# Average session duration

Understand how your experience impacts the session duration.

> **Automatically tracked**
>
> The SDK automatically tracks the events that feed this widget.

This widget shows how long users who have been exposed to an experience stay engaged with your application. It helps you understand whether an experience contributes to prolonging the session duration or making users disengage earlier. It also displays how sessions are distributed across different duration ranges, which helps you see how the average is built and which behavior dominates.

The ranges are:

- Up to 5s
- From 6s to 30s
- From 30s to 1m
- From 1m to 3m
- More than 3m

## Metrics

![Average session duration widget](/assets/reference/analytics/experience/average-session-duration.png)

The chart includes:

1. **Average session duration**\
   The average duration of sessions impacted by your experience.
2. **Session duration ranges**\
   Breaks down sessions into predefined ranges.

> **Question: What does the comparison over the last period mean?**
>
> It represents the growth or decline of the metric compared to the previous period.
>
> The *last period* refers to the date filter you selected. For example, if the filter is set to the **last 7 days**, the *last period* will be the **7 days immediately before that range**.

## Interpretation

In the context of experiences, average session duration should be interpreted as a signal of behavioral impact, not just time spent.

An experience that results in shorter sessions may be introducing friction, creating confusion, or failing to communicate value clearly. Conversely, longer session durations often indicate that the experience is relevant, well-timed, and aligned with user intent. However, unusually long sessions may also suggest that users are struggling to complete tasks, especially when paired with lower conversion rates.

We calculate this metric using the formula:

```math
Average \space session \space duration = \frac{total \space duration \space of \space sessions}{total \space sessions}
```

### What the number tells you

Here are some common insights you can get from this widget:

- Experiences that increase session duration tend to promote deeper engagement and clearer user journeys.
- A drop in session duration may indicate that the experience distracts users or interrupts their flow.
- Similar averages with different range distributions can reveal very different behaviors. Two experiences may show the same average session duration, but one might be driven by a few highly engaged users while most leave quickly, whereas another reflects a more consistent engagement across sessions.
- Session duration is especially valuable when analyzed alongside conversion metrics, helping distinguish efficient experiences from confusing ones.

## Explore

- [Events](/reference/event/overview#event-types): Learn how to track user events for analytics and personalization.
- [Audiences](/explanation/audience): Understand how to deliver content to specific groups of users.