Here’s your one-stop shop for understanding Wistia's engagement graphs and analytics.

While heatmaps depict individual viewing sessions, the engagement graph provides an aggregate view of audience interactions with your media.

You can see which sections of your media your audience rewound and played multiple times, and which sections they stopped playing. Drop-offs show where your audience stopped paying attention, and big spikes indicate sections people found compelling enough to replay.

The blue section of the engagement graph shows your audience's engagement (i.e., who clicked play on the media). The orange section above it shows how many times that section of the media was replayed.

The point where the blue line falls is where attention dropped. For second-by-second detail on an individual session, check out heatmaps.

Move your cursor over the graph (from left to right) to see the specific engagement at that point in the media, and click the graph to play the media from that point. Click any of the waypoints below the graph to view specific data for the Actions (such as Calls to action and Annotation links).

All of this information can help you optimize your current media and guide you towards creating even more engaging media in the future.

Next to the engagement graph are summary analytics to give you a high-level view of how that media has performed to date. Click "Show Details" to get a deeper look into these numbers.

The summary analytics include useful metrics like the percentage of visitors who clicked play and valuable analytics on audience actions (like how many people clicked your Call to action). In the Show Details section, we show you how we calculate these numbers.

For example, the Play Rate metric is the number of people who played your media, divided by the unique page loads (expressed as a percentage). This metric helps you understand a lot of things ,  like the positioning of your video on the page or the image used for the thumbnail. All of these factors influence whether visitors press play.

The Actions metric is specific to videos (except for Chapters). We get the conversion rate by dividing how many people interacted with your actions (clicked on them, or entered their email with a Wistia Form) by how many people viewed them in total. Got some low numbers on an Annotation Link? Maybe it’s time to update the copy or move it to a different section of the video.

Need more information on each of these metrics? Check out our Media Analytics Overview page for a full breakdown of average engagement, total plays, play rate, and action analytics.

Does your engagement graph look something like this?

That may be because you’re using Chapters. Chapters let viewers quickly skim the content and play only the sections of your media that are important to them. So you might see parts of your media with higher engagement rates than others.

Chapters will be indicated by the gray dots below the engagement graph. Hovering over them will reveal the total number of clicks.

Average engagement summarizes how much of your media viewers watched. For example, if your video is 20 minutes long and viewers watched 10 minutes on average, average engagement is 50%. Use the graph to see where viewers continued, dropped off, or replayed sections. This aggregate view can't tell you whether a particular person watched the whole video; check the individual viewer's heatmap for session-level detail.

A page load means the video player was loaded on the page, even if the visitor didn't start watching. Unique page loads count visitors who loaded that video's player during the relevant date range. A play requires a play event, so loading the page alone doesn't mean someone watched. Play Rate compares unique plays with unique page loads.

Before comparing Engagement with Embed analytics, check the scope and date range. Engagement totals can reflect the video's all-time history, while the Embed tab shows plays for its selected date range and embedded locations. If the figures still don't reconcile after aligning the scope, share the video link, selected dates, and the figures you're comparing with Wistia Support.