By now you have had the pleasure of working with and using Googles new Analytics service; GA4. One of the biggest concerns and questions we have been seeing is, “Why is my session time lower now then it was before?”
Google has introduced a fresh method for gauging session time, known as Average Engagement Time Per Session. There are specific criteria that must be met for a session’s time to be counted. Due to these updates, the average time has decreased, impacting certain traffic sources more than others.
An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key events, or has at least 2 pageviews or screen views. What is average engagement time per session? It is the average time that your website was in focus in a user’s browser or an app was in the foreground of a user’s device) divided by (The total number of sessions).
Organic searches or direct traffic should always have a higher time as it requires the user to navigate the website to find what they are looking for. Display, social, and especially email ads will always have a lower time due to the ads ability to direct the user directly to the page the user is interested in.
Hopefully with this information you will have a better understanding on peoples behavior and how your marketing efforts are working to drive customers to your website.
If you need help further understanding or setting up filters on GA4 we are happy to help!
