Answer
What Time Spent in a Gallery Tells You, and What It Cannot
Time spent and average time per visitor are account-wide numbers. They describe your galleries across a period, not one client's evening with one gallery. Here is exactly how they are measured, where the method is rough, and which decisions they can carry.
Updated September 2026
The short answer: time spent tells you whether people who open your galleries stay or leave, measured across your whole account over a period. It is a trend signal. It cannot tell you how long one client spent in one gallery, and it cannot tell you whether they liked what they saw.
This page describes the two time figures in the clientgallery.io analytics dashboard as the product code computes them, checked on 30 September 2026. It covers the method, the ways it drifts, and what to do with the number. The full list of metrics in the dashboard is in the analytics guide.
The two numbers, and what sits behind them
The dashboard shows two time figures. Both are totals across every gallery in the account for the period you choose.
| Figure | How it is computed | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Time spent | The sum of every time report received from gallery pages in the period | Whole account, all galleries |
| Average time per visitor | Time spent divided by unique visitors in the same period | Whole account, all galleries |
The periods are Today, Yesterday, This week (starting Monday), This month, This year and All time. Every period except All time is compared with the same length of time just before it, shown as a percentage change. When the earlier period had nothing to compare against, no percentage is shown at all. Both figures are displayed in hours and minutes, rounded to the minute.
There is no filter that narrows either number to one gallery. That is the boundary the rest of this page works within.
How a visit becomes seconds
The measurement is simple, and knowing it is what lets you read the number properly.
First, which pages report time at all. Only the classic gallery page, the one scrolling page that galleries created before 25 September 2026 open in, sends a time report. Galleries that open in the review room record visits and photo views but send no time. The Shooting and Delivery pages of a staged gallery record nothing. So as more of your galleries use the review room, time spent covers a shrinking share of your visits, and the average per visitor falls for that reason alone.
On the classic page, this is how a visit becomes seconds.
- A clock starts when the gallery page loads in the visitor's browser.
- When the page is hidden, the page reports the seconds elapsed since it loaded. Hidden means the visitor switched tabs, locked the phone, moved to another app, navigated away or closed the tab.
- The page also reports when it is closed or navigated away from.
- A report under 3 seconds is not sent. A bounce is not counted as time.
- The server caps any single report at one hour.
- Visits from the studio owner are ignored when the owner is signed in to the studio in that same browser.
There is no heartbeat. The page does not ping every few seconds while someone is looking. It measures from load to the moment it is hidden, and it does not know whether anyone was looking in between.
Where the method over counts and under counts
Every analytics method has blind spots. These are the ones in this one, stated plainly so the number is not over-read.
| What happens | Effect on time spent |
|---|---|
| The client leaves the gallery open on screen and walks away | Counted as time, up to one hour per report |
| The client switches tabs, comes back, and later closes the tab | Counted more than once. Each report carries the time since the page first loaded, not since the last report, so the second report repeats the first stretch and adds the time the tab sat in the background |
| The client closes the tab or navigates away | Can be counted twice. The page listens for both the page-hidden signal and the page-closing signal, and when a browser fires both, the page reports on each |
| The gallery opens in the review room, or on a staged Shooting or Delivery page | No time is reported at all |
| The browser crashes, or the phone dies, before the page is hidden | Lost. Nothing is reported |
| The client stays under 3 seconds | No time added, but they still count as a visitor |
| You open a gallery on a device where you are not signed in | Your own time is counted like a client's |
On balance the method leans high rather than low. Idle screens and repeated reports add time. Crashes remove it, but they are rarer. Treat the total as an upper estimate of attention, not a stopwatch.
The practical consequence is simple. The absolute figure is soft. The direction of the figure, compared with the same period before, is much firmer, because the same biases apply to both periods.
What unique visitors means in the average
Average time per visitor divides by unique visitors. Who counts as a unique visitor changes how the average moves.
A visitor is a one-way hash of the connection address and the browser, combined with the day and the gallery link. The hash is stored in place of the address, and no name, email or account is attached to it. The same design has three effects on the average.
- A returning client counts again each day. A client who opens the gallery on Monday and again on Thursday is two visitors, not one.
- Each gallery link counts separately. The same person opening two of your galleries, or a gallery and one of its section links, on the same day is counted once per link.
- Bounces still sit in the denominator. A visitor who opened a gallery and left within 3 seconds adds no time but does add a visitor, so a week of quick bounces pulls the average down.
Two people on the same home connection with the same phone and browser version can also collapse into one visitor. That is uncommon, and it pushes the average up slightly when it happens.
Decisions it can support
An account-wide trend is the right instrument for decisions you make for every client at once.
| Question | How time spent helps |
|---|---|
| Did a change to my delivery message or welcome note keep people longer | Compare average time per visitor this month with last month, after the change went out to every new gallery |
| Is this season busier in the galleries than the last | Compare total time spent year on year, alongside gallery visits |
| Are people staying long enough to choose | Read the average next to picks sent. Long visits with few picks sent suggest people are browsing without deciding |
| Did a much shorter or much longer gallery style change behaviour | Watch the average for a few weeks after you change how many photos you deliver per session |
In each case the change has to apply across most of your galleries. If it only touched one gallery, it will be lost in the total.
