Engagement rate

It reveals the gap between what an advert or email promised and what the page delivers. A visitor who lands and does nothing was curious enough to click once and found no reason to continue. A low engagement rate is therefore usually a message-match problem more than a content-quality one. It also measures traffic quality. Cheap, broadly targeted traffic tends to engage far less than a smaller, better-matched audience.

• Check that the headline and top of the page confirm what the visitor was told to expect.
• Fix load time first if engagement is much lower on mobile than on desktop. See page speed.
• Watch session recordings to see where people stop scrolling, rather than reading only the average.
• Split the rate by traffic source, to tell a weak page from the wrong audience.
• Change one thing at a time. A better headline often moves engagement more than a full redesign.

In Google Analytics 4 a session counts as engaged if it lasts at least 10 seconds, includes a conversion event, or includes two or more page views. Engagement rate is engaged sessions divided by all sessions. The 10-second limit can be changed in the settings, up to 60 seconds. GA4 also reports bounce rate, and in GA4 that is simply the opposite of engagement rate. Other tools, and social platforms, define engagement differently, so check the definition before comparing figures.

• Comparing engagement rate across tools that define it differently.
• Judging a page that answers a question quickly as a failure. Someone who finds a phone number in five seconds and calls has succeeded.