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This article is about how he redefined "bounce" to not include people that viewed the site for 30 seconds or more. While I appreciate the sentiment, I consider

by sh1mmer 17y ago

This article is about how he redefined "bounce" to not include people that viewed the site for 30 seconds or more. While I appreciate the sentiment, I consider "bounces" to be a lack of up-sell. My stats give me a "bounce" rate as well as the average time spent on that page for new visitors, so I can already see both of the stats he's referring to. They are just useful for different things.

byoung2 17y ago
I consider "bounces" to be a lack of up-sell Not in all cases. For an affiliate site, a bounce could be some one who gave up reading, or someone who was completely sold and clicked through on the affiliate link. They both show up as "bounces" in Google Analytics.
- sh1mmer 16y ago
  In which case you'd be most interested in your outbound clicks vs. your time spent on site or page views.
Encosia 17y ago
Since I'm not selling anything, a single pageview can easily be a success case for me. If Google refers someone to my site and a single page (and/or its comments) answers their question, I see that as a win. That's where most stats packages fail me, since they assume single pageview visits are immediate bounces. I think it's applicable to other situations as well. Even if you're selling something and hope to guide visitors down a funnel, an accurate time-on-last-page metric should be valuable. There's a world of difference between someone that bounced immediately and someone that read your landing page for a few minutes but wasn't convinced to take the next step.
- sh1mmer 16y ago
  If you just want single page view stats, my stats give me "time spent on site" broken down by "new visitors". I don't understand why you have to redefine the term "bounce" in order to achieve that. You could simply say that "bounce" wasn't the metric that you were looking for, or that people put too much emphasis in it. You don't need to "fix" it because it isn't broken. "Bounce" is a measurement of people that do not continue to interact with a site after the first page they visit.
  - Encosia 16y ago
    What stats package do you use that gives you a "time spent on site" that's accurate for a single or final pageview (honest question)? Most of them take a very pessimistic view. I believe Google Analytics counts a single pageview visitor as 0s, for example. That turns out to be terribly inaccurate for my site.
    - sh1mmer 16y ago
      I'm using Yahoo! Web Analytics which is not publicly available.
  - schammy 16y ago
    The problem is that "bounce" is a broken metric. It implies that people "bounced away" from your site very quickly because they didn't find it engaging. But the standard definition of a bounce is simply a single pageview visit. It needs redefining, because there are plenty of single pageview visits that do actually engage the reader. e.g. reading this article - I bet a lot of you read it but didn't read any other articles on the site. GA would probably report 90% bounce rate for these visits, but Clicky would be more like 20-30%, which is much more accurate measurement of how many people are actually engaging with the site.

by sh1mmer 17y ago

byoung2 17y ago

I consider "bounces" to be a lack of up-sell Not in all cases. For an affiliate site, a bounce could be some one who gave up reading, or someone who was completely sold and clicked through on the affiliate link. They both show up as "bounces" in Google Analytics.

sh1mmer 16y ago
In which case you'd be most interested in your outbound clicks vs. your time spent on site or page views.

Encosia 17y ago

Since I'm not selling anything, a single pageview can easily be a success case for me. If Google refers someone to my site and a single page (and/or its comments) answers their question, I see that as a win. That's where most stats packages fail me, since they assume single pageview visits are immediate bounces. I think it's applicable to other situations as well. Even if you're selling something and hope to guide visitors down a funnel, an accurate time-on-last-page metric should be valuable. There's a world of difference between someone that bounced immediately and someone that read your landing page for a few minutes but wasn't convinced to take the next step.

sh1mmer 16y ago
If you just want single page view stats, my stats give me "time spent on site" broken down by "new visitors". I don't understand why you have to redefine the term "bounce" in order to achieve that. You could simply say that "bounce" wasn't the metric that you were looking for, or that people put too much emphasis in it. You don't need to "fix" it because it isn't broken. "Bounce" is a measurement of people that do not continue to interact with a site after the first page they visit.
- Encosia 16y ago
  What stats package do you use that gives you a "time spent on site" that's accurate for a single or final pageview (honest question)? Most of them take a very pessimistic view. I believe Google Analytics counts a single pageview visitor as 0s, for example. That turns out to be terribly inaccurate for my site.
  - sh1mmer 16y ago
    I'm using Yahoo! Web Analytics which is not publicly available.
- schammy 16y ago
  The problem is that "bounce" is a broken metric. It implies that people "bounced away" from your site very quickly because they didn't find it engaging. But the standard definition of a bounce is simply a single pageview visit. It needs redefining, because there are plenty of single pageview visits that do actually engage the reader. e.g. reading this article - I bet a lot of you read it but didn't read any other articles on the site. GA would probably report 90% bounce rate for these visits, but Clicky would be more like 20-30%, which is much more accurate measurement of how many people are actually engaging with the site.