Average Engagement Time in GA4 Explained

In the dynamic world of digital marketing, understanding how users interact with your website is critical. This crucial knowledge aids in making tactical decisions to enhance user experience and drive business growth. 

One of the key metrics that provide these insights is Average Engagement Time, especially in the latest iteration of Google’s analytical tool – Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

This article aims to demystify Average Engagement Time within GA4 and explain its significance, calculation, and why it matters to your online presence. Join us as we navigate through this often misunderstood yet powerful metric in analytics.

What is Average Engagement Time?

Imagine you’re throwing a party. The “Average Engagement Time” in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is like figuring out how much time your guests spent directly taking part in your party games and activities. 

For example, let’s say a friend called Bob visited your party, he danced for 15 minutes, played a card game for half an hour, chatted with others for 20 minutes before leaving the party. 

Here, even though Bob stayed at your party for say two hours, he was actively involved or ‘engaged’ only for about 1 hour and 5 minutes (15 mins of dancing +30 mins of playing + 20 mins of chatting). That’s his ‘Engagement Time’ at your party.

Coming back to websites and GA4 – just like we calculated Bob’s active time at the party ignoring when he was just standing around; GA4 calculates how long each user spends doing things on your website like reading articles, clicking on links or watching videos – ignoring when they are just idle. 

By summing up all these active times from every user that visited your site, GA4 gives you the ‘Average Engagement Time.’ This helps you know how long visitors usually stay active on your webpage or what they do most often – helping you make improvements where necessary.

What is Average Engagement Time Per Session?

Think of your website as a theme park, and every time a visitor comes to the park it’s like a new ‘session’ starts for them. Now, not all visitors will stay the same amount of time at the park, some might leave early if they didn’t find it interesting enough or some might enjoy it so much that they spend the whole day there. 

Like in our theme park analogy, on websites too, each time someone visits your site, whether they read an article or click on different links – their total activity duration is calculated as one ‘session’. Their session ends either after 30 minutes of idle time (no clicks or scrolls) or at midnight.

Now imagine during a day you had 100 visitors coming to your park; Anna spent 2 hours (120 minutes), Bob spent 1.5 hours (90 minutes), Charlie only stayed for an hour (60 minutes) and so on. 

If you were to calculate the “average engagement time per session”, you would add up all these times and divide by the number of visitors (or sessions). 

So in this case: Anna’s 120 mins + Bob’s 90 mins + Charlie’s 60 mins + … all divided by total sessions which are a hundred in our case.

This way GA4 lets you know what is the average time people spend doing things actively on your website every time they visit or simply put – ‘Average Engagement Time Per Session’.

This metric allows you to understand how engaging each visit typically is and where improvements can be made for better user experience.

How is Average Engagement Time Calculated?

Imagine you’re a basketball coach and during one training session, you had 15 players show up. Some players spent 45 minutes shooting hoops, some spent 30 minutes practicing dribbling drills, while others spent an hour on defensive exercises. 

To find out the average engagement time for that particular training session, you would add up all these individual times and then divide by the total number of players.

If we translate that into website terms, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will keep track of how much ‘active’ time each visitor spends on your site – whether they’re clicking links, reading articles, watching videos, etc (basically taking action similar to how your basketball players were actively training). 

To calculate the Average Engagement Time, GA4 adds up all these individual visitor times over a certain period and divides them by the number of engagements in that period. 

So if during an hour, there were 150 interactions totalling 600 minutes overall, your Average Engagement Time is calculated as (Total Time Spent: 600 minutes / Total Number of Interactions: 150) = 4 minutes per interaction.

This way, you can understand how long on average, each interaction lasts on your website, which in turn gives insight into user behavior and site performance.

Why is my average engagement time so low?

There could be a few reasons your average engagement time might be low, and it’s a bit like hosting a party where people leave earlier than you expected. 

1) The first thing could be that your website isn’t what visitors were expecting. Imagine inviting people for a fancy dinner, but when they arrive, they find out it’s actually a casual barbecue. Some would still stay and enjoy, but many might decide to leave sooner because it wasn’t what they were looking for.

2) The second reason might be the content on the website. This is akin to the entertainment at your party; if there’s no good music or engaging games, some guests may decide to leave as they’re not enjoying themselves.

