Help creating a custom bounce

[aedelnevo77]

Hello clever people

I'm looking for extra help on creating a custom bounce rate for our company. Essentially a few variations.

First case

Visitor arrives, views our disclaimer/cookie pop up (page background is greyed out)
Leaves
= Hard bounce

Second case

Visitor arrives views our disclaimer/cookie pop up
Accepts and enters and sees page for the first time (without greyed out backgroun)
Leaves
= Soft bounce

Third case
Visitor arrives (previously has accepted cookies so doesn't see popup)
Leaves

= Regular bounce

For extra info, we have an event firing when they see the pop-up (first time with grey background), Also, when they hit accept, it loads 2 page view beacons.

Angela

[MandyGeorge]

For the first and third cases, you could create a metric using "single page visits" and a segment that either includes/excludes seeing that pop-up. For the second case, does a second page load call fire after they accept the disclainer and see the page? If not, then the same method would work, again just modifying the segment.

Single page visits is a default metric from Adobe. 

For the segments, for case 1 have a hit condition where they see the pop up, and then do an exclude container for accepting it.

For case 2, have a hit condition where they see the pop up and accept it.

For case 3, have a hit condition where you exclude anyone who sees the pop up (you don't need to worry about excluding accepting it, because if they don't see it at all, they can't accept it).

Then create calculated metrics with each of the segments and the metric "single page visits" for each of your bounces. If you want a bounce rate, then you would divide that by the number of visits (you would likely apply the segments to all visits as well that way you get bounce as a % for each group, and the three groups should add up to 100% of traffic if the groups are mutually exclusive).

Editing because I missed the last sentence of your post. 

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@aedelnevo77 wrote:

For extra info, we have an event firing when they see the pop-up (first time with grey background), Also, when they hit accept, it loads 2 page view beacons.

---

So for the second condition, if there is a page view firing when they hit accept, then you wouldn't be able to use single page visits if there is more than one. So the segment would get a bit more complicated for that. You would need a visit level sequential segment. First condition is seeing the pop up, then them accepting it, then an exclude container for any page view or custom link. If there are no more custom links or page views, then they must have exited the site. You can use that with the visits metric, to see how many visits did that. Then for a bounce rate, divide that by a segment with just the disclaimer view and accept, but not the condition excluding the rest of the visit so get everyone who accepted it.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

To add to this, I don't use Adobe's standard "Bounce Rate" because it's based in "Single Hit / Visit"... but we consider Bounces as a "Single Page Visits"... using the standard metric that @MandyGeorge showed, we created a calculated metric of "Single Page Visits / Entries" or "Single Page Visits / Visits" (either work to get you your "rate" rather than just raw number of "Single Page Visits").

I would almost be tempted to just use this one calculated metric, and pair it with segments for "sees popup" (second option) / "doesn't see popup" (third option)

The first depends on your tracking... you are asking people to opt into Cookies, not necessarily "Tracking", so depending on your system, I don't know if the page is still tracking (with fingerprinting cookies disabled until opt-in), or if you are suppressing tracking altogether until the user opts-in? This could make a different to the first type of bounce, so I am not sure what you might need at this time to segment it, but surely you could use some sort of segment, and maybe a new metric if page views are suppressed... (note: you could use the Adobe standard metric based on hit, paired with a segment... because this would also pull back scenario 3 without some sort of filtering)

I am not sure if you are looking specifically for raw count of "Bounces" or a "Bounce Rate" but both are possible with a little creativity.

[aedelnevo77]

Thank you to you all. I've been trying to make sense of it all.

Case 1 Hard Bounce

Exclude Hit

e45 (Auto Pop) - greater than or equal to 1

and

e46 (Accept)  - greater than or equal to 1

Case 2 Soft Bounce

Include Hit

e45 (Auto Pop)  - greater than or equal to 1

and

e46 (Accept)  - greater than or equal to 1

Case 3 Return Cookied Visitor Bounce

Exclude Hit

e45 (Auto Pop) - greater than or equal to 1

Then i've created calculated metrics like below

Is this what you guys had envisaged?

We have a cookie less XML beacon that fires (capturing basic metrics) if they land and exit without accepting cookies.  This fires if they abandon or if they actually go into the settings and switch of targeting cookies.  Otherwise, Adobe will track once they press accept.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I am worried that your hard bounce is going to pull in Visits that don't see the popup at all... 

Case 1 Hard Bounce

Exclude Hit

e45 (Auto Pop) - greater than or equal to 1

and

e46 (Accept)  - greater than or equal to 1

According to your definition:

First case

Visitor arrives, views our disclaimer/cookie pop up (page background is greyed out)
Leaves
= Hard bounce

But what you have written would return all visits that don't see the disclaimer at all.

I think this "hard bounce" might be something more like:

VISIT [

    e45 (Auto Pop) exists

    THEN

    Container HIT Exclude [

        e46 (Accept) exists

    ]

]

So this should capture the visits where the popup was shown, but the user did not accept the terms...

