Bounce Rate - That's one sexy metric

Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik often calls bounce rate “the sexiest web metric ever.”[i]

What is this Metric? Why is it So Sexy?

The bounce rate is “the percentage of sessions on your website with only one page view.”[ii] This means a visitor came to your website, looked at a single page, and then left the site. A bounce can be caused by “clicking on a link to a page on a different website, clicking the “Back” button to leave the site, closing an open window or tab site, typing a new URL, or a session timeout.”[iii]

This sexy metric is “available as a standard metric in pretty much all [web analytics] tools...It measures customer behavior, perhaps the most holy of the holy goals in measurement.”[iv] 

What Should My Site’s Bounce Rate Be?

“Typically, a bounce isn’t a positive thing, although that could depend based on your site structure and online marketing goals.”[v] If you have a blog, for example, visitors may look at one page (such as your latest post) and then leave. In this case, having a high bounce rate may not be such a bad thing. On the other hand, if you have an e-commerce site that sells shoes, you want visitors to view different pages (and more shoes) on your site. Therefore, you do not want a high bounce rate. Bearing this in mind, a good bounce rate should generally be between 40 and 60 percent.[vi] Anything higher means changes should be made to your site. 

How Can I Improve My Site’s Bounce Rate?

There are several ways to improve your site’s bounce rate. Some possibilities include:

1.      Improve your content – Your site should include content that is concise, clear, relevant, and exciting. If it doesn’t, then change it! After all, “shoddy, low-value content leads to high bounce rates and poor website performance overall.”[vii] Remember to edit for grammar and spelling and to incorporate images and/or video, too.  

2.      Improve site usability – Visitors will quickly leave your site if it’s difficult to navigate. To avoid that:

a.       Ensure that search functions are easily visible.[viii]

b.      Include labels/tags and appropriate headings so visitors can find the information they want quickly.

c.       Don’t overuse images and video.   

d.      Make hyperlinked text user-friendly.[ix]

3.      Eliminate pop-up ads.[x]

4.      Decrease use of external links “or have them open in a new window”.[xi]

5.      Test your site using a cross-browser capability tool such as Adobe Browserlab or Browser Stack.[xii]

It is important to note that bounce rate is just one metric that should be considered when analyzing your site’s performance. Do not ignore other metrics such as pages per visit or new vs. returning visitors. Those metrics are valuable, telling, and sexy in their own ways.   

---

[i] Kaushik, Avinash. Web Analytics 2.0. Wiley Publishing: Indianapolis, IN. P. 51.

[ii] Kaushik, Avinash. Web Analytics 2.0. Wiley Publishing: Indianapolis, IN. P. 51.

[iii] “Bounce Rate Demystified.” Retrieved February 8, 2013. KISSMetrics.” Available: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/  

[iv] Kaushik, Avinash. Web Analytics 2.0. Wiley Publishing: Indianapolis, IN. P. 51.  

[v] “10 Google Analytics Terms  & Definitions You Need to Know.” November 6, 2011. Zizinya Web Solutions. Available: http://web.zizinya.com/blog/bid/104421/10-Google-Analytics-Terms-Definitions-You-Need-to-Know

[vi] West, Angela. November 15, 2012. “5 Ways to Use Your Bounce Rate to Improve Your Website.”PCWorld. Available: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2013967/5-ways-to-use-your-bounce-rate-to-improve-your-website.html

[vii] Patel, Sujan. February 4, 2013. “Easy Ways to Reduce Your Website’s Bounce Rate.” Search Engine Journal. Available: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/easy-ways-to-reduce-your-websites-bounce-rate/57813/

[viii] “Bounce Rate Demystified.” Retrieved February 8, 2013. KISSMetrics.” Available: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/   

[ix] “7 Best Practices for Improving Your Website’s Usability.” Mashable. September 12, 2011. Available: http://mashable.com/2011/09/12/website-usability-tips/

[x] “Bounce Rate Demystified.” Retrieved February 8, 2013. KISSMetrics.” Available: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/  

[xi] “Bounce Rate Demystified.” Retrieved February 8, 2013. KISSMetrics.” Available: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/   

[xii] Patel, Sujan. February 4, 2013. “Easy Ways to Reduce Your Website’s Bounce Rate.” Search Engine Journal. Available: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/easy-ways-to-reduce-your-websites-bounce-rate/57813/

Google Event Tracking and Bounce Rate

Overview

After last week’s post on the differences and similarities between Google Analytics event tracking and ­custom variables I updated my website to include various types of custom variables and event tracking. Everything looked awesome in analytics and was able to better understand my customer segments and behavior. However, after a few days I started to notice that our site bounce rate drastically reduced and was having a new record low. I knew I screwed something up.

