Levelwing: Why "Bounce Rate" is a Poor Performance Metric for Data-Driven Marketers - Jeff Adelson-Yan

Welcome Levelwing our newest MediaBizBloggerBounce Rate is a poor performance metric for datadriven marketers Yes I said it Add bounce rate to the growing list along with time spent on site page views etc of poor or deceptive performance metrics when measuring the level and quality of engagement of your web trafficWikipedia defines bounce rate as occurring quotwhen a web site visitor only views a single page on a website that is the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified sessiontimeout occurs There is no industrystandard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occurquot Bounce rate is expressed as a percentage of visitors who quotbouncedquotBounce rate is commonly regarded as an important metric in measuring the level of engagement of traffic to your web site A low bounce rate means your visitors are very engaged and a high bounce rate means your visitors are not engaged right Not so fast Bounce rate as it is measured by major analytics platforms such as Google Analytics Omniture SiteCatalyst Webtrends and Coremetrics are currently missing one important metric in this calculation time In the age of limited exit landing pages blogs and social media are single page view visits the most accurate way to measure visitor engagement Probably not After all there is a tremendous difference between a visitor with one page view that stays on your site for two seconds and a visitor with one page view who stays on your site for 10 minutesOne company Clicky Web Analytics has attempted to tackle this deficiency headon by adding quotpingingquot to their tracking code By continually pinging they are able to determine how long a visitor stays on the website even if they only have one page viewConsider this example You39re reading this blog post that might have been shared on other social sharing sites like Digg or Reddit You clickthrough and read the entire post and leave as do 40 of all others who initially clicked one page view However 10 of those who read this post also clicked through to read other posts We now have a bounce rate of 90 What a horrendous number So 90 of visitors were not at all engaged Wrong In fact at least 50 read the entire postThe point that I39m trying to make is that it39s foolish to get caught up in any single success metric even sales revenue Singular focus on any given metric can give you tunnel vision that may cause you to miss something really importantJeff AdelsonYan is a CoFounder and Managing Partner of Levelwing a digital advertising agency that provides datadriven marketing solutions In 2002 AdelsonYan cofounded Levelwing with Steve Parker Jr growing the agency out of a 450 square foot New York apartment into a multioffice agency serving global clients Today Levelwing operates in both NYC and Charleston SC and serves clients in the automotive financebanking healthcare retail and travel industries among others Jeff can be reached at jefflevelwingcomRead all Jeff39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at LevelwingCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerMediaBizBloggers is an openthought leadership blog platform for media marketing and advertising professionals companies and organizations To contribute contact Jackmediadvisorygroupcom The opinions expressed in MediaBizBloggerscom are not those of Media Advisory Group its employees or other MediaBizBloggerscom contributors Media Advisory Group accepts no responsibility for the views of MediaBizBloggers authors

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Levelwing: Why "Bounce Rate" is a Poor Performance Metric for Data-Driven Marketers - Jeff Adelson-Yan

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