Aussie Web Analyst

Engagement Metrics

The set of metrics that I listed in the post last week (visits, visitors and interactions) could be described as the basic traffic metrics. Each are absolute numbers as opposed to a percentage or ratio and each can be used to describe the popularity of the website during the previous period.

The following set of metrics are what I describe as (for want of a better term) as engagement metrics. I do not claim that they describe completely that mystical experience known as a user’s engagement with a website but I believe they give an indication of the level to which people are engaging. All are ratios calculating by combining two other metrics.

Frequency – Visits per Visitor

This is the average number of visits each visitor to the website made during the specified period calculated by dividing the number of visits by the number of unique visitors for that time period. It reflects whether the users of a website are interacting with it on a regular basis or only ever visiting once. The minimum number for this metric is 1.0 – every visitor must have made at least one visit.

Interactions per Visit

This is the average number of interactions made with the website during each visit during the specified time period – calculated by the dividing the total number of interactions by the number of visits for that time period. Again, the usual type of interaction that is used here is page views.

It is an interesting metric in that there is no good or bad result, it all depends on the context. For example, a higher number of interactions per visit may suggest a greater level of engagement but it could also be that the user was having to search through the site in an attempt to find the information they were after.

Duration per visit

Similar to the previous metric, this is the average time a user spends on a site in each visit. It can provide additional information about the average visit regarding the length of time people spend on the website.

A key point to remember though is that web analytics packages can only work off known measurements and there is generally no measurement for when a user leaves a website. Therefore the duration for each visit is typically under reported and cannot be measured at all when only one measurement is received.

Bounce Rate

This is a measure of the number of time a website is visited and the user leaves immediately without engaging with it at all. The simple method of judging whether there was any engagement is to assume that the user has to have more than one interaction. Therefore bounce rate is commonly calculated as the percentage of visits with only one page view.

A website that is used as the user’s home page (portals, google, news sites) would have a high bounce rate for all visits where the user opened their browser but then immediately went to an alternative site. Also, it possible for a user to get all the information they need from a website from a single page – high engagement but only a single interaction. Basically every site has a certain level of bounce rate, it is how it changes over time that is important.

What Next

So these 7 metrics would be your basic set of traffic and engagement metrics, and the basis for any investigation into the performance of a website. From here I am going to go into some methods of how to look at the numbers and how to understand better what they are telling you.

Note: we are dealing with the average in all the engagement metrics and this could produce some misleading results unless you think through what the change actually means. For example, a influx of traffic from a new source may lead to a drop in the overall site frequency as the new visitors have a lower average frequency than the current average average, not that people are less satisfied with the site.

While I will cover this specific concept further in a future post I think the key point I wanted to make is that numbers should not be just taken as black and white, you need to do some thinking in order to understand a change. And you need to understand a change in order to do something about it.

Tags: Engagement Metrics, Web Metrics