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How to Separate User Engagement from

Distraction
Himanshu Sharma

4 minutes

November 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

User engagement is the key. We have heard this phrase

millions of times so far. But this is not always true. User
engagement is important only when it is profitable. Yes
you heard it right. I am talking about Profitable User
Engagement. A profitable engagement is an
engagement which leads to goal conversions or
e-commerce transactions or both.

Let’s say you have been running a Facebook campaign

for the last three months. As a result you have been
getting a lot of engaged visitors on your website. User
engagement is increasing month after month in terms of
large volume of social shares, high average visit duration
and high pages/visit on your website.  But still your
conversions are going down month after month. What
could be the reason? Well one reason could be that your
user engagement is turning into distraction. This is the
distraction which is causing people not to convert on
your website. 

“When a user engagement negatively correlates with

conversion then the engagement becomes distraction.“
Following is an example of distraction: 

Screenshot of anlaytics showing user distraction

The avg. visit duration is increasing over time but the

goal conversion rate is going down. Following is another
example of distraction:

Screenshot of analytics showing user distraction

 Pages/visit is increasing over time but the Goal

conversion rate is going down. Now what can be the
cause of such distraction? This distraction can be due to
several reasons:

1. We are engaging more with random people than our

target audience. This can happen in case of poorly
targeted campaigns.

2. Our content strategy does not align well with our

business goals. We are developing and marketing
contents which have nothing to do with the
products/services we sell.  For example you sell shoes
but you created and promoted an infographic on ‘beer
consumption in New York city. This infographic went
viral and as a result you got lot of engaged visits on your
website. But since this infographic has nothing to do
with what you sell, it didn’t result in any sales.

3. The user engagement overshadows our ‘call to

action’. This happens more often than we think. For
example you put a very entertaining video on your
landing page. Now this video is so engaging that people
watch the video, share it with others and then bounce
from the page. In other words the video is causing a
distraction from your call to action and that is why
people don’t convert. Videos generally improve
conversions but sometimes they can also break
conversions. So we need to determine whether the
visitors’ engagement is truly an engagement or it is a
distraction.

4.Website is not optimized for conversions. If there is

no prominent call to action on your landing page then
people may not convert even after engaging with your
website. There could also be credibility issues and other
conversion issues with your landing pages.

5. Bounce rate does not correlate well with conversions

– This can happen when our bounce
rate calculations are faulty. We should not count visits
with conversion as bounce even if the visits are single
page visits. I have talked about faulty bounce rate
calculations in great detail in this post: The Geek guide
to Determining and Reporting the Real Bounce Rate

Now it is your turn. How do you separate user

engagement from distraction? Please share your views
and insights.