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User engagement metrics that keep trending in the right direction quarter after quarter mean a lot to B2B businesses. Not only they indicate how well your site and its design are serving user needs, but they are also key when it comes to evaluating how well you’re attracting new leads and building rapport among your existing and new audience.
But which B2B engagement metrics are the most important to track and what do they tell you about your website? We are covering everything you need to know, along with expert advice on how to improve each metric.
We are covering everything you need to know.
Here’s a complete breakdown of what we’ll be discussing:
Engagement metrics measure how users interact with your website and everything in it.
To find the commonly tracked B2B website user engagement metrics, we surveyed 43 companies. 56.10% of our respondents were agencies/consultants working for B2B businesses, while 43.90% were B2B companies.
When asked which metrics they track to measure engagement on their B2B website, the popular choice was conversion rate (65.85%), while the close second was page views (63.41%).
56.10% and 53.66% of our respondents also track average time on page and bounce rates to determine how engaging their websites are.
Other common choices for engagement metrics were average session duration, traffic sources, and pages per session.
To better understand their user engagement, we asked them to share the numbers of their different metrics and then calculated median values.
The median conversion rate across 40+ B2B websites was 3.13, their average page views were 1000 views, and their users spent nearly 120 seconds on their pages.
But how do these median values stack up against industry standards? Here is a chart comparing this self-reported data with median values from our B2B Website Engagement Benchmark Group ($1-$10M) with 600+ contributors.
We’ll be going into detail on the commonly used engagement metrics, what they are, how to calculate them, track them, and how to improve them.
Ah, conversions – probably the most thrown-around word in your quarterly meetings.
Simply put, the conversion rate measures the percentage of people who completed desired goals on your website. These goals or actions can take many shapes, and some common ones are below:
The conversion rate measures how successful your website – its content, design, calls to action, etc. – was in meeting the set goals. A high number is favorable and indicates that your set strategies are working.
Tracking conversion rates is even important when you run paid campaigns or make changes to your website to see if they brought positive results.
To calculate conversion rates, divide the total number of conversions (sales/downloads/sign-ups) by the total number of website visitors and then multiply the number by 100.
Google Analytics has a separate tab dedicated to tracking and monitoring conversions. Over there, you can get a holistic view of your set goals, how many were achieved at a given time, and the sources (organic search, direct, Facebook, etc.) that brought in the most conversions.
Related: How to Track Conversions with Google Analytics 4: 7 Best Practices
Ideally, you should be investing in a comprehensive Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) plan to boost desired actions. Even if you aren’t, one quick tip for optimizing your conversion rate is to include social proof in your website’s content.
Social proof, like customer testimonials, ratings on G2/Capterra, and the number of clients, helps increase trust, especially when a first-time visitor is looking to commit to your solution.
Related: Website Conversion Rate Optimization Tips: How to Optimize Conversion Rates with Low Traffic?
As the name implies, pageviews refer to the number of views a page gets during a certain time.
Every single time a page is loaded – whether someone visited that page at a later time or simply reloaded it in the same setting – the number of page views increases.
When thinking about page views, you may believe the more, the merrier, but measuring it can be more like holding a double-edged sword.
A high number of page views may indicate your content is engaging and people are coming back to view it again. A greater number of views after running a campaign may also show that your campaign successfully brought new visitors to your website.
But more page views may also show that your website has performance issues and visitors have to reload pages to access it properly. It may also signal that your content is difficult to understand, and visitors have to view it again and again to understand it.
So is a high number of page views favorable or not? Well, it depends. A greater number of page views on blog pages means that content is helpful, but a high number on your demo page may indicate your page has missing information.
You can track page views on Google Analytics by going to Audience > Overview and then selecting a time range.
The median value of page views for our 43 respondents was 1,000. This was self-reported data based on which we calculated the median.
According to Databox’s own Benchmark data, the median value of pageviews for B2B companies is 5.53K.
This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from close to 2000 companies.
Are you a B2B company and want to benchmark your marketing performance, including Sessions, Users, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate, and more, against other companies like yours? Join the benchmark group for free.
Viewing benchmark data can be enlightening, but seeing where your company’s efforts rank against those benchmarks can be game-changing.
