Welcome "Time Spent" as a Useful New Metric

Nielsen/NetRatings introduction of total minutes spent on site is a useful addition to the tools for understanding how websites engage customers even though it will provoke a fair amount of debate mostly because it can shuffle the rankings of the biggest sites.

There is no single metric that reveals the usage/mindset of site visitors. And there is no infallible metric. So adding a time spent dimension will give us another data point with which to infer behavior and triangulate message targeting. Time spent is a standard measurement in traditional media (radio & TV) where the amount of time spent with a particular media vehicle is generally thought to reflect preferences.

When I worked in radio, time spent listening was the critical measurement for programmers. The more time spent listening to our station allowed us to identify distinguish core listeners and loyalists from occasional listeners. It also helped us understand how programming worked in each daypart. Knowing how long listeners listened enabled us to dissect program and music sequences to keep them listening longer and to experiment with music and promotions to extend listening and simultaneously reduce our abandon rate.

Comparing total minutes (time spent) with unique visitors and page views will give us a more robust understanding of how and possibly why consumers come to our sites.  The same logic will be applicable to websites which will allow us to compare time spent with page sequences to understand how visitors actually use websites. It will provide insight to re-craft information and message sequences to make it easier to find things and to speed conversion.

Comments

[BJ Cook]

Hey Danny,

Great Insight into this new metric. I'd be interested in seeing how this affects analytics workshops, courses and seminars. Will Time Spent be the new buzz and shift how analysts are using their data? Will they go back and try to associate previous findings with this new metric?

[Sarah Carr]

Hi Danny -

Great post! I recently wrote a blog post on this same topic and created a list of benefits and drawbacks for using this new type of metric in web rankings. What worries me is the drawbacks from this new metric.

Possible drawbacks include:
1.) Scammers - who create an unfriendly user interface to keep the time spent on site artificially inflated.

2.) Inactive Sessions - users who are on a site, but leave their desk for an unknown period of time, which will also inflate the time spent on site.

What do you think about these issues? How do you think we as marketing analysts can avoid or make up for these inflated stats?

Thanks!