Factors Affecting Web Site Visit Duration: A Cross-Domain Analysis

In this study, the authors examine factors that affect Web site visit duration, including user demographics, text and graphics content, type of site, presence of functionality features, advertising content, and the number of previous visits. The authors use a random effects model to determine the impact of these factors on site duration and the number of pages viewed. The proposed method accounts for three distinct sources of heterogeneity that arise from differences among people, Web sites, and visit occasions to the same Web site by the same person. The model is fit using one month of user-centric panel data, and it encompasses the 50 most popular sites in a market. The results show that, in general, older people and women visit Web sites for a longer period. Some surprising results are revealed in an examination of interactions between these demographic and site characteristic variables. For example, sites with higher levels of advertising usually result in lower visit duration, but this is not the case for older people. The model also yields insights into the relative importance of different sources of heterogeneity in visit duration; heterogeneity in visit occasions dominates over individual-level and Web site-specific heterogeneity.