User Behaviour Engagement Overview

Engagement overview is the row of four cards at the top of the User Behaviour dashboard. It shows sessions, time on page, scroll depth and clicks for the selected page or pages, and how each changed from the previous period.

Engagement overview cards

Card	What it shows
Sessions	Page sessions for the selected page or pages in the period. With All pages, a visit that viewed three pages counts three times.
Average time spent	Time recorded on the page, divided by sessions.
Average scroll depth	How far down the page sessions scrolled, on average.
Clicks per session	Clicks recorded on the page, divided by sessions. Each click counts.

The line under the Engagement overview title shows the selected period and the period it is compared with: the same number of days immediately before it.

Reading the change on each card

Each Engagement overview card shows the current value, the change from the previous period and the previous value, for example "Previous period 10".

The change is the difference between the two periods, in the card's own unit:

Card	Change shown in
Sessions	Sessions
Average time spent	Minutes and seconds
Average scroll depth	Percentage points
Clicks per session	Clicks per session

The colour shows direction only. Green means the value rose, red means it fell and orange means it did not change. "No comparison available" means there is no previous value.

Engagement overview with a single traffic source

With a single traffic source selected on the User Behaviour dashboard, Sessions and Clicks per session are filtered to that source. Average scroll depth still includes visits from every source, and Average time spent is not a reliable figure for that source. Use All traffic sources when you read these two cards.

Clicks per session for a single source needs click tracking by source to cover both the selected and previous periods. If it does not, the card shows "This traffic source does not yet cover both periods."

Engagement overview messages

A card with no value shows the reason in place of the change.

Message	Meaning
No qualifying sessions were available.	Nothing was recorded for this selection.
No recorded page-time observations were available.	No time on the page was recorded for this selection.
No scroll observations were available.	No scrolling was recorded for this selection.
Recent click detail is still being prepared.	With a single traffic source selected, click data is being updated. Try again later, or choose All traffic sources.
This traffic source does not yet cover both periods.	Choose a more recent, shorter period, or All traffic sources.
Not available for this selection.	The measure cannot be calculated for these filters.
Engagement overview could not be loaded. Please refresh the page.	Refresh the page.

Common misreadings of Engagement overview

Belief	Correction
A red change means performance got worse.	Red means the value fell. A shorter visit can mean the page answered the question quickly.
Clicks per session is the share of visitors who clicked.	It counts every click. One visitor can click many times.
Average time spent equals the values in the Time view of Page depth engagement added together.	They use different bases. Average time spent divides by all sessions; the Time view divides by the sessions that reached each depth.
Sessions matches the total in Traffic sources.	They are counted separately and can differ. Use Sessions for the page total.
Average scroll depth of 90% means visitors saw 90% of the page's content.	It shows how far they scrolled, not what was on screen.
With All pages, Sessions is the number of visitors to the website.	It adds up sessions page by page. One visit to several pages is counted on each page.