Fixing Bounce Rate between Domain and Subdomain

[KathleenDC]

Currently, the way our site is set up, our clients generally visit our homepage and then login through a separate page that is a subdomain, or they can read our blog/support articles that are also on separate subdomains.

From my understanding, this can be counted as a bounce, and I know this sorta of site structure isn't ideal, but with our current dev resources and dependencies, fixing this isn't going to happen overnight.

Regardless, what would be the easiest way to implement this fix witihn the Google Analytics code?

EX: If someone visits our site at X.com, and then wants to login at portal.X.com, I don't want to count that as a bounce.

Any insight is appreciated!

Thanks

[RobCairns]

Hi Paul,

You're right - any click from X.com that takes someone directly to portal.X.com would indeed count as a bounce. There are a couple of ways you might proceed:

1. Use Adjusted Bounce Rate

You can read this great post about adjusting your GA code to interpret users that spend a certain amount of time on a landing page as "engaged" and therefore not a bounce even if they click through to portal.X.com.

https://moz.com/blog/adjusted-bounce-rate

This probably won't solve your problem if people are specifically coming to your site and immediately clicking through to the subdomain, but it might help if your blog posts are ranking and being considered bounces.

2. Redirect Through An Intermediary Page

If you have the ability to create a page through which you can transfer any clicks, that would solve your problem. For example, you create a "placeholder" page and redirect it to your subdomain. You then make the "portal" link direct to the placeholder page.

In other words, the following would happen:

1. User lands on Landing Page
2. User clicks "Portal Page"
3. User goes to placeholder page (considered "engaged" at this point)
4. User redirected from placeholder page to portal

It's not the cleanest solution but it will accomplish what you are asking for. The placeholder page is just there to redirect the user, nothing else.

More important than these 2 strategies, however, is the question of why bounce rate is so important. Are you simply trying to differentiate your portal users from other traffic on your site? Are you worried about negative SEO impacts of having a higher bounce rate than usual? Or is it being used as a KPI of some sort?

Feel free to reach out any time and I will be happy to lend a hand if at all possible.

Cheers,

Rob