Understanding how users interact with your website is key to making informed decisions about your content, marketing, and user experience. In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), while much has changed from Universal Analytics, one thing remains crucial—sessions. But GA4 introduces several session-based metrics that go beyond simply counting visits. These metrics help you understand how long users stay, how engaged they are, and how often they return.
1. Session
A session in GA4 is a group of user interactions on your website or app that happen within a given timeframe. It starts when a user lands on your site and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity or when the clock strikes midnight, whichever comes first.
🔹 Example: A visitor lands on your homepage, clicks through to a product page, and exits the site after 10 minutes. GA4 counts this as one session. If the same visitor returns after an hour, GA4 starts a new session.
Sessions form the backbone of web analytics. They help you understand how many times users are visiting and initiating interaction with your site.
2. Total Sessions
Total sessions is the complete number of sessions that took place on your site within a given time frame. This includes sessions from all users, regardless of whether they’re new or returning.
🔹 Example: Your eCommerce store had 10,000 total sessions in March. That means people visited your store 10,000 times—regardless of whether it was one person visiting five times or 5,000 people visiting twice.
This metric helps you assess overall site performance and user interest. Comparing it month-over-month helps identify trends or seasonal changes.
3. Engaged Sessions
Not all sessions are created equal. GA4 defines an engaged session as one that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has at least one conversion event, or involves two or more screen/page views.
🔹 Example: A user lands on your blog, reads the entire article (staying for over a minute), and clicks a CTA to download a resource. This would be classified as an engaged session because it exceeds the 10-second rule and includes meaningful interaction.
Engaged sessions are critical for understanding quality traffic—users who are actually interested in what you offer, not just bouncing after a few seconds.
4. Engaged Sessions Per User
Engaged sessions per user is the average number of engaged sessions each user initiates over a set period. This metric provides insight into the stickiness of your site and user loyalty.
🔹 Example: Let’s say you had 1,000 users and 2,500 engaged sessions in a month. Your engaged sessions per user would be 2.5, indicating that users came back multiple times and interacted deeply.
This metric helps marketers and UX designers evaluate retention efforts. The higher this number, the better your site is at maintaining user interest.
5. Average Session Duration
This metric tells you how long, on average, a session lasts. In GA4, since everything is event-driven, session duration is derived from the timestamps of the first and last events in a session.
🔹 Example: You have 3 sessions—one lasted 2 minutes, another 4 minutes, and one 6 minutes. The average session duration is 4 minutes.
This gives you a clear sense of how compelling your content is. Short durations may signal weak content or usability issues, while longer durations often point to good user engagement.
6. Session Engagement Rate
Session engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions out of total sessions. This metric replaces the traditional bounce rate and provides a more actionable view of how interactive users are.
🔹 Example: If your blog received 1,000 total sessions in a week and 600 of them were engaged (lasting over 10 seconds or including multiple page views), then your session engagement rate is 60%.
This is a high-value metric for evaluating the performance of specific pages, campaigns, or traffic sources. A low rate might signal a mismatch between user expectations and your content.
Why These Metrics Matter
GA4 takes a more modern approach to analytics by focusing on event-based tracking rather than sessions alone. However, session-based metrics are still essential. They help you assess not just how many people visit, but how they interact, how long they stay, and how frequently they return.
Let’s say you launch a new landing page for a product campaign:
- Sessions and total sessions tell you how many visits the page is getting.
- Engaged sessions show you how many of those visits are meaningful.
- Average session duration indicates how long users are staying.
- Session engagement rate reveals whether the content encourages interaction.
- Engaged sessions per user tells you if people are coming back and engaging again.
By tracking these metrics together, you get a comprehensive view of user behavior and can make smarter decisions to optimize performance.