The Problem

After some digging around and researching Google’s event tracking code online I finally figured out what was going on. In general, we consider a “bounce” as a single-page visit to your site. So when a visitor lands on your product page and reads about the product then decides to exit the website we count that as a bounce. However, let’s say you setup event tracking on the video clip in the product description to know how many people are viewing the video. A visitor again lands on the product page, watches the video, and then exits the website without visiting any additional pages. If we go by our general description of a “bounce” then we would expect this to be recorded as a bounce since the visitor did not visit any additional pages before leaving the site. Google event tracking takes a different approach that turns out to be very helpful. Using the default code for event tracking in the video example above Google Analytics would view this as the visitor interacting with your website and therefore would not count their visit as a “bounce”. On my website I had event tracking automatically executing on page load so I was getting a zero bounce rate for all those pages.

Is it a Problem?

First we have to understand that everyone’s site is different. For example if my site was a blog and I enable event tracking on some of the videos or other areas where visitors could interact then I probably wouldn't want to record visitors that interact with my blog as a bounce if an event was triggered manually. This is because it’s common for people to only view one page of a blog. You could in this example add an event if the visitor scrolls down to read more of your blog. That would be helpful to know and you probably wouldn't want to count it as a bounce if they then exited your website.

On the other side we have websites with pages that are special offers or an eCommerce site with the whole purpose of having visitors move to other pages on the website. In this case you would probably want to record any single-page visit as a bounce. So you might be asking yourself how can you track events and still report the visit as a bounce if it’s a single-page visit? Simple!

The Solution

Google updated its event tracking script to include an optional parameter called Non-Interaction Events. You can simply include a “true” to tell Google it is not an interaction hit and should not be used in the bounce rate calculations. Conversely, by not including this parameter or including the parameter with a “false” will result in the event being calculated in the site bounce ratio. Regardless of the approach you take this can better help you understand the benefits of using event tracking and have more control over your sites bounce rate calculation.

Reference(s):

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/eventTrackerGuide#non-interaction

Google Analytics for Beginners: Top 4 Metrics to Start With

If you are like a lot of people, you've probably heard about web analytics and you know that it is important. Web analytics is especially important if there are certain goals you want to accomplish with that website. So where does one start when it comes to web analytics? Perhaps you've opened up a Google Analytics account and are a bit overwhelmed by the number of available tools and reports available to you and don’t know where to start. I've compiled a list of some of the basic tools that experts from the industry recommend starting with to a beginner of Google Analytics.  If you are wondering on where to begin, start by using these 4 tools.

Bounce Rate

In the article, “3 Basic Google Analytics Metrics You Need to Watch” Clancy Clarke suggests looking at the Bounce rate for visitors. He states that the “Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who looked at only a single page on your site before leaving”. He goes on to say that “visitors will stay if they find what they are looking for and enjoy the experience. If not they will immediately ‘bounce’ from the site. A high bounce rate can indicate that the content on your site is not relevant to the search term the visitor used or the visitor is not enjoying the experience on your website”.

Time on Page/Site

Time on Page and Time on Site measures the amount of time a visitor spends on a specific page or site. Clancy Clarke also recommends using this metric. He writes, “The ‘average time on page’ data is also helpful for determining whether your site is providing value to visitors. As the name suggests, this data provides information on how long, on average, visitors stayed on the site and how long they remained on each page. If visitors feel happy with your site and believe they are receiving valuable information, they will no doubt stay longer.

Visits & Visitors

Carrie Hill mentions in her article, “3 Metrics Google Analytics Beginners Should Watch”, that knowing how you site is being used and how to make it better begin with the sites visitors. She states, “Knowing who is coming to your site, how long they spend on the site and each page, and how many pages they look at before leaving or buying can give valuable insight into improving your subscription or checkout process”. By looking at this metric, you’ll be able to determine how many people visited your site, the number of unique visitors, and how many pages per visit each person looked at.

Sources

There is great value in knowing how visitors are locating and being directed to your site. Carrie Hill suggests using this metric and using the Traffic Source report. She writes, “If you drill down a bit into your Traffic Source report, you can see which sources sent the most traffic. You might use this to determine whether a directory listing is worth the cost, or if your paid advertising is lucrative”.

Please realize that every person’s goals in doing analytics is different and you may find that some tools may not be relevant for your own situation. After gaining some experience in using Google Analytics, you’ll know what information is most useful and what tools are best for you and your site.


3 Metrics Google Analytics Beginners Should Watch - http://searchengineland.com/3-metrics-google-analytics-beginners-should-watch-98663

3 Basic Google Analytics Metrics You Need to Watch - http://www.netregistry.com.au/blog/seo/3-basic-google-analytics-metrics-you-need-to-watch/

The confusion with Google Analytics bounce rate

Bounce rate at its fundamental level means someone entered your site at that particular page then left without visiting other pages. Avinash Kaushik calls it one of the sexiest metrics ever because its in pretty much all analytics tools, is actionable and measures customer behavior.

Is an increase in bounce rate bad?

I was recently in a conversation with another person at work and we were discussing our Google analytics. We were congratulating each other about some big increases in page visits but I pointed out that our bounce rate has increased quite a bit. His excuse about the bounce rate was that this was a good thing. It meant that people where finding the information they needed and did not need to dig around our website to find what they were looking for.

