Why adjust the bounce rate in Google Tag Manager if you can already see it in Google analytics or in Metrica? Let's see how these analytics systems calculate the bounce rate.

1. In Google Analytics, opt-out is a session with one page view on a site without a single action or click; the time spent on the page does not matter.
2. In Yandex.Metrica, a refusal is a visit to a page for less than 15 seconds without transitions and actions on the site.

Obviously, when visiting a one-page site, the user can only go to one more page. Most likely, this is the "Thank you" page. It turns out that in Google Analytics, any visit to the site that did not lead to a transition to the "Thank you" page will be considered a bounce, that is, all visitors who have not made a conversion are included in the bounced traffic.

Because of this, the bounce data in Metric and Analytics will differ significantly. And Analytics bounce rate traffic analysis will be wrong.

As seen in this example, the bounce rate in Google Analytics is 74.46%. For the same site, the bounce rate in Yandex.Metrica is already 15.7%.

If you have a multi-page site, and the main model of visitor behavior on the site is viewing several pages, then the bounce rate in Google Analytics for high-quality traffic will have the correct indicators and will not be overestimated, then you can analyze it.

If you have a one-page site or a visitor immediately lands on the final page, then the indicator in Analytics will be incorrect. For the metric to be calculated according to the same principle as in Yandex.Metrica, you need to create a bounce rate tag in GTM.

Adjusting the bounce rate in GTM

We will now set up sending events to Analytics after 15 seconds of visiting the site.

Go to GTM and go to the "Triggers" section, press the red "Create" button. We give a clear name to the trigger.

Let's move on to setting up the timer. Set the interval in milliseconds —15,000. Set the limit 1. In the condition, set the type to "Page URL contains" and set the site's URL. The activation condition is "All timers". Press the button"Save".

Create a tag for sending an event by timer

Go to the "Tags" section, click "Create", enter the name of the tag "Bounce rate 15 sec." Then go to the tag configuration and click on "Universal Analytics".

Select the type of tracking "Event". Enter the name of the category read and the name of the action 15sec. In the item "No interaction" you need to set the value False. In the settings of Google Analytics, select (( Google settings Analytics)).

After configuring the tag, you need to select from all triggers the timer that we created - "Bounce rate 15 sec".

Congratulations! We have a bounce rate configured in Tag Manager. The only thing left to do is to test the tag in preview mode, and then publish a new version of the container.

Click the gray button "Preview". Now you need to go to the site where the GTM container is installed. At the bottom of the site, a GTM window appears, where we should see the tag that we created.

A GA failure is a session with only one page view, no other events. That is, only one request to the GA server.

If you have an online store with many product cards for which organic traffic goes, and the bounce rate on these pages tends to 100%. It is possible to draw the wrong conclusions. For example, that the page is bad and something needs to be changed. Although, in fact, the user could go in and study everything in detail. On landing page(one-page) bounce rate will be 100%, if you did not add events, let's say goals on forms. Consequently, in order for a session less than 15 seconds to be considered an indicator of refusal in the analytics, you need to send an event that would be triggered after a certain amount of time the user has been on the site.

Set up the bounce rate as in the metric (less than 15 seconds - failure)

After the analytics counter code, insert the code:

location.pathname- a parameter that contains the address of the page.

This is how the counter code on the website will look like.

We can also set up an event that will fire after 15 seconds after google tag manager

1.Create the variable "Cod ua"(if you have, you haven't created it yet)

Variable type "Constant" /// Insert your own counter code UA-XXXXXX

2.Create a trigger

Let's call, for example "Timer"

Trigger type "Timer" /// name gtm.timer /// interval "15000" (counted in milliseconds) /// limit "1" (number of event activations)

Setting the rule PageURL matches regular expression. *

The type is activated on the following pages: All timers

3. create a tag

Let's call, for example, "events of 15 seconds"

Type tag "Universal Analytics"

tracking type "Events"

Action "Page Path" (built-in variable, page name, no domain)

Tracking ID "cod ua" - variable for code analytics counter that we created in the first paragraph.

