How do I measure website engagement not just conversions?

Why aren’t conversions alone enough to measure engagement?

Conversions are late-stage signals. By the time someone fills in a form or starts a free trial, they may have visited your site multiple times, read several articles, and watched videos without leaving a visible trace in your CRM. Research suggests that B2B buyers complete around 70–80% of their journey before speaking to sales and often make 30+ touches along the way (6sense 2024, Gartner 2023). If you only look at conversions, you miss most of the story.

For many high-value accounts, the majority of visitors never convert on the website at all. They might research anonymously, then reach out via a partner, meet you at an event, or reply to an outbound email. In those cases, engagement metrics – time, depth, and interaction – are the only way to see whether your site is doing its job.

Shifting from a conversion-only mindset to an engagement-led view helps you improve the site for all buyers, not just the ones who are ready today. It also gives marketing a stronger narrative internally: you can show how the website is educating, qualifying, and progressing buyers long before they hit a form.

What core engagement metrics should B2B teams track?

There is no single perfect engagement metric, but combining a few key signals gives you a reliable picture. For each priority page and segment, track the following:

• Time-on-page and session duration: Longer isn’t always better, but if visitors are bouncing in under 10–20 seconds on high-intent pages, it’s a red flag.
• Scroll depth: Measuring how far visitors scroll shows whether they are consuming key sections like problem framing, proof, and pricing.
• Pages per session: Particularly for early-stage visitors, more page views often indicate deeper exploration and curiosity.
• Click-through to critical paths: For example, clicks from the homepage to pricing, product, or case studies are strong engagement signals.
• Video interactions: View impressions, plays, and clicks inside interactive video journeys often reveal higher-intent visitors.

Some teams combine these into an engagement score (for example, assigning points to key behaviours). This can then be used in lead scoring or account prioritisation alongside traditional firmographic and intent data.

How does interactive video change engagement measurement?

Video compresses a lot of information into a short, human format. Surveys show that 87% of buyers say video influences their decision to purchase and 78% prefer short video over reading text when learning about products (Wyzowl 2025). That means tracking video engagement is no longer optional – it’s central to understanding how buyers engage with your story.

For standard embedded video, useful metrics include play rate (how many visitors press play), completion rate, and drop-off points. If people consistently drop off before you explain pricing, pricing confidence might be an issue. If nobody reaches the final call to action in a five-minute video, you may need to split it into shorter segments.

Interactive video goes further by turning engagement into a sequence of deliberate choices. You can see which branches visitors choose, which topics they explore, and where they exit. For example, if a high percentage of visitors choose “Show me customer examples” and then click through to case studies, that’s a strong sign of serious research. Compared with chatbots – where typical engagement rates might sit in the low single digits – interactive video journeys often attract a much higher share of traffic because they feel more like a helpful guide than an interruption.

How do we turn engagement data into better buyer experiences?

Engagement data is only useful if it leads to better decisions. Once you’re tracking the right signals, the next step is to create a feedback loop between analytics, content, and design. Instead of asking “Which pages get the most views?”, ask “Which paths lead to deeper engagement and better outcomes?”

For example, if you see that visitors who watch a short interactive overview video have 2–3x the session duration and are far more likely to view pricing, you can make that experience more prominent. If you see that a segment – such as mid-market CMOs – rarely scrolls beyond the first third of a long page, you might replace dense text with shorter sections and video modules.

Sharing these findings with sales and leadership also helps change the conversation. Instead of defending page views, you can show how specific experiences increase high-intent actions, shaped by how modern buyers prefer to research independently.

FAQ

Are conversions still important if we focus on engagement?

Yes, conversions are still important, but engagement metrics help you understand and improve what happens before conversion.

What’s a good benchmark for time-on-page?

It depends on content type, but for in-depth B2B pages, 60–120 seconds often indicates real reading or viewing.

Do we need new tools to track engagement?

Most analytics platforms can track basic events; richer interactions like interactive video paths may require lightweight additional tracking.

How often should we review engagement metrics?

Monthly is a good cadence for trends, with more frequent checks during experiments or major campaigns.