Decisions it cannot support
These are the readings the number invites and cannot bear.
- Whether one client has looked at their gallery. Use the opened indicator on the gallery tile in your studio instead, with its All, Seen by client and Not opened yet filters. That is the only per-gallery signal, and it is covered in the guide to knowing if a client viewed their gallery.
- Whether a client loved the photos. Time is not approval. A long visit can be a client who cannot decide, or a tab left open over dinner. Favourites and picks sent are closer to approval.
- Which gallery held attention best. The total cannot be split by gallery, so it cannot rank one wedding against another.
- Whether to chase a client. A falling average says nothing about any single person. Chase from the opened indicator and from whether picks came back.
- Where visitors came from. There is no referrer, location or browser breakdown. The only split is mobile, desktop and tablet.
If per-gallery time on page is central to how you run your studio, this dashboard does not provide it. Weigh that honestly before relying on it.
A reading routine that works
Once a month is enough. Daily readings on a small studio are mostly noise.
- Set the range to This month, so the comparison is with last month.
- Read gallery visits and unique visitors first. If they fell, a lower time spent is probably just fewer visits.
- Then read average time per visitor. It is the figure that says whether each visit got longer or shorter.
- Read it next to favourites and picks sent. Time that does not turn into picks is a signal about the gallery or the instructions, not about attention.
- Check the opened indicator on the studio tiles for any single client you are worried about. That is a separate question with a separate answer.
A thin month, with only a handful of visitors, gives an average that one idle tab can double. Read the trend over a season before changing how you work.
What it costs
The analytics dashboard is on every plan, free included. A free account holds one gallery of up to 1,000 photos. The paid plan is $10 a month or $110 a year, for unlimited galleries up to 500,000 photos per account, with optional team seats at $8 a month. Paying adds galleries and storage, not features.
Sources
- MDN Web Docs, "Document: visibilitychange event", https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/visibilitychange_event, fetched 30 September 2026. The page-hidden signal fires on switching tabs, closing the tab, navigating away and switching apps on mobile.
- MDN Web Docs, "Window: pagehide event", https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/pagehide_event, fetched 30 September 2026. The page-closing signal fires when the browser hides the page to show another one, and is not reliably fired, especially on mobile.
- MDN Web Docs, "Navigator: sendBeacon() method", https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/sendBeacon, fetched 30 September 2026. Describes sending end-of-visit data when the page is hidden.
Every statement about clientgallery.io was checked against the product code on 30 September 2026: the account-wide scope of both time figures; the average computed as time spent divided by unique visitors; the ranges and the same-length comparison; the display rounded to the minute; time reported only by the classic gallery page, not by the review room or the staged Shooting and Delivery pages; the clock starting at page load and reporting on page hidden and page close with the time since load; the 3-second floor; the one-hour cap per report; the owner exclusion for a signed-in studio; the visitor hash built from connection address, browser, day and gallery link; the opened indicator and its filters as the only per-gallery signal; and the absence of referrer, location and browser breakdowns.
Frequently asked
Can I see how long one client spent in their gallery?
No. Time spent and average time per visitor are account-wide totals across every gallery. The only per-gallery signal is the opened indicator on each gallery tile in your studio, which tells you whether the gallery has been opened, not for how long.
How is time spent measured?
Only the classic gallery page reports time; review-room galleries and staged Shooting and Delivery pages send none. On the classic page a clock starts when the page loads, and when the page is hidden or closed it reports the seconds since it loaded. Reports under 3 seconds are not sent, and each report is capped at one hour. There is no heartbeat, so an idle screen still counts as time.
Is the time spent figure accurate?
It leans high. A tab left open counts as time, and a client who switches away and back can be reported more than once because each report carries the time since the page first loaded. A tab close can also send two reports. Read the change against the previous period rather than the absolute figure.
What does average time per visitor divide by?
Unique visitors in the same period. A visitor is a one-way hash of connection address, browser, day and gallery link, so a client who returns on another day, or opens a second gallery, counts again. Quick bounces add a visitor but no time, which pulls the average down.
Are my own visits counted?
Not when you are signed in to your studio in the browser you use to open the gallery. If you open a gallery on a device where you are not signed in, that visit is counted like a client's.
Does a long average mean clients like my photos?
Not on its own. Time is not approval: a long visit can be indecision or an idle tab. Read the average next to favourites and picks sent, which are closer to what clients actually want.
Your client galleries, under your name
Branded galleries, client selections and a Lightroom Classic workflow. Start with your first gallery, then compare the current plan. Full-resolution delivery is a separate handoff with its own limits and conditions.
Create your studio