What is average session duration?
Average session duration measures the average amount of time a user spends, per session, on your website.
Google Analytics begins counting a session from the moment a user lands on your site until he leaves the site or remains inactive for a predetermined amount of time.
How to calculate average session duration?
To calculate the average session duration, divide the ‘total session duration of all sessions’ by the ‘number of sessions’ during a specific time frame. Average session duration is calculated for a particular period and is generally calculated in seconds or minutes.
The average session duration can be found in various Google Analytics reports.
Formula for calculating average session duration
Real-life example of average session duration
Take a look at an example to understand the average session duration better:
For example, you had three website visitors in the last week and their individual session duration was:
Visitor 1 - 60 seconds
Visitor 2 - 360 seconds
Visitor 3 - 180 seconds
Now, the total session duration of all sessions will be 600 seconds (60 + 360 + 180) and the number of sessions is 3.
Plugging this data into the formula will give us an average session duration of: 600/3 = 200 seconds or 3 minutes 20 seconds.
What’s considered a good average session duration? (benchmark)
A good average session duration is considered to be between 2 - 4 minutes. According to Databox’s Benchmark data, the average session duration for B2B companies is 77.61 seconds.
For B2C companies, the median value is higher – 92.33 seconds.
For industry-specific average session duration benchmarks, take a look at this report: Average Session Duration by Industry
Observe this infographic:
About 60% of desktop average session duration is up to 3.5 minutes. The average session duration on mobile is still shorter than on desktop, but the difference is not significant.
Low average sessions result in high bounce rates and low conversion rates, indicating a lack of user engagement.
Ways to increase your average session duration
- Craft attractive and interactive design: Using only text-based content doesn’t compel users anymore. Videos and interactive tools are effective for keeping users engaged. Make sure your website design is not complex else the users will leave it immediately. Suggested read: Guidelines & Best Practices for Exceptional Web Design
- Use internal linking: If you want to keep your visitor on your site for a long time, it is important to incorporate strong interlinking in your strategy. You want them to keep reading more. Read this guide on How to Use Internal Links to Boost SEO and the User Experience
- Craft skimmable content: Visitors only scan through your page. So if they don’t discover what they’re looking for or find your website complex, they’ll leave. You need to follow best practices to make your content easy to read to retain and convert your visitors.