The bounce rate is an important metric that allows Webmasters to better understand the performance of the content on their website. Although crucial, the bounce rate is often misleading and misinterpreted. Many people forget that the bounce rate does not indicate whether users are engaging with your content in a meaningful way. Google explains, ” “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).” Since there are too many unknowns that come with a bounce rate, it’s best to turn towards an adjusted bounce rate which lets you see how users are engaging with your website.
Creating an Adjusted Bounce Rate
Set up an event that is triggered after a user spends a specified amount of time on the landing page. Google Analytics will not count these users as bounces. Users may come to your website and gather all the information they need such as a phone number or address, and then leave the site without visiting other pages. By creating a limit where you can consider a user to be “engaged,” the user would not count as a bounce. In turn, you’d receive accurate data of whether they found what they are looking for.
Even if you don’t know coding, adding an adjusted bounce rate is as simple as implementing a single line of code. Below you will find the code that should be added to your current tag:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-XXXXXXX-1’]);
_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]);
setTimeout(“_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ’15_seconds’, ‘read’])”,15000); // –additional line
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘https://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
The code above has the time set to 15 seconds but this can always be changed. Switching to adjusted bounce rate means you’ll see fewer bounce rates within Google Analytics and improved accuracy of data.