Your "Soft Bounce" might be something more like:

VISIT [

    e45 (Auto Pop) exists

    THEN

    e46 (Accept) exists

]

And your Returned Bounce should be fine, you are excluding the "e45 (Auto Pop)", you could use exists, but exists vs greater than or equal to 1 should act about the same.

[aedelnevo77]

HI Jennifer, 

The soft bounce one I'm struggling a bit with.  Its because once the visitor has seen e45 (pop up), pressed accept, it generates two page load beacons.  Then on top of that. We don't want to include two types of events which will fire on that 'landing page'.  One, a custom link event which fires when our chat bot loads, and two, if the visitor scrolls and fires the scroll engagement custom link event.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Wait, you are getting two page load beacons in that scenario? Or two server calls?

If you actually have 2 page views, then I would suggest revisiting the implementation to prevent that... this will be inflating your overall page views metric, and make trying to check for a "bounce" almost impossible...  because 2 page views isn't a "bounce" in most definitions, even if it is the same page.

Bounces are calculated based on "Single Hit" or "Single Page View"... trying to create something custom to account for 2 of the same page view in conjunction with a cookie opt-in is extremely hard.

Page Views are different from Actions... In your scenario, as long as only one page view is triggered, then using "Single Page Visit / Visit" is fine, because it won't care about any of your other actions (scrolls, chat bot loaded, etc)... those aren't / shouldn't be "Page Views", and therefore will have no impact on a custom Bounce rate using Single Page Visit. You don't have to build anything fancy into your segment for them.

[aedelnevo77]

Completely agree Jennifer. Its not an ideal situation. i can ask if they would consider changing the site behaviour, but i'm not sure if that will happen.

Someone lands on the site and sees the popup, and presses Accept - this is what happens:

1st Page Load Beacon fires, including events 45 (popup viewed) and 46 (accept pressed)

immediately, it then fires

2nd Page Load Beacon

i know its no longer a bounce now.  That's why we have this issue.

[aedelnevo77]

I believe the site behaviour logic was set because when someone arrives, they are served a country website that is best appropriate for their location.  However, we have for example 15 different country websites for EMEA alone so if someone changed their country (for example), it would force a URL change and therefore site navigation.

We can't get in between the 1st page view and 2nd page view, because its set to fire one after the other. I can have another conversation with the dev team on what is possible. But hopefully it can explain some of the challenges i face.

[aedelnevo77]

So more pieces to share. Yes, once certain cookies are selected/accepted, then AA kicks in. We do have an XML page beacon that fires but only if the visitor exits/chooses not to have cookies.

[aedelnevo77]

They can change country, language, role.....and product.  

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

All on that cookie consent popup?

Or just in general once the page loads?

[aedelnevo77]

Apologies, I've been away.

The pop up will only be automatically displayed if the visitor is visiting the site for the first time and hasn't accepted / saved their cookies.  if they clear cookies after accepting, the 'Pop up' would appear.  The user could also while in a visit, open the pop up themselves but this isn't in our bounce rate scenario.

We are particularly trying to implement the 2nd scenario because its tricky.  The user has seen the auto pop-up, accepted cookies and forced 2 page load beacons and yet, we are still trying to measure if they do anything on the page.  Its almost as if we are trying to ignore the fact that 2 page loads has occurred and we have reset the hits to zero.  We also want to ignore the custom events that automatically fire on a page load .

i don't have much influence over changing how the site behaves, only i can input on how much of a challenge it is to technically measure.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

OK, I understand the extra page view for changing location, that one makes sense, you are technically loading a new page in that flow.

And, ha... what is an implementation without challenges?

So it's actually reloading the page when the user accept the cookies... hmm that is a challenge..  but it's always the same page? Or are users also choosing a location on your popup that forces them to potentially another URL?

If it's always the same page, we might be able to use the calculated "reloads" in Adobe to help build in logic on the rule... but this only works if its the same page, and not a location specific variant change.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Wow... to be honest, this would be my tracking:

• Page Loads - Page View Beacon + event45 (popup shown)
• Click Action (only one of these depending on the choice)
  • User Clicks Accept - Action Triggers with correlation data and event46 (accepted)
  • User Clicks to Not Accept - Action Triggers with correlation data and maybe an event, or maybe not about not accepting the cookies (I might just do this with the Custom Link value instead of assigning a whole event to it....)
• No additional "page view"

Unless you are treating your "cookie" consent like a "tracking consent"... which are two different things...

As far as I am concerned, Cookie Consent is about identifying / following the user... which means turning off ECID and ensuring that the backup s_vid and other cookies won't exist beyond the session.. basically, I don't "fingerprint" the users... so each subsequent visit they will be treated as a new user.

In the above tracking, if your first page view is deferred until the user accepts, then how can you ever get your hard bounce scenario? Users who don't accept won't even track that first page / popup shown call.... Unless its the second page view that is tracked? But that would be indistinguishable from a user that doesn't see the popup at all.... 

Given the behaviours I don't think you can get all your scenarios...

Before I try to think about how to track a "2 Page Visit with popup acceptance", you should probably evaluate the current tracking behaviours and if they are really what you want / should be doing....