Time-spent metric tells you how much time a visitor has spent on your website from the moment they enter the home page (or whichever page they start their visit from) to the moment they close the tab or window your site is on. This can be a good or a bad indicator, depending on how you look at it. It may tell you that your site is interesting enough to warrant long periods of browsing and reading. But this will depend on the type of website as some websites require longer time spent on the site while others do not need that much time to make an impact. Also, when a visitor spends in inordinate amount of time on your site it may be an indication that your site is confusing and the person cannot find what they are looking for.
Why is it important?
A high time spent on a website can mean-
- Users find your content and website valuable
- Your website is user friendly and easy to use
- Your website has good amount of useful information
Sometimes, it can also mean that your website is little bit confusing to the user and he faces difficulty in navigating to the page/service/information he is looking for. It’s very important that, you define the following key segments in your analytics tool and gauge the Navigation, Search, page engagement behavior of these visitors:
• Visitors who spent less than 60 seconds
• Visitors who spent less than 180 seconds
• Visitors who spent between 180 and 300 seconds
• Visitors who spent between 300 and 600 seconds
• Visitors who spent between 600 and 900 seconds
Acquisition metrics are good indicators of how your marketing efforts are performing as they show how many people are reaching your website. If your goal is to create as much awareness as possible of your organization, the new visitors vs. returning visitors metric may be extremely important. If you are a location-based business and using an analytics tool like Google Analytics, you will also be able to see where the visitors to your site are located to make sure you are targeting users in the correct location. “Referring Sources” can also be looked at to see which websites are driving you traffic or whether they are arriving to your site via search engines. Although for many businesses the goal of their website will be to convert, a close eye should be kept on these acquisition metrics as it is likely that the more traffic a website receives will ultimately result in more sales or leads generated.
