See how long visitors stay on your pages or site with time on page and time on site.
Knowing how much time visitors spend on individual pages and across your site gives you a better understanding of how they engage with your content — even when they don’t click anything. You can uncover which content truly engages readers, identify drop-off points, compare behavior after a redesign, and spot pages that lose your readers’ attention.
Understand time on site
Time on site (also known as “average session duration” or “average session length”) measures how long visitors typically stay on your site. It’s calculated by averaging the total session lengths of all visitors within the selected timespan (e.g., last 7 days) who meet your filter criteria (e.g., mobile devices): total session time ÷ total sessions
Understand time on page
Time on page measures how long visitors typically stay on a webpage. Analyze uses industry-standard calculations to determine the average time the page stays in focus (i.e., when the browser tab is open and active) for visitors. Below are two example scenarios.
| Scenario |
Recorded time on page |
| A visitor reads Page A for 60 seconds → switches tabs → returns and reads for 30 more seconds → closes tab |
Time on page = 90 seconds |
| A visitor opens Page B → reads for 15 seconds → walks away for 10 minutes → comes back, reads 30 seconds → closes tab |
Time on page = 10 minutes 45 seconds |
Good to know
Analyze excludes extreme outliers — like if a visitor never interacts again — to keep your averages useful and realistic.
How to review time-based metrics
These metrics appear throughout Analyze to enhance your results.
-
Site overview — Go to Insights tab > Site overview to see time on site
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Page details — Go to Insights tab > Pages > Individual page to see time on page
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Analyze mode — Go to the page details and click View in Analyze mode to see time on page and other page insights
FAQs
How far back do the time-based results go back?
Time on site and time on page data is retroactively available for sessions starting ~May 2025, or from when Analyze tracking was first enabled on your site — whichever is more recent.
Why is my time on page really high or low?
A small number of sessions can skew the average. For example, one visitor spending 15 minutes on a low-traffic page can drive up the average. Login pages or quick redirects often have low time on page — that’s expected.
Why do I see sessions with no time on page?
Some sessions are excluded if we weren’t able to reliably measure time (e.g., the page wasn’t in focus) or if the session is an outlier. You can try to expand the date range to include more sessions for results to populate.
What’s the difference between time on page and time on site?
Time on site is the sum of time across all pages in a session. It’s also called “average session duration” or “average session length” in other tools. Time on page is the time spent on a given page.
Why do time-based metrics matter?
These metrics help you understand engagement beyond surface-level stats like views or clicks:
- A low bounce rate and long time on page might mean the page is genuinely interesting
- If time on site increases after a design change, it could signal a better user experience
- Comparing mobile vs. desktop time on page helps catch UX issues
- Time-based insights support Optimize testing (e.g., “Page B keeps visitors 50% longer”)