some other metrics (we call them "item views") went up as well.

but it must be said: users of that site special, they actually want to find something, so they are (mostly) not casual users.

i remember a case a few years back on a travel site where we had a different experience, time on site went up after we ditched pagination (but that site also had horrible page load time, so every page view was a great opportunity to leave the site, so well, it's all interconnected)