*Dramatic* reduction in bounce rate, why?

[TimMarsh]

Hi all

I cannot pin this down to one of

-new theme using Thesis 2 and Social Triggers, or

-implementing Moz

Does the Moz crawler linger on page?

I'd love to know why this is happening

7iSnNfC

[KeriMorgret]

Oh, and if you look at the source code for your site, do so from an incognito browser -- most WP setups will suppress one of the GA instances from firing if you're logged in as an admin.

Voice of experience again here, as I had to have someone else initially point this out to me on this very forum a couple of years ago.

[RicardoLG]

Yes, you need to check other metrics too. But magazine themes usually get less bounce rate then blog style themes, what doesn't really means that this is better then that.

From what you said, it's probably the duplicate script issue that Keri pointed. If you want to recheck if your theme is adding it, add the GA ID again in the specific field, open the front page in the browser and check the source code (ctrl+u in firefox an chrome). Then search for the GA ID with ctrl+f and check if you find 2 IDs.

[TimMarsh]

Ricardo, wouldn't this be reflected in time on site? I've checked that, and it's pretty much the same.

And, the front page used to be a magazine kinda theme - so, ebooks in a slider, some stuff in another section, latest articles, then reviews, etc etc.

This front page is now latest blog articles...

(And I would say readability is better).

Keri, Thesis lets you add your GA ID into a special field (and presumably just populates the appropriate GA into the header). I also added it into the footer because Thesis wasn't using the Universal Analytics, in particular, the demographic data acquisition code.

I've removed it from the footer, so let's see if that is what it is!

Good catch!

[RicardoLG]

What probably happened is that your old theme displayed all the content that the user wanted to see in the landing page, and the new one requires the user to go a little deeper to see it.

A good way to check it is to verify the traffic flow before and after the new theme. Sometimes the decrease in the bounce rate isn't a good thing because it means that the visitor needs to crawl deeper to get to the content he is looking for.

[KeriMorgret]

This wouldn't be the Moz crawler, as we don't trigger javascript.

What often happens (and I've done this myself) is that Google Analytics will be in the header or footer, and ALSO added as a Wordpress plugin. This drops the bounce rate to nearly zero.