{"id":19646,"date":"2021-02-23T09:20:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T09:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/?p=19646"},"modified":"2022-07-11T09:35:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T09:35:47","slug":"journal-20-death-of-bounce-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/journal-20-death-of-bounce-rate\/","title":{"rendered":"Journal 20: The Death of Bounce Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Bounce Rate Has Died And We Are Waiting For The Funeral Date.<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Hello Everyone<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Today I want to talk to you about a day some will say was a bad day and some will say was a long time coming. The death of bounce rate. Let me explain.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In GA 4<\/strong> the newest version of Google Analytics bounce rate has gone and been replaced by a new thing called engagement rate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What is bounce rate?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

These single-page sessions have a session duration of 0 seconds since there are no subsequent hits after the first one that would let Analytics calculate the length of the session.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Is a high bounce rate a bad thing?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It depends.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If the success of your site depends on users viewing more than one page, then, yes, a high bounce rate is bad. For example, if your home page is the gateway to the rest of your site (e.g., news articles, product pages, your checkout process) <\/em>and a high percentage of users are viewing only your home page, then you don\u2019t want a high bounce rate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On the other hand, if you have a single-page site like a blog, or offer other types of content for which single-page sessions are expected, then a high bounce rate is perfectly normal.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What is engagement rate?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Analysts have never had a healthy relationship with Bounce Rate, but most of us have been afraid to put ourselves out there and find something new. So let\u2019s talk about alternatives.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The new version of Google Analytics has replaced the concept of a \u201cBounce\u201d with something called an \u201cEngaged Session\u201d. For a session to qualify as Engaged, the user must have done at least one of the following during their session:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

    \r\n\t
  • Actively engaged with your website or app in the foreground for at least 10 seconds<\/li>\r\n\t
  • Fire a conversion event<\/li>\r\n\t
  • Fire 2 or more screen or page views
    <\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

    You\u2019ll notice several new metrics in GA4 property that are built on top of this concept:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      \r\n\t
    • Engagement Rate = (engaged sessions) \/ (sessions)<\/li>\r\n\t
    • Engaged Sessions per User = (engaged sessions) \/ (users)<\/li>\r\n\t
    • Engagement Time = sum(engagement time)<\/li>\r\n\t
    • The new metric you\u2019ll want to use instead of Bounce Rate is Engagement Rate.
      <\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      What was wrong with Bounce Rate?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      You may remember from your first day as an Analyst that Bounce Rate is not a very useful metric.<\/strong> On most websites, a user might have a successful visit and still bounce (think about how you interact with news articles for example)<\/em>. Additionally, it\u2019s even more rare for this metric to make sense in a mobile or single page application, where users don\u2019t always generate multiple page views during a session.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Google Analytics 4 is built to be flexible. It joins data from both websites and mobile apps in a simple interface, and provides you with reports that are useful for measuring a wide variety of user experiences. With that in mind, it\u2019s no surprise that Bounce Rate had to go<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      How Does Engagement Rate Compare to Bounce Rate?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Just like Bounce Rate, the Engagement Rate is useful for answering the question: \u201cAre customers really engaged with my site?\u201d. But Engagement Rate can also be applied in places where Bounce Rate cannot<\/strong>, such as: mobile apps, single page apps, and content sites such as blogs and news outlets.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Your Engagement Rate will always be greater than the inverse of your Bounce Rate. This is because a session with at least 2-page views (not a bounce) qualifies as an engaged session, but so do other sessions that would otherwise be considered a bounce.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      So, if your Bounce Rate was 65% last month, your engagement rate will be at least 35%. If your visitors are converting or actually reading your content.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      That’s all for today until next time this has been Jack Thomson’s<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Today I want to talk to you about a day some will say was a bad day and some will say was a long time coming. The death of bounce rate. Let me explain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"order-bump-settings":[],"_wpfnl_thankyou_order_overview":"on","_wpfnl_thankyou_order_details":"on","_wpfnl_thankyou_billing_details":"on","_wpfnl_thankyou_shipping_details":"on"},"categories":[91,214,73,219,223],"tags":[245,164,166,162,119,127,133,117,141,143,139],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}