#1 - Visitors and their page-views
Website visitors indicate the number of times users opened your domain, reached your WordPress, reflecting overall traffic and interest. Meanwhile, their respective page views measure the number of pages users explore during their visits.
Why track Visitors and their page-views together? Because content complexity is not consistent. Tracking these metrics together, provide valuable insights into user engagement and interaction FROM your content. More organic traffic or direct visits imply increased exposure and visibility to a broader audience. Higher page views, from each specific visit suggest users explore multiple sections of your site, indicating deeper connection and interest in your content and offerings.
Complexity also plays an unique role here. If you content is part of a series, then page views for each, in total offers a more clearer understanding on how things evolve.
#2 - URL and their Time On Page
The URL reveals the time each visitor reaches your specific WordPress page. The Time on site reveals how your content lands with your audience. Don’t stress if the bounce rate is high; just focus at specific pages to understand what’s happening. Overall, spiders + crawlers + bots are not humans, yet they fool almost any analytic tracking, constantly testing security, vulnerabilities, pagespeed and whatnots.
If visitors spend a lot of time on your content, that’s a good sign—it’s interesting and informative. A "short" content combined "high" Time On Page means the visitor opened your domain on a tab, and forgot about it. This is BAD.
If visitors spend too little time on your URL, it could signal returning visitors or knowledgeable existing customer. This is very OK, almost perfect, as you can interact with two types: interested future prospects and existing loyal customers.
Why track URL and their Time On Page together? Because content length is not consistent. Length of a 10 minutes to read blog-post like this, does not compare to our monthly CVE vulnerability reports, where you just glimpse if your WordPress plugin name was mentioned again or not. Difference to read by a human the same length (based on number of words): 10 minutes VERSUS a browser search + 10 seconds glimpse.
How to improve URL and their Time On Page? Make it interesting and more readable. For longer content, consider adding attention-grabbing CTA(s) or improving readability (like add pictures, videos, links related to content, table of content) to keep them engaged. Consider tone and style, but make sure you keep it consistent throughout the entire WordPress URL.
#3 - Average session duration
Session duration measures how much time visitors spend on a domain per session. This practically double-check above two metrics. A session contains each visitors all pageview, all urls and all their time spent for that browsing session. The average shows how close or far is that from expected and OK scenario.
How to measure Average session duration? To get the average, if not already provided: Simply divide the total number of sessions during a specific period by the entire duration of all of the sessions.
Why measure Average session duration? This compares all users and tends to pinpoint the sweet-spot between visitor types. When you account calendar to that raw data you'll understand instantly why a user has more or not at all attention during holiday in DEC versus early MAY.
How to improve your Average session duration? Longer average times indicate your audience is hooked and finds your content valuable, which helps build brand loyalty, trust, and deeper customer relationships. Check drop-off points within longer content. Are there specific sections losing their interest? Use this to UPDATE or SWITCH the content with something more engaging.
