Bounce Rate

[GV16]

Hi. I have added all our related brand website (belonging to same organization) in URL filter. All those websites have different report suites. Now my question is - if a user comes to our site and from that page moves/clicks to another page of other website(which belongs to our organization) will it be considered as bounce rate? Thank You.

[Krishna_Musku]

@GV16 In Adobe Analytics, Bounce Rate is calculated using the formula of Bounces divided by Entries. If a visit contains only one hit, then it is bounce. If a visit contains one page view and one link tracking call, then it's not a bounce. In your case, The first page is not bounce as the user clicks on entry page to go to another page. So, there are two calls happened. 1. page view call of that page and 2. Click call on that page. As two calls happened in a visit, it's not a bounce.

There is another way to calculate bounce rate: Single page visits divided by entries. With this calculation, you will see the different bounce rate, as Single page visits doesn't count link tracking calls. If there is one page view call and have a link click call (or not) in a visit, then this is counted towards to single page visits.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Except that the presence of the other domains being listed as "internal" urls will prevent the exit link from tracking, therefore not trigger a link tracking event.... so now there is only one hit (the page view) and it will be tracked as a bounce....

[Jennifer_Dungan]

If the sites are all in separate suites, then yes, they will be treated as a bounce.... A bounce is calculated based on a "Single Hit within a Visit"

If all your sites are in separate suites, they will each record their own separate visits per suite... unless of course you are talking about separate virtual suites and collecting data in one consolidated global suite?

Even with indicating that all the URLs are "internal", this will only stop the clicks from Site A to Site B from being tracked as an "exit click" on Site A, and preventing "Site A" from being recorded as a Referrer in Site B.. which in this setup may not be the best option... as you are now moving from suite to suite, and site to site, and now have no tracking telling you about any of that cross site traffic.

[GV16]

@Jennifer_Dungan Thank You for answering. Yes all our sites have separate report suite. In this scenario do you suggest not to indicate these URL's in 'Internal URL Filters'.

Additionally, can you please suggest me where I can read more about bounces when I move from 1 suite to another, particularly the suites belonging to sites of our organization.

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Well this is a tricky situation... they are "internal" to your org, but "external" to the suite.... 

As it stands on your current implementation, I don't think listing all your domains as internal is in your best interest at this time.... it's not helping with the bounce situation (which is a calculated metric based the individual suite and how many hits were recorded), and since each report suite is fully separate, you really can't see how the traffic is moving between domains.... 

I am not sure what your network looks like, but one consideration (but it's a lot of work, and may or may not work for you), would be to migrate all your sites into one global tracking suite (using Virtual Report Suites for each domain).

I've done this in our org, tracking 30 sites, 3 mobile apps, and "extended content subdomains for the 30 sites) all into one global tracking suite... I then have virtual suites for each "core site", "app", "all apps together", "extended content X together", "extended content Y together", and "core + app" and "core + app + extended", etc.

Then all those domains are treated as internal URLs, I don't get bounces when someone enters on site a and goes to site b, and I can look at the pathing between sites using a the flow diagram or creating segments that look for specific sequences.

But this is a lot of work, and a lot of planning, and as I said, without understanding your needs, I don't know if this will work for you, but it is something you might want to investigate.