This sounded like a plausible argument but contrasted with what Vainest Kaushik says in his book Web Analytics 2.0 that “If you make an excuse I’ll push back because I don’t fundamentally believe for any site for-profit or nonprofit that success is a one-page-view.” But as Claudiu Murariu points out Kaushik himself defined bounce rate as being the percent of traffic that stayed on your website fewer than 10 seconds.

I began digging into this question of could a high bounce rate be good and what does our bounce rate in Google analytics really mean. Some claim bounce rate is always bad while others say a high bounce rate can be good. Who is right and what can we make of our analytics data to reflect a tighter definition of bounce rate tied to time on page.

Good Bounce Rate versus Bad Bounce Rate

If you tie dwell time into the bounce rate then you can start to see where a high bounce rate might be ok. For example lets say visitor A looks at your page for 2 minutes. They obviously are finding the page to be of interest based on what they are looking for versus visitor B who hits the page and in less then 5 seconds they leave.

A very short dwell time is obviously bad where a long dwell time could be a good thing and meshes with my coworkers argument that the increase in bounce rate could be good thing.
But where do you draw the line on dwell time and how do I put this into my analytics.
For our website visitors (University of Utah Health Care) we have found that many people are simply coming to the website to look-up a phone number or address. We made it a priority to make our phone numbers and addresses big and prominent. This may have led to our increase in bounce rate. It doesn’t take long to find the phone number or the address so our target dwell time might be a little shorter then most people.

Take for example this page. http://healthcare.utah.edu/cardiovascular/cardiology/general.php
We have about a 70% bounce rate on this page. People can find the contact number to call and make an appointment, they can see a list of the doctors and see there phone numbers and since our goal is to get them to make an appointment then this page may be delivering and driving people to make appointments rather then stumble around multiple pages trying to figure out how to find a location or contact a doctor.

It’s important to take bounce rate into context with the content of the page.
Kayden Kelly on http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what-is-bounce-rate/ simply puts it this way. A high bounce rate is acceptable when the visitor has a positive experience.

The shortcoming with Google Analytics Dwell Time

The other confusing part of the issue is that Google measures the time on a page based on the time a visitor enters a page to the time they go to another page within the same site. If the visitor does not visit another page on the site then the time is not measured in Google analytics and would list 0:00 seconds for time on page and a bounce rate of 100%. Paul McCarthy gives some great diagrams and examples on this site http://imimpact.com/google-analytics-bounce-rates/ although it appears there is an error in example 3.

As seen in Paul’s erroneous example bounce rate can be a little confusing in how it it’s calculated.
On Google’s Support Site they describes how bounce rate percentages are calculated with this example,

“Your site has pages A through C, and only one session per day exists, with the following page view order:

• Monday: Page A > Page B > Page C
• Tuesday: Page B > Page A > Page C
• Wednesday: Page A > exit

The content report for Page A would show 3 pageviews and a 50% bounce rate.  You might have guessed that the bounce rate would be 33%, but the Tuesday pageview granted to Page A is not considered in its bounce rate calculation. ”

People may be visiting Page A and then going to other pages but this does not reduce your bounce rate unless they actually entered your site at Page A. Additionally they may start at Page B then go to Page A then leave but this will not count as a bounce because they viewed more then one page and they did not start at Page A.

What Can We Do?

Now seeing how bounce rate may not be calculated as you would have expected and that time on page is not accurately reflected its easy to see how bounce rate even when tied to time on page could be misunderstood.

An article written b Claudiu Murariu gives us a great hack to better report what we feel should be recorded as bad bounces. By adding a line of javascript code we can track the dwell time on a page and then if the visitor stays for a specific time on that page before leaving we can have Google analytics not count this as a bounce. http://padicode.com/blog/analytics/the-real-bounce-rate/

Asynchronous Code (newer Google analytics snippet)

“In case you have decided to already update to the new GoogleAnalytics Asynchronous Tracking code here is how the hack would be applied (place it as the last _gaq.push declaration)
setTimeout('_gaq.push([\'_trackEvent\', \'NoBounce\', \'Over 10 seconds\'])',10000);
10000 refers to the number of milliseconds after which you want to fire up the above code. If you want to do it after 15 seconds than you need to place there 15000.The hack will not alter your data in any way. It will just record in the Events section all the non-bouncers.”

Synchronous Code (older Google analytics code)

“What you need to do is to fire up an event each time a user spends more than 10 seconds (or you can define your own standard) on the website. Just add the following line under the page Tracker._trackPageview(); line:

setTimeout('pageTracker._trackEvent(\'NoBounce\', \'NoBounce\', \'Over 10 seconds\')',10000);”

Resources and References

• Google Support -http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2525491&topic=1120718&ctx=topic
• Google Analytics Code Hack
  http://padicode.com/blog/analytics/the-real-bounce-rate/ 
•  What is Bounce Rate? Avoid Common Pitfalls
  http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what-is-bounce-rate/