Average time on site

[Elena-Stan1]

I’m using the adobe average time on site metric with the month dimension in a table and I have a total number of 4 minutes and 0 seconds but when I look at the same metric paired with the Page URL or Page dimension the total of the average time spent on site is significantly lower (approx 1 minute). Can somebody explain why these are different?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

It's all in the context of the usage.... when you are looking at a monthly breakdown, the time spent is showing the average time spend across the entire site per visitor (so every page for every visit within that month is taken into consideration). The total at the top will average out the time spent by each visitor for all pages.

When you break it down by page or URL, the average time spend by every visitor for each individual page is being looked at. 

So let's say you take a generic page, like your home page... the visitor may have visited that page 3 times, the average time would show the average time spend on the home page within your selected time frame.

But maybe there's another page that is less popular, like maybe a specific content page, that they only view once.. the time there will be the time spent.... The total at the top will take the average time for each page individually per user, then averaged across the pages.... 

The "name" Average Time on Site is a bit misleading, since it also represents average time on pages or other breakdowns depending on the usage.

[leocwlau · Accepted solution]

You can refer to https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/metrics/time-spent.html?lang=en on the definitions and calculation of different time spent metrics and dimensions. They are somehow complicated and the name for 'Average time on site' is very confusing when it mentions 'site' but actually can be used on any dimension.

Two very important factors make those 'time' different:

- include/exclude bounce

- using visitors, visitors, and sequence of dimension items as the denominator

[Leyla]

Hello team, 

A follow up question. When I set up a report using a Canonical URL dimension and apply a filter to display a list of pages, the Avg Time on Site in the top row displays averages. Same usually happens if I drag and drop Canonical URL one by one. However, in some cases, when I add URLs one by one, the Avg Time on Site in the top row shows total number (sum of all line items) instead of the average. Is there a reason why it changes? In some cases I had to remove and re-add the Avg Time on site metric and that would fix the problem. Please let me know.

Thank you!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I notice the same thing, and haven't yet determined the pattern behind it.... 

[leocwlau]

I am not 100% sure about the pattern yet. But for the Freeform table, dropping a dimension and then applying a filter is different from adding individual items from the dimension. Even at the end, they are the same list of items.

Adding items directly is more like adding segments to the table where numbers are always adding up and no visit/visitor deduplication.

[Leyla]

Thanks guys! Agree with that but since the average worked before when adding individual row items, thought I would ask here. I'll keep digging and add an update here if I find anything else.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hmm do you have proof it worked before? If so, if I were you, I would absolutely open a Client Care ticket (with that proof).... while you may get an answer such as "well we changed the logic for these reasons"... it's worth a shot... and since the metric is supposed to be average it would make more sense for this to give you average and not total (no matter how the data is broken down)!

[Leyla]

Hey guys,

Actually, I tried again this morning and the average in the top line worked when adding three Canonical pages URLs one by one. Please see the screenshot below. 

Thanks,

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I'm very glad its working for you again!