The event is triggered when the "timer" trigger is activated - the trigger that we created in the second paragraph.

Checking in GA: Real-time reports /// events.

The event should fire after 15 seconds of visiting the site.

After installing the code, we can start analyzing the bounce rate, where a user who has been on the site for less than 15 seconds will be considered a bounce.

In order to lower the bounce rate in the first place, you need to make the site more interesting, especially for the first two screens, as well as optimize the site's loading speed.

If you are monetizing your Internet project, then you have probably heard about behavioral factors and their role in ranking sites in search engine results. The traffic to our sites directly depends on the position in the search results. And some of the most important metrics for tracking behavioral factors can be considered the bounce rate in Google Analytics and Yandex Metrics.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate(English bounce rate) is a term in web analytics that denotes the percentage of the number of visitors who left the site directly from the entry page or viewed no more than one page of the site. That is refusal- this is a visit during which a visitor, having entered the site, viewed only one page, without making a transition to another page until the end of the session.

A high bounce rate usually means that the site has problems, for example, with the design, navigation, or the content itself. But there are also false rejections, when users quickly find all necessary information on one page and therefore do not go to other sections.

Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) have different views on such refusals. And if you installed both basic tracking codes for these services on your site, then you probably noticed that the average bounce rate according to the Metrica version varies in the amount of 10-15%, which is close to the average on the web, while the bounce rate in Google Analytics is incredible. big - 85-90%! But why is that ?! Yes, there may be some errors in their measurements, but at times ?!

From the Yandex.Metrica point of view, the bounce rate is the proportion of visits with only one pageview lasting less than 15 seconds. Entering the metric here is logical - the visitor opened the page, quickly assessed it with a glance, found nothing of value for himself, closed the page.

Google Analytics does not see visitor actions

With Google Analytics (Universal Analytics), the situation is different. Visitors do something on the page, but this is not tracked in Analytics. V basic settings his code sets a scenario where the bounce rate in Google Analytics is the percentage of sessions with only one pageview. That is, a visitor entered the site and left without doing anything, regardless of how long the visitor viewed this page.

But in a situation with Analytics, it is possible that it is on your page that the visitor found exactly the information that he was looking for for a long time!

For example, he carefully read this page for 10 minutes, understood valuable information for himself, and only then closed the page. Or, for example, a visitor is interested in the information, found your phone number on the page and calls you, while the page is open. That is, the visitor performs targeted actions.

Can such a visitor be called a refusenik? Unlikely. However, Google does not think so, so it rates your site with a bounce rate of 85-90% as not very interesting and lowers it in the search results. But this is not so!

Google Analytics Tracking Code

So how do you get Analytics to calculate bounce rates correctly? So how, for example, does Metrica do it?
In fact, this is easy to do and must be done. We need to get Analytics to count correctly!

To do this, for example, add only one line with the setTimeout function after the line “ga (‘ send ’,‘ pageview ’”); to the basic tracking code of Universal Analytics. The updated tracking code will look like this:

V this case a timer is set, which, 15,000 milliseconds (15 seconds) after the page is opened, sends a signal to Google Analytics that the page is still open. This will allow us to identify those who leave the site (close the page) in the first 1-14 seconds of the visit. If the code works, then the visitor is still on the page and will no longer be considered a refusal. If it doesn't work, then the visitor closed the page before 15 seconds. As a result, after installing this code, it will be possible to say that refuseniks are those who entered the page and left it in the first 1-14 seconds of the visit without doing anything.

After adjusting the tracking code on my site in this way, the bounce rate in Google Analytics immediately showed a more realistic picture, dropping to 10-12% .

It should be noted that this was immediately reflected in the site traffic. Traffic through the Google search engine grew to the level of Yandex within a week.

