Average time spent on page metric

[andrew_r-GrfLbX]

 Is this metric available in Workspace? I can't find it anywhere but it reports fine in reports and analytics :S

[norman_cloutier · Accepted solution]

You have to build it as a calculated metric:

• Total Seconds Spent
• /
• Page Views

[andrew_r-GrfLbX]

Of course! I can't believe I had to ask! 

[jono70]

Hi,

Just picking up on this, we previously used the metric "Average Time Spent on Site (seconds)" and have now compared to this new calculated metric, and the times are vastly different, ie, much higher 'average times spent on site'.

Logically the new calculated metric makes sense (and is also in line with 'average page views per visits' and 'bounce rate'), but GA also shows times very similar to "Average Time Spent on Site" so just wondering why the vast difference and which metric to use?

[Urs_Boller]

hi @norman_cloutier and andrew.r​

we changed this metric sightly to only include visits where page views are greater than 1.

or in other words: exclude all bounce visits.

this is due to the fact that those visits have no time spent on the page and therefore we separate those visits.

our calc. metric looks like this:

  segment (visits without bounces)

        { total time spent : visits }

[jono70]

Many thanks @norman_cloutier, really useful!