Best way to measure conversion duration (across multiple pages) in Google Analytics?

Question

I'd like to use GA to work out how long it takes for a user to convert on my site - from the defined page at the start of the conversion journey to the defined page at the end of the journey.

I guess this is similar to the User Timing events in GA, but across different pages.

This article suggests a simple approach using timestamps, saved in a cookie: http://www.e-nor.com/blog/google-analytics/time-on-site-2-0-tracking-conversion-duration-in-google-analytics

My question is this.

Is there a way to do this that doesn't involve creating custom cookies on a user machine? Presumably Google Analytics must have a way to session sessions, and I'd prefer to piggy-back off the GA tracking rather than creating my own.

Is this the best approach overall? I'm surprised this isn't just offered as part of GA.

Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

Universal Analytics tracks sessions serverside based on the client id (which is stored in a cookie but without a timestamp) so there is not much you could use. "Classic" GA can retrieve custom vars from the visitor scope (using _getVisitorCustomVar) so you could store the start timestamp there (which is basically the same the cookie storage method mentioned in the linked article). But then classic analytics is not supported for new accountss, so it'S not exactly a future-proof method.

So I'd say yes, writing a custom cookie is all in all the best choice.