What else can be done

Correcting your code is something you can do easily, quickly, at no cost, and with a clear bottom line. But to reduce bounce rates in general, check, just in case, your site for the following points:

Your site may load too slowly

Most Internet users are unlikely to tolerate a slow website. This is especially true for those who use mobile devices. Slow sites kill any user interest and increase bounce rates.

Confusing page navigation

This is the scourge of many sites. Use generally accepted web design standards to make navigation easy and intuitive.

No responsive version for mobile devices

From 20% to 50% of the traffic on the entire Internet already comes from mobile devices... If your page is awkward or impossible to view on most mobile devices, your bounce rate is likely to be high.

You don't have a clear call to action

This is often the case for the home page. About 80% of all your website traffic comes directly to inner pages your site, not on home page. Home page typically receives between 20% and 40% of incoming traffic. Use this, optimize it!

Pop-ups on your site may be annoying to your visitors

Popups are a double-edged sword. They might help you grow your customer base, but if you have a very high bounce rate, try turning them off for a while and see if that helps you reduce bounce rates. If the bounce rate has dropped after that, then it will be possible to conclude that pop-ups are not interesting to your customers, and some simply hate them!

Sergey Arsentiev

How to Reduce Google Analytics Bounce Rate by 12x?

Behavioral factors are gaining more and more influence. And the so-called "bounce rate" is quite important. Now I will tell you how to reduce it several times by adding just one line to the Google Analytics code.

By Google's definition bounce rate is the number of website visitors, expressed as a percentage, who leave it after visiting just one single page.

100 people came to your site, 30 of them viewed only the login page and left the site without opening a single page. While the other 70 visitors looked at other pages of the site.
Google believes that the site was uninteresting for the first 30 people, and records this event as a bounce rate, which in this case will be equal to 30%.

What does a high bounce rate mean?

The higher the bounce rate, the worse it is for the search engine optimization of the site. Since Google tries to show in the search only sites that are interesting to people, including those that have a minimum bounce rate for specific search queries.

Google's traditional approach to determining bounce rate is not entirely correct. After all, there are one-page sites on which all useful information presented on one informative and long page. In this case, the person can no longer open other pages on this site, and the bounce rate of single page sites is actually 100%.

But is this correct?
After all, visitors to one-page sites get all the information they need on one page. Therefore, it is, of course, wrong to consider a visit, during which a purchase may have even occurred, as a refusal.

In addition to one-page projects, a high bounce rate often occurs in specialized online stores with a small amount of goods, on young blogs, and corporate sites. In short, wherever useful information can be presented on one specific page and where the visitor does not need to open other pages - after all, he has already received the information he needs!

How do I reduce my high bounce rate?

Of course, in the most traditional view, in order to reduce the bounce rate in Google Analytics, the site must have a lot of context, which must be connected with each other through competent and noticeable linking. In this case, people will open as many pages as possible and thereby reduce the bounce rate.

But there is one more hidden way , with the help of which I lowered the bounce rate in Google Analytics on almost all sites several times, spending just a few minutes once.

Here is a graph of how the number of bounces decreased after applying this method in my online store:

The whole secret is that you need to make Google Analytics consider not the opening of a single page on the site as an indicator of bounce, but the visitor's stay on a single page after entering for a certain time for example within 15 seconds.

In this case, only a quick exit from the site will be considered a refusal, when the information presented on it is obviously not interesting to the visitor. That is, the user typed a request in the search, went to the site, realized in 15 seconds or less that the site was not interesting and left - only in this case a refusal is recorded. And it really makes sense.

If a user came to the site and for, say, read one of its pages for 10 minutes, then even if after that he leaves the site, such a fact will no longer be considered a refusal, because it is logical to assume that a person has received the information he needs.

All you need is to add one line to the Google Analytics code posted on your site, which will calculate bounce rates in a new way. You can view this line by clicking on the button in social network where you are registered - it's easy and completely free.