Browse Databox’s open Benchmark Groups and join ones relevant to your business to get free and instant performance benchmarks.
One effective way to improve page views (and ensure the higher number is in your favor) is by improving the user experience on your website. When your website, and its individual web pages, are easy to navigate, your users will likely visit them again.
Here are some ways you can improve your website’s user experience:
Another engagement metrics example that most marketers fancy is time on page. The latter measures the average amount of time users spend on a certain page of your website.
Tracking the time spent on pages is important because it signifies how interesting and engaging it is. Take the example of any clothing outlet near you. The more time you spend in that shop, the more the chances you will buy from them.
A higher time on page is preferred and proves that your page successfully achieved what it set out to do.
To view the time on page, go to Google Analytics > Behavior > Site Content > All Pages, and there you can find the average time for different web pages.
One important thing to note when tracking this metric is understanding how Google Analytics records the time a user spends.
The time spent on page A can only be recorded if the user visited page B. Say, a user lands on a blog page at 2:00, reads it, and then visits your product page at 2:15. The time spent on that blog page was 15 minutes.
Conversely, if the same user read that blog page for 15 minutes but didn’t go to any other page of your website, Google Analytics will consider the user as bounced and record a time spent of 0 minutes (more on this later).
As per the survey, the median time on page for our respondents was 120 seconds.
According to Databox’s Benchmarks data, the median time on page for B2B companies is 1 minute and 40 seconds (or 100 seconds).
Are you a B2B company and want to benchmark your marketing performance, including Sessions, Users, Avg. Session Duration, and more, against other companies like yours? Join the benchmark group for free.
If you’re looking to optimize the time spent on your web pages, consider adding more (but relevant) internal links (links to different pages of your website).
How do they make a difference? Well, you’re giving your viewers access to more content, and if they’re enjoying their experience on your website so far, they will also check those pages. Hence, increasing time spent on different pages and making it easier for Google Analytics to record that information.
The bounce rate takes into account visitors who land on one web page and then leave your website without visiting any other pages. These “bounced” visitors can be considered missed targets as they leave your website without taking any desired actions.
There are many reasons why visitors may bounce, some of them are below:
High bounces signify a lack of interest and may indicate that your website is performing poorly, which is why it is imperative to track and monitor them across different web pages.
You can find bounce rates where you found time on page in Google Analytics. Just a refresher – go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
The average bounce rate in our survey was 55%.
According to Databox’s Benchmarks data, the median bounce rate for B2B companies is 65.03%.
If your bounce rate is lower than the latter percentage, you deserve a pat on the back.
One important thing to note when tracking bounce rates is to consider the nature of the different web pages. Blog pages generally witness a greater bounce rate than product or pricing pages since searchers hunt for specific answers and move on with their day once they acquire them.
You can lower your website’s bounce rates by understanding the searcher’s intent and creating content that meets it.
If your visitor is looking for a guide on B2B marketing strategies, your blog written on the same topic should cover it all. If they’re looking for your monthly pricing plans, your pricing page should clearly mention the price with a breakdown of the features offered – no need to disguise with lots of content on why they should buy your product.
Related: What Is a Good Bounce Rate for a Landing Page? 40+ Marketers Share Their Thoughts and Tips for Improvement
Before we can talk about the average session duration metric, it’s important to understand what sessions are.
Whenever a visitor lands on your website, a session is created. All the different pages they visit and actions they take in that setting fall under the same session. Sessions end after 30 minutes of inactivity or when midnight strikes.
With that being said, the average session duration measures the length of a session over a time frame. In other words, how long do users spend on your website before moving on to something else.
The average session duration can be found in Google Analytics by going to Audience > Overview. For better tracking, it’s important to know how this engagement metric is calculated.
When you divide the session duration by the number of sessions, you get the average session duration. Pretty easy, right? Things get a little complicated when you get to know that the time spent on the last page before a user exits your website/session is always considered as 0. Hence, it is important to track this metric along with the average time on page before making any exit page changes.
So, what is considered a good average session duration? Our survey respondents share a median value of 157 seconds. On the other hand, Databox’s Benchmarks feature reports a median of 1 minute and 18 seconds or 78 seconds.
