Metrics Average time spent on site
Hi ,
I’m noticing a discrepancy in the average time on site. When I view the time for a specific segment, the total average time is shown a minute, but when I break it down by day or week, the average time increases significantly around 6 minutes.
Could you help clarify why this difference occurs?
But when I breakdown by custom date segment it showing "around 1 mins"
If I need to show the break down by month is there any other way I could present data.
Thanks
Ramya
The time calculation metrics can be quite tricky. I attempted to replicate what you're seeing, and I got essentially the same result.
I decided to look at it both ways, breakdown the segment by the day, and then breakdown the day by the segment. In the top of the screenshot, I get a very short time on site for the segment, but then the day breakdown is much larger. In the bottom half, the day has a larger time spent on site, and then the breakdown gives the segment row a very small number again.
What I think might be happening is that in the row with the segment, the time spent on site is looking at just the conditions that are in the segment (so only specific pages), which looking at a specific page or two is definitely going to be shorter than an entire visit. Then using the day breakdown I think is bringing in the whole visit again, not just the part in the segment.
I also looked at what happens with the date range. The date range for my panel is last week, so the header row of the second table below is the same time period as the date range for the first table. I had to block out visits, but they're the same in both tables. You can see that time spent per visit (seconds) is the same for both. 679 seconds divided by 60 gives 11.32 minutes, which is pretty close to what the bottom table has. So even with the date range it's doing something weird like it is with the segment.
I'm not entirely sure what is causing it. I think @Jennifer_Dungan is going to try and figure this out too.
But I think my recommendation would be to put your segment either at the top of your panel (if you want it to apply to the whole panel) or above the metrics in your table (if you only want it for a particular table/column). Both of these solutions will result in no single line with a time against the segment itself, it'll result in having your dimension in the table and seeing the values associated with them. As for time periods, I would try and use panel date ranges instead of the component ones to avoid any miscalculations like this. If you do have to use the component date ranges, put them on top of your metric and use a dimension for the rows. I tested putting the segment and the date range on top of the metric and the totals are unaffected.
So to summarize - don't put the segment or date range directly against 'average time on site', use a dimension with the metric and apply the segments/date ranges you need above the metric or in the segment drop down at the top of the panel to avoid this issue.
Ok, so I was just reading through some documentation because I still didn't get why this was working the way it was, and I came across this.
https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/components/metrics/time-spent-per-visit
The important part here is "average time on site uses the sequences that includes a dimension item as it's denominator"
Meaning when you don't have a dimension item against it, it doesn't have a proper denominator to use, so it's likely taking each hit individually (basically giving a time spent on page, not a time spent per visit). But when you put a dimension item against it, then it does the calculation correctly.
So my solution from the comment above still stands - don't put segments or date ranges in the row against the metric, use them at the top of a table/panel and make sure to include a dimension against the metric.
