How 30 seconds dropped my bounce rate by 78%

Re:How 30 seconds dropped my bounce rate by 78% by gojomo on Monday April 26, 2010 @01:19PM (#1295352)

While the original 78% bounce rate missed people who happily read the full page and then were done, the new 15% "<30 seconds on page bounce rate" overcounts people who leave the page up without reading.

When discovering new material (as from HN or long lists of search results), I'm sure I'm not alone in that I open a bunch of tabs, then slowly work through them. Sometimes, when I reach one, even if it's been open for minutes (or hours!), it's dismissed immediately as uninteresting or obsolete.

I've noticed some video sites manage to defer auto-start of the video until I bring the tab to the fore. Other sites seem to only load (or fade-in) inline images as I scroll to them. Has any analytics tool added similar monitoring of foreground-time or scroll-to-end-of-item sensing?

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Re:How 30 seconds dropped my bounce rate by 78% by Encosia on Monday April 26, 2010 @01:30PM (#1295377)

I believe Clicky only continues pinging for 10 or 20 minutes after a page loads (not sure which; they've changed it up a bit since introducing the pinging).

That's a great idea about detecting whether or not the tab is actually active. I don't know how difficult that is to implement without a visible element on the page, but I'm going to ask Clicky about adding that feature.

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Re:How 30 seconds dropped my bounce rate by 78% by m_eiman on Monday April 26, 2010 @02:45PM (#1295554)

At least "scroll to end" or "scroll more than x pixels" is easy to add, and would work just as well as long as your pages don't fit on screen.

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Re:How 30 seconds dropped my bounce rate by 78% by DrSprout on Monday April 26, 2010 @01:38PM (#1295393)

Also noscripters like myself are undercounted, since I read your whole post, but didn't have any reason to turn on Javascript for your blog.

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Re:How 30 seconds dropped my bounce rate by 78% by _sgo4 on Monday April 26, 2010 @02:47PM (#1295560)

I agree about the overcount vs undercount thing, but I think Clicky's method is much closer to the "truth" of site engagement. Tabs aren't used much outside of the "power user" world. Typically when people go to a page, it is the page they are reading.

We do want to make it smarter and only ping when the tab is in the foreground, as that will make it more accurate. It's a planned update for the future.

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