Dwell time
Dwell time is the time customers spend inside an area or the wider store — the umbrella metric for measuring engagement with a space.
Dwell time is the time customers spend inside an area or the wider store. It’s the umbrella concept Aura Vision uses to measure how much of a customer’s visit was actually spent engaging with a space, rather than passing through it.
The three dwell metrics
Aura Vision exposes three specific dwell metrics, each answering a slightly different question:
- Total dwell — the sum of every visitor’s dwell time inside an area. Best for comparing areas or periods, because it captures both volume and engagement.
- Average dwell — Total dwell divided by entries. Best for engagement quality — how compelling an area is for the people who do step in.
- Store dwell — the average time a customer spends in the store as a whole, measured across one or more dwell areas mapped over the shop floor.
The 5-second rule
For area dwell, a visitor only starts contributing once they’ve been inside the polygon for 5 seconds or longer. Shorter passes — shoppers cutting across an area on the way somewhere else — are filtered out, so dwell reflects intentional engagement rather than transit.