[EN] Snoobi Extended Analytics Session

Extended Session Length

New in the February 2023 Snoobi Analytics release is the ability to customize the time-out of a session or visit, thereby improving your ability to analyse details of your website usage by visitors. Sessions in Snoobi Analytics can now be set from 1 minute up to 24 hours. Longer session time is possible as a customized solution.

Session Length is a standard web analytics metric that measures how long users engage with your website. The generic web analytics default which is followed by any web analytics tool is 30 minutes and for standard web analytics that should be used. This means that after 30 minutes of inactivity the session (aka 'visit') times out and any next click on your site by a visitor will start a new session. 

As an example, the user may still have a page on your website open in their browser while they go out for a meeting. 

Here are three potential scenarios where it is beneficial to extend the standard 30 minutes:

1. You are running a business-to-business portal or webshop, e.g. for your partners to order maintenance spare parts. Your partner logs into your webshop portal and adds parts to be ordered during the day. The site remains active to allow research and parts selection during the day.
    If the analytics session times out after 30 minutes of inactivity, you can no longer reliably analyse usage and logged-in data may be lost.
2. You are analysing an intranet, for instance a Microsoft 365 solution based on Sharepoint. Your employees in one or more offices will usually login only once during the day, and keep the Sharepoint intranet site open to review articles, share files etc. Lengthening the session to at least 8 hours ensures you can analyse a single visit instead of multiple fragmented visits during the day. It also allows you to review which pages are mostly used as 'pause'-pages, that are active in the background while the site user performs other tasks.
3. Your website functions as a knowledgebase for spec sheets or other technical background information, like for building materials or electronic components. The users will most likely keep the website open and active on a search page to quickly have access to relevant information, but may only use the site a few times during their working day. Keeping the analytics session open after the standard 30 minutes means you improve your ability to see the complete session history as a single visit.

Here is an example page from the Snoobi Visits: (English language selected)

There are more examples where a longer session is beneficial to your online analytics, and there can also be situations where a shorter session length could improve analytics. The Snoobi Analytics specialists will gladly assist you in determining the best option for your website analytics solution.