3) Another cause can be navigation issues on your website. Just like guests at your party should easily find the food or restroom without getting lost in your home, visitors of your site need to move around smoothly too – else they might get frustrated and leave.

4) And just like if guests have to wait too long for their dinner at your party, slow loading speed on webpages can make visitors impatient causing them to log off quicker than desired.

5) Lastly, traffic source plays a role too: In our party example – if you invited close friends who know you well already (similar to direct website traffic), they will likely stay longer as opposed to mere acquaintances who stumbled upon your invite on social media (akin social media traffic).

Recognizing these potential issues will help identify areas for improvement by making changes such as enhancing content quality or fixing technical glitches so visitors feel more inclined towards spending much longer durations actively engaged on site.

What is a good engaged session rate?

The engaged session rate is much like examining how many people go to the library and spend meaningful time there. They don’t just walk in, look around, and then leave immediately. Instead, they sit down, read a book or two, conduct some research or perhaps even attend a literary event.

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), an engaged session means that a user wasn’t just idly browsing through your website. They have interacted with it for more than 10 seconds, visited several pages within the site or completed a particular goal such as filling out a contact form or completing an online purchase.

Now what counts as a ‘good’ engaged session rate can vary quite widely depending on the type of website you operate and your target audience.

However generally speaking, if over half of those visiting your ‘library’ are spending valuable time (say more than 50%) — reading books i.e., involved in active interaction on site; this would typically be considered as indicative of well-engaging content- much like finding engaging books or resources at the library. 

At its core however, analysing this rate helps website managers understand whether their content is interesting enough to keep visitors occupied during their sessions – netting into richer user experiences going forward based on these insights.

How to track session duration in GA4?

Let’s say you operate a customer service helpline and want to understand how long each call takes on average. You’ll start the clock when the customer is connected to a representative and stop it when they hang up.

Here’s how Google Analytics 4 (GA4) allows you to do something similar with sessions on your website:

1. Log into your Google Analytics account.

2. In the menu located on the left side of your screen, click on ‘Engagement,’ then find and click ‘Engage Sessions’.

3. A report will be displayed showing “Average Engaged Session Duration”. This represents the average amount of time users are actively engaged with your website during their visit.

Similar to analysing call durations, keeping track of user engagement time can provide valuable insights into user behaviour and help identify areas needed for improvement in your services or content, leading to a better overall user experience.

What is the average time on page in GA4?

The concept of Average Time on Page in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be likened to measuring the amount of time people spend in a particular room at a museum during their visit.

Just as curators are interested in knowing how long visitors are spending appreciating each exhibit, website owners are keen to understand how much time users spend on each webpage. This helps comprehend what content is capturing user interest and what isn’t.

However, GA4 handles things differently from its predecessor and the specific metric “Average Time on Page” isn’t directly available like it was in Universal Analytics. 

This is due to GA4 treating every event, page views included, as independent occurrences that have their own set of parameters associated with them. 

To ascertain similar information in GA4, you must manually calculate this figure by adding up activity durations for all views of each page and then dividing this sum by the respective total view counts.

For example, if a page was viewed 10 times, with each ranging from 2 to 5 minutes, these should be added up to get total engagement time, which should then be divided by total views, i.e., 10- to find the average time spent per view or ‘page’.

Another valuable resource under ‘Page Screens’, shows individual page timings under “engagement_time_msec,” which represents timing data in milliseconds that can subsequently be converted into seconds or minutes as needed. 

By evaluating such metrics reflecting individual user behaviour, digital marketers and SEO professionals can tweak strategies based on empirical evidence, facilitating improvements and enhancing overall website performance.

Conclusion

In wrapping up, the metrics in Google Analytics 4 (GA4), including Average Engagement Time and Average Engagement Time Per Session, are key to understanding user behaviour on your website. Even though GA4 may handle data differently than its predecessor, all metrics contribute to a holistic view of site performance.

 Encountering low engagement times signals potential improvements in design or content. Mastering these analytical tools ultimately leads to boosted user experience and improved website performance. Harnessing these insights shapes a robust and successful digital marketing strategy.

If you need assistance with Google Analytics 4, then look no further than ROI Boffins. Contact us today for a quick call on how we could best assist you in reaching your business goals.