On Wednesday, November 4th Sr. Director of Audience Development, Chris Muller, presented a webinar on the importance of measurement in relation to engagement. He took a deeper dive into a variety of metrics, highlighting bounce rates and what they mean for your page.

1. Behind the Bounce: Understanding Metrics
and Engagement
1
Chris Muller
Taboola’s Organic Audience Development Team

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Defining bounce rate
• How analytics tools measure bounce rate
• What does/does not count as a bounce
• Modifying your analytics software to more accurately track
bounces
• How your bounce rate can affect your traffic
• Six Metrics you can use to measure engagement
• Q&A

3. “Bounce Rate” is one of the most
misunderstood digital metrics
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4. Defining Bounce Rate
Percentage of
sessions (visits)
with a single
tracked
Interaction
Percentage of
users who don’t
watch a video
Percentage of
non-converting
users
Percentage of
users who stay
on my site < 1
minute
Percentage of
people leaving
my site

5. 5
How Analytics Tools Track Sessions and Pageviews
Views Page 1
(tracking
beacon sent)
User Enters Site Clicks Internal Link
Views Page 2
(tracking
beacon sent)
?
User Not Seen
Again on Site
Recorded: 1 User, 1 Session, Two Pageviews
Views Page 1
(tracking
beacon sent)
User Enters Site ? User Not Seen
Again on Site
Recorded: 1 User, 1 Session, 1 Pageview

6. 6
Examples of the Data Sent in a Tracking Beacon

7. 7
Default Analytics Setups Do NOT Count These As
Bounces
1.A user visits your site, reads the page they land on, and clicks to another page
2.A user visits your site, begins a purchase funnel that takes them to another
URL, then leaves
3.A user visits your site, performs an action that is tracked by your analytics
package (such as watching a video that has an attached event), then leaves
4.A user visits your site, reads that page, closes your tab … then returns to your
site within 30 minutes and reads multiple pages. (Not a bounce since the
session is still active* in both GA and Omniture)
* Except if the user clears their cookies, or the time zone for your account passes to the next day

8. 8
Default Analytics Setups DO Count These As Bounces
1.A user visits your site, reads the page they landed on, and hits the back button
2.A user visits your site, reads the page they landed on, and closes their
browser/tab
3.A user visits your site, clicks the “share on Facebook” button, then leaves
4.A user visits your site, fills out a form (that remains on that page), then leaves
5.A user visits your site, watches an embedded YouTube video, then leaves

9. 9
Modifying Your Analytics Setup to Track a More Useful
“Bounce Rate”
Add an event that fires if a user stays on your page over X seconds
setTimeout("_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', '30_seconds', 'read'])",30000); [Google Analytics]
setTimeout(“ga(‘send’,’event’,’30_seconds’,read’)”,30000); [Universal Analytics]
Fire an event when social media share buttons are clicked
Track video plays, or interaction with any other media, with an event
If you use infinite scroll or any other form of continuous consumption, make
sure you’re accurately tracking page views on the second piece of content

10. 10
Your Bounce Rate Will Vary Across Different Segments:
•Different Pages
•Traffic mediums
•Different paid campaigns/sources
•Demographics (age, sex, location)
•Combinations of these

11. 11
Facts and Myths: Your Bounce Rate CAN affect both your
Google and Facebook Traffic
• On August 25, 2014, Facebook announced that the time spent on a page
would be a factor in news feed ranking
• It has never been confirmed that Google uses bounces back to search
results in their ranking algorithms, but it make sense to me that they do - an
immediate bounce back means the user wasn’t satisfied with your page!
Image Source: moz.com

12. 12
Final Notes About ‘Bounce Rate’
1.A ‘bounce’ is not necessarily a bad thing: you may have delivered what they
were looking for in a single page view.
2.Bounce rates, as measured by analytics tools, can be manipulated. As we
saw, we can affect bounce rate with our implementation so we need to make
sure we don’t have any errors in our code.
3.At the end of the day, tracking engagement metrics that directly lead to our
KPIs matters much more than focusing on bounce rates!

13. #2: Pages Per
Session
#5:
Video/Gallery
Consumption
#3: Sessions
per User
#4:
Conversion
(signing up or
purchasing)
#1: Time on
Site
Conversion
Many Different Metrics Can Be Used To Measure
Engagement:
#6 Other
Custom
Events

14. 14
Engagement Metric #1: Average Time on Site (Session
Duration)
How Google Analytics and Omniture track session duration:
Google Analytics:
Chartbeat:

15. 15
Engagement Metric #2: Pages Per Session
Note: More than other engagement metrics, this metric is driven by page design how you present
related/other content to users

16. 16
Engagement Metric #3: Sessions Per User

17. 17
Engagement Metric #4: Conversion
Goal Flow in Google Analytics:

18. 18
Engagement Metric #5: Video/Gallery Consumption

19. 19
Engagement Metric #6: Other Custom Events
Social Shares:
Changing Sections:
Read More Buttons:

20. Choose Other Engagement Metrics that lead to your KPIs:
•Ad Revenue is a function of Frequency x Depth x Audience x RPM
•Ad Revenue = (visits/user) * (pages/visit) * (users) * ($/pageview)

21. Thank You!
Questions?
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