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7 Important User Engagement Metrics For Your Website

User engagement metrics | benefits of google analytics

Businesses constantly strive to create a website with high-quality content that attracts the right users. Thus, after putting in so much time and effort, the business needs to know how the users are engaged with the website.

What is User Engagement?

User engagement metrics measure what users are doing with your website. Having insight into what content drives user engagement helps the business understand their customer better.

User engagement metrics help to make informed decisions. If a user is getting value from your website, he starts using it longer, and the longer he uses it, the more excellent the opportunity for revenue generation.

There is no one formula for all websites. Different user engagement models are used for different types of websites.

The table below shows the different types of websites following different metrics.

Types of Websites Metrics
Content-rich (Blogging) websites Time spent on the site
The number of page views
Return rates
E-commerce websites Shopping cart abandonment
Page views
Conversion rate
Time on site
Educational websites Number of visitors
Bounce Rate
Impressions click
Entertainment Website Watch time
Audience Retention
Re-watches
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Finally, it is up to you to decide which metrics to measure user engagement of your website the most and develop a plan to track them accordingly. Below are some of the user engagement metrics that could be useful for your website:

Important User Engagement Metrics for Website

1. Website Visitors

Unique visits tell you how many people have engaged with your website for the first time. It is one of web analytics’s fundamental user engagement metrics and gives you an overall measure of website traffic.

Most web analytics platform counts unique visitors by dropping a cookie on the user’s device. But this method is not always accurate, as a user may delete the cookie.

For example, if a visitor visits on Monday and deletes the cookie, his next visit on Tuesday will be again considered unique as a new cookie is generated, and the same user will be counted twice as unique.

Therefore, it may be better for some websites to count the total number of users over a given period. This will give you a better look at your visitors and help you make different decisions.

You can further segment these visitors as per their demographics, gender, age, or any other way that suits you to make appropriate decisions.

2. Frequency Of Visits

How often a user returns to your website is another key indicator of engagement. This is known as the frequency of visits. The frequency of visits will tell you how loyal your visitors are.

The satisfaction of these loyal users will determine their future behavior, such as purchasing your product or service or recommending or committing to your brand. All the visitors might not be visiting your website daily.

You need to understand the pattern for your website traffic to understand the users better. Higher the number of returning visitors to your site, the higher the engagement and more opportunities to generate revenue.

Understanding why some users are returning, and others aren’t will help you develop the right content to frequently attract more visitors to your website.

3. Core User Actions

You can assess the engagement on your website by studying core user actions. Core user actions depend on your product or service. If you have created an online social game, joining the game is considered a core user action.

You should always define the core user actions per your business needs and track whether or not your visitors are performing them. If your website traffic is performing these actions consistently, it indicates good adoption of your content.

Otherwise, if the users are spending enough time on your website and aren’t performing the actions, they might be having difficulties finding a way to perform them.

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(image source: www.totango.com)

4. Pages Per Session

Pages per session tell us how many pages the user visited throughout his visit to the website. It measures engagement as a function of the total number of clicks and pages visited.

For most websites, the objective is to keep the visitors engaged, nurture their interests, and drive them toward critical website actions. More pages per session will indicate that your users are highly engaged and willing to explore your website.

However, it is essential to know that if your visitors are visiting more pages and the other metrics are low, the visitor isn’t finding what he is looking for. It would be best if you combined this metric with average session duration to check whether your users engage with your site.

5. Average Session Duration

This is the average amount of time the user spends on your site for each of his sessions. Time on site or visit duration can indicate the level of interest or involvement a visitor has with the website. It is also a good indicator of the success of a campaign or other promotional activity that brings visitors to your website.

The more time the user spends on your site, the more interested and involved he is with your content. Also, the likelihood of performing specific key actions on your website increases with the increase in session duration.

But, more often, the user may spend a lot of time on your website trying to find the exact content he is looking for. Thus, it is a good idea to measure this metric alongside another, such as core user actions, to assess the success of your website.

6. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits. It is closely related to session duration pages per visit.

Bounce rate is helpful as a general signal of user engagement and the state of content quality and helps to identify when problems exist on your site.

High bounce rates indicate that the visitors are not finding what they are looking for.

However, the bounce rate (in Google Analytics) has nothing to do with the amount of time spent on the page. It just tells you that the user has left from the same page as his initial entry on the site.

Someone may spend a few minutes on the landing page and exit to complete a call to action offline. But Analytics will consider this as a bounce.

Thus, it is always advisable to use bounce rate metrics and other metrics like time on site or session duration to correctly assess your page’s success.

7. Visitor Recency

This user metric tells you about the time elapsed since the user’s last visit to your website.

Generally speaking, if the time between two sessions of your user is less, then he is more loyal to your website. A low time between two sessions also increases the likelihood of engagement.

So it is a good idea to track visitor recency to know how engaged your users are. But, if your website has a long buying cycle, there may not be high visitor recency. It may be more medium (a few days or a week).

You’re looking for high recency if you update your website daily with a blog post, IT alerts, or any important daily information.

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Conclusion

Not all of these user metrics need to help you achieve your goals. You would be required to measure and track only those metrics that are relevant to your website.

Though, by tracking the relevant user engagement metrics will help improve you understand your website traffic better. You will learn how people interact with your website and what is needed to improve your website further.

FAQ’s

1. What are the 4 types of engagement?

Four types of customer engagement are-

  • Contextual engagement.
  • Engagement of convenience.
  • Emotional engagement.
  • Social engagement.

2. What are the five levels of user engagement?

There are five levels of customer engagement- Discover, Shop, Buy, Own, and Advocate.

3. What are the 4 key attributes of successful customer engagement?

The 4 key attributes of successful customer engagement are-

  • Active customer engagement.
  • Emotional customer engagement.
  • Rational customer engagement.
  • Ethical customer engagement.

4. What are the 4 M’s of engagement?

The 4 M’s are: make, manage, monitor, and measure.

5. What is a good engagement rate?

A good engagement rate is between 1% to 5%.

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Sangram Tawde

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