Average total time spent hovering over the zone.
Can indicate both interest — through long hovers on an image or a description —, or a lack of clarity — with long hovers over a CTA —.
How it's calculated
Float Time = Total time spent hovering the zone ÷ Number of pageviews with at least one hover
How to interpret it
The float time can signify interest or confusion, hence why it is important to consider the type of element in question. For example, a Float Time of over 3 seconds on a text image can be considered positive while on a CTA this could be considered negative.
A high Float Time (3+ seconds) on a CTA can indicate the call to action is not clear, and visitors aren’t processing the content. This metric can be useful when analyzing non-clickable content because you would not use Click Rate on zones where visitors aren’t encouraged to click. In this case, a longer Float Time shows higher consumption.
With the highest Float Time of all products on the page (2.91 seconds), the blouse is causing either confusion or interest. Find out for sure by looking at the engagement rate of this zone.
Significativity
It is not recommended to use this metric on low hover rates. — On a small sample, time metrics are highly likely to have a high variance: some users can spend 10 min or more on the page before clicking an element, which makes the average time highly skewed if you have any extreme value.