Bounce Rate Alternative

[czmudzin]

Is there an alternative way to report on Bounce Rate?

Or, can you define a bounce to happen where hits <=2?

Bounce rate does not work for us traditionally, because we have a chat bot that fires an event on every page, followed by a secondary hit to an audience tool (Bombora). 

I know that single page visit rate can be an alternative, but it's not the best descriptive metric in my use case.

[RobertBlakeley]

I believe you can create a custom metric using the hit depth dimension: Hit Depth is less than or equal to 2.

Then use the visit metric.

 Hit Depth counts all types of hits, including page view type calls and custom link type calls.

The following is an example of a visit with 8 interactions. The Home Page is Hit Depth 1. The second Custom Link click is Hit Depth 5.

Page sequence  >  Hit depth

Home page	1
Health Center page	2
Home page	3
Custom link click	4
Custom link click	5
Health Center page	6
Custom link click	7
Health Center page	8

[czmudzin]

This is an interesting workaround. I'll give it a shot.

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

We created our own "Bounce Rate" based on Single Page Views as opposed to Single Hit... Like you, we have the potential for additional hits on the first page (more so a few years ago, but still to us, a "bounce" is based on pages viewed)

[czmudzin]

I like this approach, but the problem is that I'm measuring bounce rate for a registration page, so a single page visit is likely in this case. Maybe I can add on to your calculation with other contraints, where scroll events don't exist, or where time on page is low.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

This will work for you then... it bases "Bounce Rate" on page view, not on hits...

Example 1:

• Page View
• Hit
• Hit
• (Leave)
  • this will count as bounce
  • Original Adobe Bounce Rate will not track as bounce

Example 2:

• Page View
• (Leave)
  • This will count as bounce
  • Original Adobe Bounce Rate will track as bounce

Example 3:

• Page View
• Hit
• Page View
• (Leave)
  • This will not count as bounce
  • Original Adobe Bounce Rate will not track as bounce

Adobe "Bounce Rate" is "Single Hit / Entries".. the custom one I showed you uses "Single Page View / Entries"

Meaning that if you have additional hits (chat bot, Bombora, etc), they will not prevent tracking a Bounce like they do with Adobe's default Bounce Rate (which is the fundamental issue you mentioned). But if you only have a Page View, and no additional hits, it will still track a bounce if there are no additional page views. This is a more traditional sense of "Bounce Rate".

Are you saying you have additional and inconsistent behaviours that you need to compensate for?

The original post indicated that the additional hits were causing an issue to tracking Bounce Rate...

However, for this new "Registration Page" example, surely after a user registers they are taken to either a success/welcome page, or back to the home page as a logged in user... which would then not be a bounce.... as they performed a very specific engagement action and hit multiple pages...

The problem with basing your Bounce Rate on hits is that a Page View is also a hit... so if you say "<=2 hits" then that could represent 2 page views, which really isn't a "bounce"... it's a "low engagement" and maybe there's a need for that too...  but I would try to avoid using "Bounce Rate" nomenclature in that case, as that will cause confusion with typical definitions of a "bounce". And if trying to compare this to global bounce rate in your industry, you will be comparing apples and oranges.... 

The traditional definition of a bounce rate is:

"the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page."

(I am still not sure why Adobe decided to use "Single Hit" in their calculation....)

[DavidBe7]

You could also do something like create an event where you're looking for visits where Single Page visit is true, but the Success event for Registration does not exist.