How to get an overview of average time spent in app per user per day.

Hi and @bkool @michael and @Ainius

This is a tricky question and I think there is no solution in Mixpanel for that right now. Let´s see, we have:

Events:

- App session: this event is not triggered only when the user opens the app but also when he or she spends more than 10 seconds on it: "Triggered when users spend more than N seconds (default: 10 seconds) in the app. Includes "Session Length" property, measured in seconds." So this event seems to be useless for knowing average daily time spent (?).

Besides, I couldn´t find "duration" as an App session´s property.

Events properties:

- Session Length : App sessions has the property Session Length which is "The number of seconds the user spent in the session." But, as it is a string, you can only group app sessions by session length. Does not work.

User properties:

- Total App Sessions: "The total number of "App Session" events that the user has sent." (A)

- Total App Sessions Length: "The amount of time in seconds from when the user launches the app until the user stops using or leaves the app." (B)

So, in Insights, if you go for (B/A)/60 you should get the average minutes per session but always knowing that "app sessions" is not only performed when the user opens the app.

Awesome Michael,
I have been turning my head around for two days to find how to display the sum/average/... of a property (and not "event + breakdown").

This should be placed in the public Docs somewhere. This is a really frequent use case ("How many X a user has Done?") and the entry in the Docs could be something like "How to track a Property for a given Event "

The "click" on "properties" in your first picture is not the most obvious process when someone starts with Mixpanel. I'm happy to know it now.

@Jice_Lavocat Can You show how to configure it?
After a two days of research I still can not find the time that user spend in one day (not session time).

Please if You have the answer I will be happy to see it.

Hi there! I also would like to know the average time spent per user in our platform. Is it correct to use formula with these events? 

Hi @stephanie,

Thanks for sharing the screenshot, that is very clear.

One thing I dont understand still, how do I know that I am looking at the average time per user per day? In my case I know that many of my customers use my software more than one time a day. From the screenshots above I get the idea that I am looking into the average time per session per user per day. But that is not the same as the average time per user per day.

Another question: I tend to use session start, I see you are using session end. When I exchange session start for session end in my case there is no difference in the time spent per user. But just wondering, is there a specific reason I should use session end/start?

Kind regards,

Mirjam

@M Irjam — The query that Stephanie showed above is averaging the session event to demonstrate  the average session time per day. The average data function will return the average of a numeric property value across all instances of the selected event, which is Session Start/End. This is why the session start and session end event yield the same results — because they both hold the same property breakdown.

If you are interested in the  average time spent per user per day, the simplest way is to use Funnels. You would first  set up a two-step funnel of session start --> session end that would look like this:
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From here, if you scroll down you'll see a clock icon that indicates "average time between steps," which, for this simple funnel, will answer your question exactly. Here, those that started a session took an average of 22.77min before ending their session.
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Session start and session end are default values in Mixpanel, and the average default timeout is 30 minutes, which could conceivably be inflating your true average (e.g. if users do some events for 5 minutes and then change windows but don't log out, this would be marked as 30 minutes). Default timeout lengths, as well as the events that constitute session starts and session ends, are all customizable - learn more about how to do that here. 

One other feature to check out: if you click "funnel steps" on the right in your funnel and choose "average time to convert" instead of funnel steps, you'll get a more granular breakdown of the time ranges your users spend in your product, which is another valuable way to analyze your question.

@fansts — this addresses your question as well! While the insights report is looking at a breakdown of average session length across all sessions, the funnels report is a breakdown of the average session length per user. It is important to add here that you want to make sure that your time to convert is high enough to not exclude sessions that you are interested in analyzing. 

I hope this helps!