Difference between 'Visit Time' & 'Time Viewing per Page'

Problem:

In the Traffic Analysis section; what's the difference between average 'Visit Time' and average 'Time Viewing per Page'. How can I have time viewing per page of 1 minute 10 seconds, but an average visit time of only 13 seconds?

Solution:

The quick explanation is that not all visitors contribute to Average Visit Time.

The results for the two stats of 'Visit Time' and "Time Viewing per Page" are calculated from two different sets of information.

'Visit Time' and 'Time Viewing per Page' are defined as follows:

'Visit Time' is defined as the time between the first page and the last page. A visitor must look at more than one page to create a statistic for Visit Time. A Visit Time is not recorded if a person just views one page on your website. If a person only visits one page the visit time is recorded as "n.a."

The 'Time Viewing per Page' is defined as the difference between entering one page and leaving that page. This statistic is often recorded, even in the event that a visitor views only one page. I say 'often' because a signal is not always sent. When we do receive the information; if a person looks at only your homepage, and they do so for 14 seconds, they will log a time viewed per page of 14 seconds, but not contribute to average visit times.

The explanation for why the two sets of information are different is due to the existing industry standards for defining the variable(s) of 'time spent on a page' when we built Opentracker. Industry standards told us that this variable was not possible to measure, simply because the technology did not exist. In the meantime we have developed the technology to record the actual amount of time that visitor spends on an individual page.

We are currently working to revise our definitions to reflect this change in our ability to track time spent on a single page.