Factors Affecting Website Visit Duration: A Cross-Domain Analysis

In this study we examine factors that impact on website visit duration, including user demographics, text and graphics content, type of site, presence of functionality features, advertising content and the number of previous visits. A random effects model is used to determine the impact of these factors on site duration and the number of pages viewed. The proposed model accounts for three distinct sources of heterogeneity arising from differences among individuals, websites and visit-occasions to the same website by the same person. Our model is fit using one month of user-centric panel data and encompasses the 50 most popular sites in a market. The results show that, in general, older people and women visit websites for longer. More substantive and surprising results are revealed by examining interactions between these demographic and site characteristic variables. For example, sites with higher levels of advertising usually result in lower visit duration, but not for older people. Our model also yields insights into the relative importance of different sources of heterogeneity in visit duration. Information: Dr.ir. Peeter Verlegh, pverlegh@rsm.nl, ext. 82732