Average Session Duration and Why it Matters to SaaS Companies
Average session duration measures the time users spend in your product per session. Learn how to calculate it and how SaaS teams use it to prioritize features.
TL;DR
- Average session duration measures the average amount of time users spend on your website or product in a single session, from login to logout or leaving.
- SaaS companies calculate it by dividing the total session time by the number of visitors within a specific time frame; the data is available through Google Analytics.
- The metric helps customer success, marketing, and product teams see which features are high or low performers and prioritize enhancements, training, and product marketing accordingly.
In the world of customer reporting, CSMs can bucket customer metrics into a few different categories:
- Sentiment-based data points help CSMs keep tabs on how customer contacts and accounts feel about a product, service, or even the customer team assisting them in their relationship.
- Issue-related metrics focus on concerns customers bring to the table, how efficiently customer teams can handle these issues and can help inform internal processes to serve customers better.
- Product-related metrics that pertain to any on-platform information your team can glean about your customers, such as usage rates or average session duration.
But how do all of these different kinds of metrics fit together? Let’s break down one common product-related data point, Average Session Duration, and find out.
What is Average Session Duration
Average Session Duration measures the average amount of time users spend on your website or product in a single session. A session includes everything a user does on your site, from when they login to when they log out or leave your site. This data is available through Google Analytics and is especially common in industries such as eCommerce, content and blogs, and other web-based services.
SaaS organizations can calculate Average Session Duration by looking at how many users visit a site within a specific time frame and then dividing the total session time by this number of visitors.
How can SaaS companies use Average Session Duration
Average Session Duration is an excellent metric for departments across an organization looking to optimize their product functionality for users. Analyzing Average Session Duration metrics can help customer success, marketing, and product teams:
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Understand how much time users are spending engaging with specific features of your product
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Know precisely which features are high performers (aka they see a majority of user attention) versus low performers (are not ever touched by a user session)
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Prioritize product marketing efforts, training sessions, and functionality enhancements based on where and how users are engaging with your product
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Realize exactly where your customers are spending their time on your product instead of just assuming how they spend their time
With these insights, SaaS organizations can be more aligned internally across different departments on the value of their products and what they deliver to customers. This alignment manifests itself in customer-facing interactions and conversations that are more in touch and empathetic with what your customers want to achieve with your product. It becomes a win-win-win for product teams, customer success managers, and customers.
Want to learn more?
You can learn more about the different types of customer success metrics – including the ones that can be most beneficial to you, your customers, and your business – with these additional resources from ClientSuccess:
Frequently Asked Questions
What is average session duration?
How do you calculate average session duration?
Why does average session duration matter for SaaS companies?
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