A higher average session duration is desirable since you want people to stay on your website for long. One way you can improve this number is by adding relevant calls to action on different web pages.
Your blog page can feature a call to action button redirecting your visitor to the features page, the call to action on your features page can lead to your case studies pages, and your case studies page to your sign-up page.
Just make sure your calls to action are descriptive and share the benefit the user gets when clicking on them.
The pages per session engagement metric shows the number of pages a visitor views in a single session.
A high number of pages per session is a positive sign as it indicates that users find your website’s content engaging and explore multiple pages to consume the same information.
However, viewing this metric as a standalone value is not always a smart choice. If you witness a high number of pages per session but a low average session duration, your visitors are not spending much time on individual pages and are switching between pages to find the answer they’re searching for.
Pages per session can be calculated by dividing the sum value of pages visited by the total number of sessions. You can view this metric in Google Analytics by going to Audience > Overview.
As per our survey, the average value for our respondents was 2.5.
According to Databox’s Benchmarks data, the median value of pages per session for B2B companies is lower — 1.84 to be exact.
Are you a B2B company and want to benchmark your marketing performance against hundreds of other companies like yours? Join the Benchmark Group for free.
If you have a low number of pages per session, you can improve it by focusing on and optimizing your site structure. The latter relates to how content is linked, grouped, and presented for people to view.
Ensure you have a content flow in place that aligns with the buyer’s journey. You can also consider adding breadcrumbs to your website for easier navigation. Site structure – and pages per session – can also be improved by adding greater yet relevant internal links across different pages.
Related: What is ‘Pages Per Session’ in Google Analytics & How Do I Increase It?
When measuring the engagement on your B2B website, you surely want to track the number of people bringing in that engagement.
The unique visitors are merely people who view your website. But how ‘unique’ these visitors are is a question mark.
Whenever someone lands on any website, Google assigns them a unique ID stored as a cookie in their browser. This ID helps Google associate all actions taken by that user with them.
However, this unique identifier changes whenever the user clears their cookies or views the same website from a different web browser or operating device. Hence, it may be possible that the same person occupies multiple unique IDs.
Even with this shortcoming, measuring unique visitors is important, and this importance increases especially after you launch marketing campaigns. If the count of unique visitors grows after you launch a campaign, then that campaign was successful.
You can track unique visitors by going to Google Analytics > Audience > Overview and looking at the “users” metric. You can set different time ranges to see how the number of unique visitors increases over different months, holidays, seasons, etc.
Promoting your website across different channels can improve the number of unique visitors.
You can create an SEO strategy where you optimize your pages for different keywords. So, when people search for the same keywords, your pages would be ranking on the first page of SERPs. You may also run paid campaigns across social channels, like Facebook and LinkedIn, to reach your target audience.
When you promote your website, you’re bringing its content in front of newer people, improving your unique visitors metric simultaneously.
Does your website mostly bring in new users or previous ones? To find this out, you should track the new vs. returning users metric.
New users are those who visit your website for the first time, while returning users are those who have initiated a session(s) before on the same website. However, if the returning user doesn’t view the website again in two years, then Google will consider the same user as a new one.
Measuring new vs. returning users helps to understand how ‘sticky’ your website is in terms of engagement. If users are returning to your website, this means they find your content valuable and are loyal to your website.
To view how many new and returning visitors your B2B website has, go to Google Analytics > Audience > Behavior > New vs. Returning. In most scenarios, the number of new users would be greater than the number of returning ones.
To track this metric effectively, select the source/medium dimension to view which sources (organic search, direct, emails, socials, etc.) bring in which types of users.
The answer to this question depends on what you’re aiming to achieve. If you’re looking to improve the number of returning users, invest in your email marketing strategy and send effective newsletters. If you want to improve the number of new users, focus on boosting promotional efforts on traffic acquisition channels.
Another essential metric to track when determining new traffic on your B2B website is sessions from new visitors. As the name implies, this metric tracks the number of new unique visitors who initiate a session(s) during a certain time frame.
Even if a single visitor commenced multiple sessions, the number of visitors would be considered as one. Hence, this metric is slightly more true to nature than unique visitors, as the latter sometimes features duplicate unique IDs of the same person.