By the way, Yandex refined its bounce rate back in 2011 and now works exactly according to this scheme, which I suggest you use in your projects.

I am using this method reduced the bounce rate on this blog more than 12 times - from 89% to 6%! What I wish you too

Most website and blog owners use various visit counters and analytics systems like Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics on their resources. And we are included. But what if you are faced with a situation where the data in them is fundamentally different?

In our case, it was noticed that the bounce rate in the analytic system from Google is significantly higher than in other metrics. Those webmasters who study in detail the behavior of visitors to their site, also could not help but notice this.

As it turned out later, the culprit is Google's non-standard algorithm for calculating the bounce rate. However, we, as it turned out, are quite capable of influencing it and significantly improve the picture. How to do this in Google Analytics and new google Read on for Analytics Universal further in this article.

How the bounce rate is calculated

In fact, there is no generally accepted calculation methodology. Each tool for analyzing and accounting for site visitors can calculate it in its own way, however, most of them use one of two methods:

1. calculation of the bounce rate based on the time spent by the user on the site ( Yandex and others);
2. calculating the bounce rate based on the number of viewed pages ( Google).

First option seems quite logical and, in our opinion, it is - if a user, having gone to a page of your site, lingers on it for longer than a certain time (in Yandex.Metrica by default it is 15 seconds) - then the content is interesting to him and consider this a visit with a refusal is not worth it.

Second option just used in Google Analytics. Its essence is to consider a session as a failure, during which the user has viewed no more than one page of your site. That is, if a visitor came to your resource with search engine in search of an answer to a given search query, studied for a long time one page, the material on it and left your site, having received an answer to your question - such a session will be counted as a refusal.

This option does not seem very logical, but it is he who is used in Google system Analytics by default. Of course, this method of calculation also has a right to exist, but, in our opinion, its objectivity is much lower. This is especially true for general sites, on which the user is usually interested in only one page that answers his search query.

It seems to us that it is not correct to consider the session of such a visitor as a failure, and we have found a way to fix this situation. As a result, it was possible not only significantly reduce the bounce rate in Google Analytics, but also to get more accurate information about the time spent by the user on the site.

How to Reduce Bounce Rate in Google Analytics and Google Analytics Universal

So, we are faced with the task of obtaining more accurate data on refusals on our resource using the analytics system from Google. To do this, we will need to change the way bounces are counted so that it is calculated based on the time the user spent on the site, and not the number of pages they viewed.

This method is not prohibited, but even recommended by Google, as reported by the company's representatives in the official Analytics blog (link to the original in English). However, it is about old version code, which recently Google has been actively recommending to replace it with a new one - the Google Analytics Universal code. Unfortunately, the method described on the official blog does not work in new version code, but it's easy to fix.

Below you will find code examples for both the old version of Analytics and the new Analytics Universal.

Old Google Analytics code

In order to change the algorithm for accounting for bounces on your site with the old analytics code, add to standard code line with the following content.

SetTimeout ("_ gaq.push ([" _ trackEvent "," 15_seconds "," read "])", 15000);

This way your code will have next view(instead of UA - ******** - *

New Google Analytics Universal code

V recent times Google advises everyone to exclusively use the new Google Analytics Universal code on their sites. To change the algorithm for calculating the bounce rate in the new version of analytics before the closing tag add the following code.

SetTimeout ("ga (" send "," event "," read "," 15_seconds ")", 15000);

As a result, your analytics code will look like this (instead of UA - ******** - * your ID must be specified).

results

After we made the above changes to the analytics system code on the site, the bounce rate decreased from 92% to 10%, it's hard not to notice it on the chart.

As a result, the indicator has changed significantly. average session duration(after all, before most of them were considered a refusal and were not taken into account), increasing from 00:30 to 07:30 - that is from 30 seconds to seven and a half minutes, which can also be observed on the graph of this indicator.

When the above charts are superimposed on each other, we see a direct dependence of one indicator on another.