How to Get Bounce Rate for Google Website Optimizer A/B Test Variations

Suppose you’re planning to run a simple A/B test on a Web page and you’d like to use bounce rate as your measure of success. Can you do it with Google Website Optimizer (GWO)?

I’ve had this issue crop up a number of times recently, so I decided to research it. Here’s what I found out.

Can I set bounce rate as a conversion goal within GWO?

No. GWO itself does not report bounce rate, nor does it allow bounce rate to be set as a conversion goal. It’s possible to approximate bounce rate as a goal by coding every single link click on every single experiment page as a conversion event, but that gives you exit rate, not bounce rate - plus the setup can take a lot of effort.

Can I get bounce rate for GWO A/B test variations from Google Analytics or Omniture?

Yes. Although bounce rate isn’t reported within GWO, you can get it from Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Omniture. Integrating the data turns out to be very easy, and in fact requires zero coding as long as all experiment pages contain your standard Web analytics page tags.  

Here’s why it’s easy: As GWO serves variations in an A/B test, visitors are redirected to unique URLs (indexA.html vs. indexB.html vs. indexC.html, for example). This behavior was contrary to my initial assumption that all visitors got the same URL, as is the case for GWO multivariate tests. Since URLs are unique in an A/B test, you can simply view the pages report within your Web analytics tool and filter on (for example) index*.html to see one row per variation.

Do I need to pass any custom variables from GWO to my Web analytics tool?

No. You don’t need to pass any custom variables to get reporting for an A/B test.

If you're running a multivariate test, on the other hand, you must pass the GWO variation ID to your Web analytics tool as a custom variable, since the URL remains the same for all variations. If you’re interested in this technique, there are good discussion threads on this topic in the GWO support forum.

If I optimize for bounce rate outside of GWO, do I still need to set up a goal within GWO?

Yes, but it can be a simple placeholder. When you create a GWO A/B test you’re required to provide a conversion goal before you can launch. However, if you're planning to optimize for bounce rate or some other metric in your standard Web analytics tool, you can spoof a GWO conversion goal by specifying a dummy page somewhere on your site. In effect, you're simply using GWO to manage the serving of page variations.

To prove that it can be done, here are some screen shots from a test I set up:

Now it's your turn. Got any tips, tricks, admonishments?

Comments

[John]

You might also be able to get away with including your GWO Conversion Script in your global template or include (every page on the site) and not using that template/include on your 2 test pages (index1.html and index2.html or whatever).

That is, if they view ANY other page on the site, it would count in GWO as a conversion.

[Pavlicko]

June,

good post, but here's one thing to look out for.

If your website is using redirection on the home page (e.g. redirecting domain.com to www.domain.com), you can wind up with some whacked out numbers for your traffic sources.

Because Google typically uses the 'last-referrer' method, when someone hits the home page from an external link that points to domain.com, when Google sends that visit to one of the test pages, there is a potential for that 'organic' or other medium visit to be reported as 'direct' instead.

Now admittedly, there are other factors that may be causing this to happen, like placement of the analytics code on the page, the type of CMS you're using, etc. But it can happen, and can suck pretty bad if not caught right away.

Still, handy tip for lots of people I'm sure.

[Janco Klijnstra - Traffic4u]

Nice post. You could also tag all underlying pages with the GWO conversion code to set bounce rate as a goal in the GWO, but that might be a lot of work in some cases. Also with tools like the visual website optimizer you can just simply slect bounce rate as a goal, because with this tool you already tagged all your pages.