A sudden drop in bounce rate

[nbendov]

Hi there,

I have noticed an unexplained sudden drop in bounce rate for (see image attached):

https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/solutions/endpoint-security/zero-trust-security

We had bounce rate at about 80% for this page. On April 12, 2023 the bounced rate drop to 2.10% and even hit 0% on April 14, 2023. After April 12 the bounce rate for this page stayed has been about 2% or lower.

There were no updates / changes made to our site around April 12. There is only one tracking script on the page. There are no redirects on this page.

Any thoughts on what is causing this issue? 

Thanks

Neil 

[leocwlau · Accepted solution]

You have two  AA hits just on the page load, so it is not a bounce. You need to check what is the second hit and if it should be there. One common trick is to calculate another version of the bounce rate using "Single Page Visit" / "Visit".

[nbendov]

Hi there,

Thank you for the help. 

The dev said that there was no updated to the site. Was it there before and suddenly started tracking? 

How did you find it (how did you get to the screen grab)? How do I know which script to remove?   

Thanks

Neil

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I recognize the tool @leocwlau used, it's called Omnibug... but you can detect multiple calls with any tool really... Omnibug, Adobe's Experience League Debugger, or looking straight at the Network calls in your browser's Dev Tools.

Now, identifying what rule is firing twice... you can try using the Satellite Debug mode... in your console you can turn debugging on and off using:

// Turn on debugging
_satellite.setDebug(true);

// Turn off debugging
_satellite.setDebug(false);

This will give you logs in your console about what rules are running (including which rules are not meeting conditions, if you have any such rules). This will be very handy for identifying if one of your rules is triggering twice, or if two different tracking rules are being triggered...

Once you identify the problem, you will have to understand what trigger the rule is using to try and determine the best way to fix it.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

However, I just took a look at your page myself, one of those calls is your page view, the other is an action "Video Load". 

So it looks like there wasn't a "code" change, but a content change... someone added a video to the page and it's now triggering a second server call.

Which probably means, unless you are ready to redesign your entire site to include "video load" as part of the page view (thereby reducing server calls and allowing the default Bounce Rate to properly calculate), you may want to create custom Bounces and  Bounce Rate calculations like @leocwlau mentioned.

Adobe's default definition is "Single Server Call / Visit" for bounce rate... but this means that any actions (triggered by users on a click, or by some automatic process to detect content loaded to the site) will break your Bounce Rate.....

Creating your own definition by using "Single Page Visits / Visit" will ensure that your bounce rate is calculated based on Page Views, and not just server calls.

[nbendov]

Thank! This is very helpful!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

You're welcome... FYI, we use our our custom Bounce Rate calculations like above... we have things like dimissable banners, or expand and collapse elements that we want to track, and don't want to impact our bounces... similar to what you are experiencing.