Time on site is measured in Google Analytics through the metric Session Duration. This measures the amount of time a single user spends on your site actively, or until they take no action for 30 minutes.

So What’s A Good Time On Site?

A standard average session duration is 2 -3 minutes. However this really varies depending on industry.

This article from Google is great for explaining how they measure session duration.

How Does Google Measure Session Duration?

Session Duration tells you and Google about the value and quality of your site. In theory the longer someone is spending on your site the more relevant and useful information they are finding.

The metric is measured by the total duration of all sessions divided by the number of sessions.

How Can You Improve User Experience to Increase The Time People Spend on Your Site?

It is really important that we enhance the content on our websites and ensure we are providing the people we are looking to reach with the most relevant & engaging content we can.

Here are 5 steps that you can take to improve your users experience and increase time on site:

  1. Strong Call to Action
  2. Excellent Link Structure
  3. Researched Longtail Keyword Strategy
  4. Meta Descriptions
  5. Improve your site speed

Strong Call to Action

As we discussed in our post What is Bounce Rate & Why Does it Matter Call to Action is vital for telling your customers where to go next. When you have a strong call to action the customer is more likely to act on your site, increasing the time they are spending on your website.

Excellent Link Structure

An excellent link structure is also essential for the performance of your site in terms of time on site. When you link relevant pages of your website to each other, with a clear call to action, the user can easily find all the information they need that is relevant to them.

Top tip – linking all the relevant content and products clearly, prevents users from leaving your site to find further information and instead they keep reading on your site.

Researched Longtail Keyword Strategy

Longtail keywords are used when a customer has a specific search in mind. These are not broad general searches, so your website is more likely to appear due to less competition.

Well Written Meta Descriptions

How does a meta description improve your time on site?

Well, if you ensure that your meta description isnt abiguous then the user knows exactly what to expect on the page they are clicking on. This means your website is going to be relevant to their needs and they will spend longer on your website – rather than clicking straight off.

Improve your Website Speed

No – one wants to spend time waiting for a page to load. If your website has slow loading times then you could be losing users who exit your site and head over to another site to find the solution to their problems.

Tags: