What is an average page depth?

Average page depth is the average number of pages a visitor views during a single session. This is how you measure engagement. 

What is average page depth?

It is a way to measure visitor engagement by looking at the average number of pages a visitor views in one session. This gives you insight into the behavior of visitors. A handy tool for this is Google Analytics, which gives you insight into both user behavior and the website.

When a visitor spends a lot of time that is often a good sign. The higher the click-through rate, the better you retain visitors and your website is therefore effective. However, it can also mean that a visitor finds it difficult to find the right information and that the structure of the site is therefore not good. Then the visitor will get out quickly and the click-through percentage will therefore decrease.

How does it work?

The first page of a visit has a page depth of 0. The next page has a page depth of 1 and so each pageview increases until the end of the visit. You can calculate average page depth by dividing all page depths by the number of visits. When a page depth is 0, it means that visitors often only stayed on the first page.

Based on that, you can see which pages are doing well and which can still be improved. However, it depends on the objective. If you have a webshop and a customer has to go through a long row of pages to be able to go to the checkout, the page depth is small. But if your goal is to generate as many clicks as possible on your website, then it is good if the page depth is high.