Behind the Bounce: Understanding Metrics and Engagement

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Chris Muller

Taboola’s Organic Audience Development Team

Agenda• Introduction

• Defining bounce rate

• How analytics tools measure bounce rate

• What does/does not count as a bounce

• Modifying your analytics software to more accurately track bounces

• How your bounce rate can affect your traffic

• Six Metrics you can use to measure engagement

• Q&A

“Bounce Rate” is one of the most misunderstood digital metrics

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Defining Bounce Rate

Percentage of sessions (visits)

with a single tracked

Interaction

Percentage of users who don’t watch a video

Percentage of non-converting

users

Percentage of users who stay on my site < 1

minute

Percentage of people leaving

my site

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How Analytics Tools Track Sessions and Pageviews

Views Page 1(tracking

beacon sent)User Enters Site Clicks Internal Link

Views Page 2 (tracking

beacon sent)? User Not Seen

Again on Site

Recorded: 1 User, 1 Session, Two Pageviews

Views Page 1(tracking

beacon sent)User Enters Site ? User Not Seen

Again on Site

Recorded: 1 User, 1 Session, 1 Pageview

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Examples of the Data Sent in a Tracking Beacon

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Default Analytics Setups Do NOT Count These As Bounces

1.A user visits your site, reads the page they land on, and clicks to another page

2.A user visits your site, begins a purchase funnel that takes them to another

URL, then leaves

3.A user visits your site, performs an action that is tracked by your analytics

package (such as watching a video that has an attached event), then leaves

4.A user visits your site, reads that page, closes your tab … then returns to your

site within 30 minutes and reads multiple pages. (Not a bounce since the

session is still active* in both GA and Omniture)

* Except if the user clears their cookies, or the time zone for your account passes to the next day

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Default Analytics Setups DO Count These As Bounces

1.A user visits your site, reads the page they landed on, and hits the back button

2.A user visits your site, reads the page they landed on, and closes their

browser/tab

3.A user visits your site, clicks the “share on Facebook” button, then leaves

4.A user visits your site, fills out a form (that remains on that page), then leaves

5.A user visits your site, watches an embedded YouTube video, then leaves

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Modifying Your Analytics Setup to Track a More Useful “Bounce Rate”

• Add an event that fires if a user stays on your page over X seconds

– setTimeout("_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', '30_seconds', 'read'])",30000); [Google Analytics]

– setTimeout(“ga(‘send’,’event’,’30_seconds’,read’)”,30000); [Universal Analytics]

• Fire an event when social media share buttons are clicked

• Track video plays, or interaction with any other media, with an event

• If you use infinite scroll or any other form of continuous consumption, make

sure you’re accurately tracking page views on the second piece of content

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Your Bounce Rate Will Vary Across Different Segments:

•Different Pages

•Traffic mediums

•Different paid campaigns/sources

•Demographics (age, sex, location)

•Combinations of these

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Facts and Myths: Your Bounce Rate CAN affect both your Google and Facebook Traffic

• On August 25, 2014, Facebook announced that the time spent on a page

would be a factor in news feed ranking

• It has never been confirmed that Google uses bounces back to search

results in their ranking algorithms, but it make sense to me that they do - an

immediate bounce back means the user wasn’t satisfied with your page!

Image Source: moz.com

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Final Notes About ‘Bounce Rate’

1.A ‘bounce’ is not necessarily a bad thing: you may have delivered what they

were looking for in a single page view.

2.Bounce rates, as measured by analytics tools, can be manipulated. As we saw,

we can affect bounce rate with our implementation so we need to make sure

we don’t have any errors in our code.

3.At the end of the day, tracking engagement metrics that directly lead to our

KPIs matters much more than focusing on bounce rates!

#2: Pages Per Session

#5: Video/Gallery Consumption

#3: Sessions per User

#4: Conversion

(signing up or purchasing)

#1: Time on Site

Conversion

Many Different Metrics Can Be Used To Measure Engagement:

#6 Other Custom Events

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Engagement Metric #1: Average Time on Site (Session Duration)

How Google Analytics and Omniture track session duration:Google Analytics:

Chartbeat:

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Engagement Metric #2: Pages Per Session

Note: More than other engagement metrics, this metric is driven by page design how you present related/other content to users

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Engagement Metric #3: Sessions Per User

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Engagement Metric #4: Conversion

Goal Flow in Google Analytics:

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Engagement Metric #5: Video/Gallery Consumption

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Engagement Metric #6: Other Custom Events

Social Shares: Changing Sections:

Read More Buttons:

Choose Other Engagement Metrics that lead to your KPIs:

•Ad Revenue is a function of Frequency x Depth x Audience x RPM

•Ad Revenue = (visits/user) * (pages/visit) * (users) * ($/pageview)

Thank You!

Questions?

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