How to measure engagement on your website

Before we get to how to measure engagement, let's start by defining engagement on your website. The goal for most websites is to get the visitors to engage with the content, usually by reading articles or clicking on links. An engaged visitor stays longer and interact more with the website. 

There are a few different signs that your visitors are engaged with the content, and here are some of the metrics you can use: bounce rate, exits, time spent, page views, returning visitors, clicks on links, and scroll. 

Automatic metrics

The automatic metrics are metrics that are always included in your analytics and that require no further set up.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the share of visitors who only viewed one page before leaving. For visitors to be engaged, you want them to interact with the page and probably move on to other pages. You therefore generally want a low bounce rate. You can read more about how to analyze the bounce rate here.

Exits

The exits tell you how many visitors left on a particular page. As much as your visitors need to leave at some point, pages with higher than average (for your website) exit rates may indicate lower engagement. It could be that these are also the most visited pages, but maybe there is a pattern where your visitors are more likely to exit on a certain page type. 

Time spent on page

Time spent on page is what is says on the tin, it tells you how long the visitors stay for (however, the exits affect the average time, which you can read more about here). If your visitors are engaged with the content, they should stay long enough to read the content before moving on. There isn't one specific time that counts as being engaged, as the time spent on the page is related to how much information there is on the page, and also the type of page.

Page views

You can use your page views as a metric of the engagement on your website, since engaged visitors are likely to visit several pages before leaving. For example, you can look at the average number of page views per visit, or you can look at how many page views specific pages get. There are many reasons as to why a specific page may have low views, but if there is a pattern related to page type or subject, there may be a problem with the engagement.

Returning visitors

An engaged visitor is likely to return to your website, because they like your content or your products. The share of returning visitors can therefore be used as a measurement of engagement. The average share of returning visitor differs between industries, and it is therefore best to only compare to yourself. For example, you can see if the changes you made to you website has affected the share of returning visitors.

Metrics that require set up or additional products

Besides the automatically collected metrics, there are some metrics you can set up yourself and some that require additional Extellio products.

Clicks

By measuring clicks, you will not only be able to see if the visitors click on internal links, but also which links they click on. Engaged visitors are likely to use internal links to read related articles, view similar products, or simply navigating further out of curiosity. There are a couple of different ways to track clicks.

Events

You can use events to track all clicks on internal links, or you can select only clicks on certain elements. This will help you evaluate which links are engaging the visitors, but also if changes to links affect the engagement. You can read more about events here.

Heatmaps

Another way of tracking clicks is to use a heatmap, which is another Extellio product and may require an additional license. Heatmaps are visual tools, where clicks, scrolls, and cursor movements are placed over a screenshot. By using heatmaps, you can easily see if the visitors are more engaged with links at the top of the page or at the bottom of the page, or if they ignore some of the links all together.

Scrolls

Another way of measuring engagement is to see how far the visitors are scrolling. Engaged visitors are likely to scroll down, for example to read the text or look for links and related information. Again, there are a couple of different ways to track scrolls.

Events

You can use event to track scroll too, and for example track how many of the visitors scrolled down 75%. One downside is that you will have to predetermine the share they scrolled down before, but you can have one event for 50%, one for 75%, and so on. Read more about events here.

Heatmaps

A better way of tracking scroll is to use heatmaps, but again, that is a separate product from analytics and may require you to purchase an additional Extellio license. Heatmaps visualize how far down the visitors scroll on the specific page by changing the color. Red (hot) areas have many views and blue (cold) areas have few views. You can also hover your cursor to see exact percentage across the page. By using heatmaps, you can easily see how the engagement changes across the page, and perhaps identify elements (or lack thereof) that are causing the engagement to drop.

Additional metrics

There are more metrics you can use to track engagement, but the ones listed above are the main metrics that apply to all websites. Depending on what you consider an engaged visitor, you can also set up goals, track forms, how they interact with media on your website, and more. 

You can also use surveys as a complementary metric of the engagement, by asking the visitors how often they visit your website (not visible in your analytics) and how likely they are to recommend you, or general satisfaction. However, surveys is a different Extellio product and may require that you purchase an additional license.