Measure average attention time, engagement rate, and scroll depth

  • Updated

You can measure the performance of your content by using metrics such as average attention time, engagement rate, and scroll depth. 

Measure engaged content

When you read a piece of content, CMP considers you engaged if your page is in focus and you scrolled or moved your cursor in the past 5 seconds. After 5 seconds of not moving your mouse or not looking at the page (perhaps it is in another window or tab), Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP) takes the current time and subtracts it from the time you started engaging.

For example, if you loaded the page, scrolled or moved your mouse for 7 seconds, then stopped, your total engaged time is 12 seconds because you were active for 7, and 5 additional seconds is assumed.

Why is there a 5-second timeout? Chartbeat found that if someone was inactive for more than 5 seconds, they were not looking at the screen.

CMP adds your cumulative engaged time to the first 12 seconds if you return and start reading. If you decide to close the window, then your total cumulative engaged time is recorded.

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Measure average attention time

Average attention time is calculated by adding the engaged time of all users and dividing the sum by the number of page views. This calculation gives an average time on a particular page. The higher the average attention time, the better, which indicates that people spend more time reading your content.

Measure scroll depth

The scroll depth tracker measures how much of a page a reader has seen, with the top defined as 0% and the bottom of the article (not including footer) as 100%. Multiple tracking events are fired at each 10% interval as a user scrolls down the page to capture the maximum depth viewed. These events automatically account for screen width and magnification. 

For example, the tracker would register a 50% scroll depth in the diagram below.

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You can view these metrics by article.

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You can also click on an article and scroll to the bottom to see a chart and compare it to the average scroll depth of articles with similar lengths. This calculation bases all-time data of articles within 100 words of similar length. 

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