Having a website with high-quality content which attracts the users is very necessary in today’s world because most probably website is the first medium your audience gets familiar with. And we all know the first impression is the last impression.
Just having a good website is not enough. You should also know how effectively engage your audience is.
User engagement metrics measure what users are doing at your website, which type of content drives the most user engagement, etc. These metrics help to know the users better and help to make informed decisions.
If a user is satisfied with your website he stays there for a long time and the longer he stays, the greater the opportunity for revenue generation.
So how do you know about user engagement? The answer is Google Analytics.
Most of the marketers use Google Analytics to analyze the performance of their website. Google Analytics KPIs measured, monitored and analyzed the available website data to improve the user experience.
Google Analytics (GA) is one of the best tools you can use to understand the engagement level of your website audience/visitor. As it tracks dozens of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your website.
There are many ways to track user engagement, however, we are mentioning some of them could be useful for your website.
Average session duration
It refers to the average amount of time a user spends on your website. This directly shows how relevant your website is to visitors. The more relevant your content is, the more time the user spends on your website and the more he/she will be engaged.
The above 1.5 minutes is considered a good average session duration.
To calculate your average session- divide the total duration of all sessions by the total number of sessions. This is how long visitors stay on your website on an average.
Bounce rate
A bounce rate is a percentage of people who leave the website from the page they landed on. There can be many reasons behind the high bounce rate, some can be positive and some can be negative.
- A reader didn’t like what saw.
- Visitors landed on a page to purchase an item, make a purchase and checkout.
- A visitor came to your website looking for some information, found it and left.
- A visitor came to your website looking for some information, didn’t found it and left.
- The bounce rate can also be high if the checkout process is too complicated.
If your site has a high bounce rate but a normal average time on page and average visit duration, then you shouldn’t worry. That’s why it is always good if you use the bounce rate metrics along with other metrics like average time session, time on site to get the correct analysis.
If you want to lower your bounce rate this article will help you.
Average time on page
The average amount of time users spend on a particular page of your website. This metric will help you to know whether visitors are reading your content or not and which content needs to modify. For more details, you can read the Analytics Edge blog post.
Page Depth
Page depth is a count of the number of pages that visitors visit. It’s basically the number of pages views.
High page visit generally means that content engages the reader enough and motivates them to explore the other pages.
If you want to increase your page depth start internal linking. Low page depth could also be a result of poor internal linking. Basically, there should be enough cross navigation throughout your site that enables users to explore the site.
There are other metrics also which you can consider:
- Percentage of returning visitors
- Frequency of visits
- Percentage of unique visitors
- Organic traffic
- Direct traffic
Tracking these Google Analytics metrics will help you understand your audience better and will improve your website user engagement.
Do you track the above-mentioned metrics using Google Analytics? Or are there other metrics that you track? Let us know in the comment section.
