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Trying to Understand Pages/Sessions and Avg Sessions Duration

Discussion in 'Google Analytics' started by jamesleesg, Apr 5, 2016.

0
  1. #1
    Hi All,

    I'm kind of stuck with this and hoping some expert here can provide some light :).

    I'm comparing the analytics before and after revamp. I can see that after the site revamp we see between 150% to 200% increase in traffic but the Pages/Sessions and Avg. Sessions Duration seems to drop.

    For example:

    Before Revamp
    January 2015
    Sessions 32,458
    Users: 23,418
    Pageviews: 117,882
    Pages/Session: 3.72
    Avg Session: 3.15

    After Revamp
    January 2016
    Sessions 102,514
    Users: 89,848
    Pageviews: 275,258
    Pages/Session: 2.45
    Avg Session: 2:10

    So the client is questioning us about the drop in this Pages/Sessions and Avg Session Duration. We don't really know the answer nor can we come out with anything that can justify this. Any idea? Can Pages/Session and Avg. Sessions Duration be use as key performance indicator? Is it normal for sites with more visitors will have lower pages/sessions and avg sessions indicator?

    Thanks in advance.
     
    jamesleesg, Apr 5, 2016 IP
  2. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #2
    Short answer: yes.
    Depending on what this site does, and what the interactions are, there is not necessarily any correlation between an increase in visitors and an increase in average pages/session access.
    Look at it this way:
    You have quadroupled visitors, but only (well, a little more, but still) doubled page views. That means that quite a lot of the new visitors doesn't view many pages. Since the pages/session and session duration are both averages, getting 40000 new users only viewing one page doesn't increase that number.

    To know more about this, you would have to have some sort of algorithm, showing how many of your users are actually using the pages, moving about, clicking on things, and how many only load the first page (or whatever landing page they reach) and never does anything else before leaving the site.

    Again, depending on what type of site this is, you might have other statistics that can better provide data - if it's a shop, is it earning more money? If it's a blog, does it get more comments? If it's a forum, are there more posts? Company page, are there more leads coming through?

    The statistics above doesn't really tell you anything useful.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Apr 5, 2016 IP