfying your readers,” says Donna Duncan ofB-SeenOnTop.

How do you do that? Make sure your content does the following, Duncan says:

• provides on-point, exhaustive, accurate information
• is easy to read and understand
• is actionable
• goes into detail
• provides links to verifiable sources
• uses common, everyday language
• includes high-quality visuals that enhance or illuminate your main points

This strategy not only increases your average session duration but also earns you repeat visits, Duncan says.

Gwen Montoyaagrees: “Create in-depth blog posts that actually answer someone’s question instead of a brief blog post that relies on SEO tactics to get traffic. Dig in, create something worth reading, and utilize SEO for the magic combo of getting and retaining traffic.”

AndCodeless”布拉德·史密斯给了我们一个很好的例子,他的紧张am increased the average session duration on a single blog post by 280%.

Smith and his team:

• updated old information
• added custom, branded images
• created a video summary with a professional narration
• provided a checklist as a content upgrade

With those four steps, the average session duration on that post rose from 28 seconds to over 1:47. That’s a big jump.

DWRincreased its average session duration across its entire website by 55% with similar ideas. Instead of adding media and content upgrades, though, DWR focused on its text content.

“In improving text content, we use the following rules: original content, accurate, engaging, informative, and providing answers to users as quickly and concisely as possible,” says Dario Sipos. He noted that keeping content up-to-date is very important as well.

In the end, the most important thing you can do to increase average session duration is providing readers with something valuable and worth their time. That’s what gets people to stick around.

Originally published in October 2018, this post has been updated with an expanded definition of average session duration and explanations for how it’s calculated and how it compares to other Google Analytics engagement metrics.