Sessions from new visitors track how popular your website has been during a time. This metric is important to track after launching marketing campaigns, receiving a backlink from an authoritative website, or introducing new features.
To track sessions from new visitors in Google Analytics, go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages and look at the % of New Sessions.
According to Databox’s Benchmarks data, the median value for % of New Sessions is pretty high — and the data is based on Google Analytics accounts from
500+ B2B companies. Want to see the median value and compare your performance to other companies like yours? Join this B2B Website Engagement Benchmark Group for free.
Similar to improving the number of unique visitors on your website, if you want to improve sessions from new visitors, you must promote your website and its content. Consider launching paid campaigns across different social platforms, investing in your SEO strategy, and creating valuable content pieces that become linkable assets.
Another user engagement metric associated with people leaving is the exit rate. A user has said to be exited if they visited a number of web pages before landing on a certain page and leaving your website from there. In other words, exit pages are the last pages before sessions end.
This is different from the bounce rate since, in exit rates, visitors leave after viewing multiple pages, but in bounce rates, the viewer abandons the website after viewing just one page.
You may think a high exit rate is undesirable, but in some cases, you’d prefer that.
See, some pages are designed to have high exit rates, like demo booking, contact, and thank you pages. High exits on these pages signify that the user has taken the desired action before leaving the site. The problem arises when you see a high exit rate for pages that are way ahead in the buyer’s journey.
If a pricing page has a high exit rate, then the users may think that your price plans are more expensive than your competitors or the latter offers more features in their free plan than you.
Generally, high exits on these pages occur because:
Related: Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate – How to Analyze Both to Improve Your Content Strategy?
In Google Analytics, you can view exit rates by going to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
One thing to remember is that the time spent on exit pages will always be 0. This is because Google Analytics can only record time spent on one page when the user page moves to another.
Lowering the exits of pages not designed to be exit pages can be done by encouraging your visitors to stay on the website for more. One way this can be done is by adding relevant pop-ups – not the annoying kind that makes content difficult to read but those that show extra information that the reader may want to view.
For instance, if a user is viewing your product page, a side pop-up sharing a comparison between you and your top competitor can help the visitor stay on your website for longer.
Ever curious if your visitors read the entire content on your website or just the sections that are of interest to them? Well, the page/scroll depth engagement metric may help you in this regard.
The page or scroll depth measures how far down your visitors scroll on a page before moving on to another one or simply leaving.
This metric shows how engaging and relevant your users find your content to be. It may also indicate that information on your website is readable – written in simple language, divided into different sections, and has enough negative space.
Page/scroll depth is also important when you’re looking to boost conversions. When you know where visitors stop scrolling, you can add effective call to action buttons before that to encourage clicks.
Related: How Can We Improve Website Time on Page and Dwell Time?
Google Analytics doesn’t have a built-in feature that lets you track page depth. To track this metric, you must either install the Scroll Depth Google Analytics plugin or Google Tag Manager.
Both of them let you see how far along visitors scroll on your page – 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%. They also use pixel depth to accurately point out where users stop scrolling.
To increase the page/scroll depth, you must make your web pages consumable. This means that your content should be concise and written in easy-to-understand language, a table of contents is added on blog pages to improve navigation, and your content is broken down into different headings and sections and reinforced through supporting graphics.
PRO TIP: Want to learn how to analyze popular visitor engagement metrics in Google Analytics such as time on page and dwell time to better understand the overall quality of our content, whether we’re attracting the right type of traffic, and more? Watch the video below.
We asked our respondents their top tips for improving overall user engagement metrics on their B2B websites. We’ve featured the best tips that are a great starting point if you want to brush up on your engagement metrics.
If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 that will get you started:
And more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring visitor engagement on your website. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
SEO-focused content often gets a lot of flak from content marketers. However, when you strike a balance between promoting content unique to your company with other SEO-driven content, like blogs and guides, you’re able to reach greater people.
Erica Mobley of Sentient Digital, Inc. reinforces this, “One best practice to improve user engagement metrics on our website has been to balance the highly technical content that demonstrates our expertise with more SEO-focused content to draw users to the site and answer questions they may have. This balance helps ensure that we address topics that both our current and potential clients, as well as potential employment seekers, are able to engage with our content.”
