Understanding Average Session Duration: What It Is and How to Calculate It

Average session duration (ASD) refers to the average amount of time users spend on your app or website during a single session. 

Calculating Your ASD

To calculate your ASD, take the total time spent by all users during a period and divide it by the total number of sessions in that period. For example, if your users spent a total of 100,000 minutes over 10,000 sessions last month, your ASD would be 10 minutes (100,000/10,000).

While a higher ASD is generally better since it means users are more engaged, the ideal duration depends on your product and business goals. For an ecommerce site, an ASD of 52 to 75 seconds could be good, while a video streaming service would aim for at least 30 minutes.

Why You Should Care About Increasing Session Duration

1) It Improves Engagement

The longer people spend on your app or website, the more engaged they are. High engagement means users find your product valuable and are interested in what you offer. Engaged users are also more likely to return, recommend your product to others, and potentially make in-app purchases.

2) It Boosts Your Ranking

Search engines like Google want to surface the most engaging and useful content for users. Average session duration is one of the signals they consider when determining search rankings. The longer people stay on your site, the higher you'll rank in search results.

3) It Provides More Data

Longer sessions mean more page views, clicks, and user interactions to analyze. This data helps you gain valuable insights into how people are using your product and what can be improved. You'll see what's working well and what's not, then make changes to optimize the user experience.

4) It Opens Up Opportunities

The more time users spend engaging with your product, the more opportunities you have to connect with them. You can use this time to display targeted ads, upsell products and services, send in-app messages, prompt for reviews, get feedback, etc. With longer sessions, the potential to drive revenue and build your business increases significantly.

5) It Leads to Return Visits

If users have an enjoyable and meaningful experience on your app or website, they'll likely come back for more. Longer session duration often translates to higher customer retention and loyalty. Repeat visitors are extremely valuable since they're already familiar with your product and more prone to taking action like making a purchase. Focusing on session duration helps create an experience people want to come back to again and again.

7 Tips to Boost Session Duration Through Gamification

There are some tried-and-true ways to keep users engaged on your app or website through game-like elements. Here are 10 tips to increase average session duration using gamification:

1) Set challenges and quests

Give users challenges, quests or missions to complete to keep them active on the site. For example, award badges or give points for completing key tasks. 

2) Provide instant feedback

Let users know instantly how they are progressing through levels, badges or points. This kind of real-time feedback keeps them motivated to do more to achieve the next goal or milestone.

3) Reward loyalty

The more time someone spends on your app or website, the more loyal they become. Reward that loyalty and longevity with special badges, access to premium content or special perks. Loyal and long-term users will keep coming back for more.

4) Share progress on social media

Make it easy for users to share their achievements, levels, badges, and points on social media. This taps into their need to gain virtual status and compete with their peers. Their social shares, in turn, promote your app or website to new potential users.

5) Offer surprises

Surprise your users with random rewards, bonus points or badges to keep them guessing and wanting to come back to see what they might unlock next. The element of surprise and delight creates an exciting experience.

6) Personalize the experience 

Tailor content, product recommendations, and messaging to individual users based on their interests and behaviors. Personalization makes the experience more compelling and sticky.

7) Offer engaging content

Show experiences like videos, interactive elements, and social features. The more time users spend consuming and interacting with your content, the longer they'll stay on your site.

Using these gamification techniques helps make an app or website experience more engaging, challenging and rewarding. Keep optimizing and testing to see which strategies work best for boosting your average user session duration.