Time spent and segment

[Sophie_H]

Hi,

I am a bit lost with the time spent metrics. I have read multiple pages but cannot find something related to time spent and segment.

I would like to get the time spent per visit on our website for 2 segments:

- Subscribers

- Not subscribers

I put Time spent per visit (seconds) and Average Time Spent on site (seconds) and the values are not similar so this is why I am having a doubt now if it is possible and if so, which one should I pick?

Does anyone have a recommendation please?

Thanks.

[Hemang35]

Sure, I can help you with this.

The "Time spent per visit (seconds)" metric shows the average amount of time that visitors interact with a given dimension item during each visit. This metric is not available in Data Warehouse due to its different processing architecture.

The "Average Time Spent on site (seconds)" metric shows the average amount of time that visitors spend on the entire site. This metric is available in Reports & Analytics and Data Warehouse.

The difference between the two metrics is that the "Time spent per visit (seconds)" metric only considers the time spent on a given dimension item, while the "Average Time Spent on site (seconds)" metric considers the time spent on the entire site.

In your case, you want to get the time spent per visit on your website for two segments: subscribers and not subscribers. You can do this by creating two reports, one for each segment. In each report, you would add the "Time spent per visit (seconds)" metric to the report.

The values for the "Time spent per visit (seconds)" metric may not be similar for the two reports because the subscribers and not subscribers segments may have different browsing habits. For example, subscribers may spend more time on your website than not subscribers.

I recommend that you use the "Time spent per visit (seconds)" metric for your analysis. This metric is more specific to your needs and will give you a better understanding of how long subscribers and not subscribers are spending on your website.

Here are some additional tips for using the "Time spent per visit (seconds)" metric:

• You can use the metric to compare the time spent on your website by different segments, such as subscribers and not subscribers.
• You can use the metric to track changes in the time spent on your website over time.
• You can use the metric to identify pages that are engaging or disengaging for your visitors.

I hope this helps!

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Time spent per visit (seconds) and Average Time Spent on site (seconds) are almost the same (when looking at something like a Daily breakdown)... but since time spent is based on calculating the difference between time stamps from page A to page B, and one of them has extra logic, you are right that these can show up very differently.

Now in general, either of these should work, but here is information about each metric:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/metrics/time-spent-per-visit.html?lang=...

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/metrics/average-time-on-site.html?lang=...

Time spent per visit (seconds) has some extra logic to calculate the time against each visit

ie. [Total seconds spent] divided by ([Visits] minus [Bounces])

If I look at the two metrics side by side, broken down by Day, and then again broken down by Page... Time spent per visit (seconds) seems to be closer to having the same average for the month? So based on that, my leaning would be to use this metric.. 

Since Time Spent is all based on page view data, I really don't understand why Average Time Spent on site (seconds) comes out to about half the average as Time spent per visit (seconds) when broken down by page...  so I share your concerns about trust.... 

Also, I was helping someone a few months ago, and we found that Time spent per visit (seconds) was more stable when using it against custom date ranges... so again, that's a good indicator that this metric is probably the better of the two to use.

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-questions/custom-date-range-doesn-t... 

Since we also have another tracking system on our sites that has heartbeat tracking, I generally tell people to use it over Adobe's data, but IF I were to pull a report in Adobe, I think Time spent per visit (seconds) is the one that I would use.