Plugin Author
Okoth1
(@okoth1)
Good question. The plugin itself is still relevant, especially for the bounce rate part of it.
You are right about the real time feature in GA. Google should be able to register the real time on page since they know when people are still on the site and also know when they are gone. But the thing is you don’t see it back in the Avg Time On Page stats. Only in the Real Time feature.
You can easily test the Time On Page by enabling and disabling the plugin and see the difference. Takes you only a day.
Thank you for answering my question, I’m testing your plugin. 🙂
By the way, with this plugin, when will be a behavior considered as a bounce, is it when below 10 sec if the event fired set at every 10sec?
Plugin Author
Okoth1
(@okoth1)
Yes, with the default options there is a bounce when people exit within 10 seconds. You can lower the time, but you’ll create lots of events (and there is a maximum). So, when you only use the time event every exit below 10 seconds will be a bounce. That’s why it’s better to use the scroll option as well. When people scroll they’ll also create an event to stop a bounce.
I have tested the plugin, and the bounce rate is reduced dramatically from almost 80% to near 30%. The average session duration increases around 4 min.
It got me thinking.
The definition of Bounce Rate by Google is the percentage of single-page sessions.
It is to measure relevancy and interactivity (click another pages).
The weakness is, GA may not show the real relevancy. Because it ignores the time that people spend on the first page (or the second one, if user doesn’t click the next page)
By using your plugin it helps to show relevancy in a more accurate way, but not much in interactivity.
Because even though the users don’t click another page in a session, as long they stay above 10 sec, it won’t be considered as a bounce.
The interactivity should be look on the Pages/Session metric.
Am I correct?
And I can reduce the rate even more if I could increases the average Pages/session, right?
So this plugin doesn’t change the behavior of my visitors, it changes only the way how relevancy is measured in GA.
Plugin Author
Okoth1
(@okoth1)
The definition of Bounce Rate by Google is the percentage of single-page sessions.
It is to measure relevancy and interactivity (click another pages).
This is not correct. Google themselves say: Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). They don’t talk about interactivity.
By using your plugin it helps to show relevancy in a more accurate way, but not much in interactivity.
The interactivity with Analytics is every 10 seconds and event and another event when people scroll for the first time. What other interactivity could I add to the plugin?
Because even though the users don’t click another page in a session, as long they stay above 10 sec, it won’t be considered as a bounce.
Or when they are less than 10 seconds on a page but they have scrolled.
The interactivity should be look on the Pages/Session metric.
Interactivity means communication between your website and Google Analytics. If someone stays 3 minutes on a single webpage and does nothing, there is just as much interactivity as someone visits 17 pages in those 3 minutes. You confuse it with Pages/Session.
And I can reduce the rate even more if I could increases the average Pages/session, right?
Now you are going back to rate (bounce rate?). There is no relation between bounce rate and Pages/session. So, you cannot decrease your bounce rate by having a higher average Pages/session.
So this plugin doesn’t change the behavior of my visitors, it changes only the way how relevancy is measured in GA.
This plugin communicates every 10 seconds with Google Analytics by creating an event. Besides that, it creates an event when people scroll for the first time on a page.