Related: Blog SEO: 47 Expert Tips for Optimizing Blog Posts for SEO
Not all content produced is equal. The content that gets conversions usually starts with a thorough content strategy followed by creating information pieces relevant to the target audience’s pain points and expectations.
John Reinesch of Exponential Growth agrees, “For us, engagement always starts with creating a great content strategy and then getting that content in front of the right people.”
“When you genuinely create content on your website that your target audience loves, engagement tends to take care of itself and you don’t need to use ‘hacks’.”
John Reinesch
Founder at Exponential Growth
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Good site navigation is important as it can prolong the time spent by users on your website, improving your average session duration and number of pages per session.
You can significantly promote easy website navigation by adding calls to action tailored to your users and the benefits they can expect from clicking on them.
Lucy Hurst of Sherbet Donkey Media explains this better, “We create engaging content that motivates the user to navigate through pages / getting a clear message and idea on the service we provide. Tailored CTAs that are easy to read to get the message and intent of the page across.”
Related: How to Write a Call to Action: Increase Your Conversions with 16 Proven Tips for Crafting CTAs
Heatmaps help you understand how users interact with your website by showing heightened activity – or lack thereof – on different web page sections. Monitoring them would be in your best interest as you can identify what is working and what should be changed.
Kent Lewis of Deksia shares, “Beyond Google Analytics review, we measure engagement for our B2B website with heat-mapping tools. While we’ve used Hotjar in the past, we currently like Microsoft Clarity, as it’s free and easy to use. These platforms allow us to ‘look over the shoulders’ of our users as they navigate through our site. What do they click on? What do they ignore? Do they fill the form out? Is the website functioning properly?”
Alysha Schultz of Intuitive Digital further adds to the narrative, “We love using Hotjar to track and monitor how users interact with our site. Finding places they expect to click but can’t, how far they scroll down the page, and moving up/down content blocks as needed to increase reading the content and A/B testing CTAs.”
Adding social proof to your website’s content is crucial for building trust, especially if you have a high number of new unique visitors. When your content appears credible, users will stick around for longer, click on call to action buttons and interact with your website overall.
“When I implemented social proof elements into a client’s B2B (SAAS) website, I was able to increase key user behaviour metrics such as time spent on a page, bounce rate, and conversion rate and dramatically improve exit rates.”
Adam Berry
Search Engine Optimisation Consultant at Adam Berry SEO
Adam Berry of Adam Berry SEO shares some social proof examples, “Here are some of the tactics I used to improve user behavior metrics:
The hero section of any website is the top most part of the website after the logo and menu. Including relevant details over here can help users understand that they’re in the right place and will be able to meet what they’re in search of.
Ali Saeed of Anotio reinforces this, “The way we managed to improve our user engagement is by clearly stating what our company does for clients in the top hero section. This way, visitors know what we do, whom we serve, and if we will be the right fit. And as they scroll down, they see our results, portfolio, and services with a contact page.”
Who says content needs to be paragraphs and paragraphs of endless text? You can talk about your product and why it is better than others in an interactive video. The same will encourage engagement and make your overall design consumable.
Dan Young of Loud Digital Ltd adds, “We found adding engaging content such as an introductory video, did wonders for improving average session duration, and actually improved conversion rates as it primed the user and encouraged them to convert.”
Tracking user engagement (and other) metrics can get tricky really fast when you need to analyze specific website segments, traffic sources or landing pages. Instead of spending hours filtering through data in GA, an easier way is to plug them into Databox and visualize them on one screen. From there, you can easily monitor fluctuations and spot trends, analyze your data, and report on results quickly and effectively.
And if you’re curious whether you are over-performing or underperforming in your industry, we have a solution for that as well!
Databox’s Benchmark Groups give you access to your industry’s user engagement metrics – and much more – completely anonymously and free of cost. You just need to plug in the data source that contains the metrics you want to benchmark. You can use this data to see how you stack up, identify growth opportunities, prioritize your activities, and much more. Browse through Databox Benchmark groups here.
Or, if you are ready to get started, sign up for a forever-free Databox account now.
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Saffa is a freelance content writer for SaaS and B2B businesses. Besides writing, she enjoys indulging in the occasional Netflix binge, hanging out with friends, and cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
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