Using segments with Time on Site

Question

I am trying to answer: What is the average time people spend in this area of the site per visit?

I am not trying to answer: If someone visits this area of the site, what is their average time per visit across the our entire site.

I've created a segment that includes every type of hit (custom links and page hits) for that portion of the site.

When applied as a segment to the days, I get 19:40 as the average time on site:

When I use the segment as a dimension, I get this 3:13:

Which one is correct and what is the difference between the two? Since it is a Hit segment, I would have thought this would be the same.

Jennifer_Dungan · Answer

Several months ago I was helping someone else with an issue with Average Time and Custom Date Ranges:

Time metrics are all calculated off timestamps, but they don't always work well with Custom Date Ranges / Segments.

Try creating a calculated metric like this:

See if that works more consistently?

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