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This terminology is used to describe different metrics. In his book, Web Analytics 2.0, author Avinash Kaushik describes metrics as a “quantitative measurement of statistics describing events or trends on a website”. In other words, metrics tell us about our website visitors’ actions. These insights are beneficial to businesses of all industries, not just e-commerce.
One metric that is particularly helpful is Visit Duration. The following breaks downs this metric’s ins-and-outs:
Visit Duration Defined
Falling under the category of visit characterization, visit duration is descriptive of a website user’s length of time spent on the site (also known as a Session). On a more granular level, Visit Duration is derived from subtracting the time of entry from that of the exit. Basically, this metric tells businesses how long someone hung around exploring their website. This is an aggregated overview, but the length of time on a specific page can also be tracked.
Why Visit Duration is Important
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that are valued by a business because they signifying important insights for their website. Categorizing Visit Duration as a KPI makes sense for websites created for any and every industry. It is important to keep in mind that there is a big difference between someone spending 15 seconds on your website compared to 2 minutes and 15 seconds.
What a Short Visit Duration Signifies
When you notice a significant ratio of people leaving your site after spending less than one minute or so exploring, it could signify that the touchpoint that got them there was misleading. For example, if you run a Google Ad advertising how amazing your restaurant’s Tex Mex is and you don’t offer a single dish of that cuisine on your menu, the visitor is going to leave. Other explanations for brief visit durations are accidental clicks to your website, the design is not user-friendly, or the content isn’t helpful.
A Case Study: Visit Duration Improved
SFA Marketing, a Connecticut-based marketing agency, shared a case study for a B2B client website revamp project. They attest significant improvements in various metrics, including average Visit Duration, to strategic SEO, content, and navigation techniques -- read the full case study here. The graphic below shows before and after launch metrics. Visit Durations increased by 86% from 1 minute 29 seconds to 2 minutes 46 seconds.
Source: SFA Marketing, Case Study: Increasing Website Traffic, 2019
My Take on the Case Study
Obviously, a company is only going to share its best success stories as case studies. With that in mind, and fairly limited behind the scenes knowledge, I imagine the clients’ original website was clunky and outdated. As a rule of thumb, websites should be redesigned and modernized every three years or so. This accommodates changes in cybersecurity requirements, algorithms, the relevancy of content and trending aesthetics.
The poor Visit Duration length described before the new launch demonstrated that the content, design, navigation, or all three were not valuable enough to target users that they stayed to learn more and explore. If users aren’t staying, that demonstrates that the business’s messages are not being clearly conveyed. The vastly improved Visit Duration after the new site launch proves further that the old site had a variety of issues, which were successfully addressed to keep users intrigued.
I think visit duration is important as well. I'm interested in more complicated analysis. For example, what if someone uses my site so efficiently, that they were able to find what they needed in 3 mins or less? My company makes that sort of thing easy for people. So, maybe having a long visit duration is bad for us? I'm interested to see.
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