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0 second visits according to Google Analytics

paweljaniak.co.za

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Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#51

Post by thauck »

adventured wrote: post #42

I believe this article is false. I have a site that is extremely heavy on front page traffic. Basically 97% of all traffic is front page traffic, and 75% of all traffic is single visit (they hit the front page and nothing else). 55% of traffic does not generate multiple page views on any given day. I have absolutely no problem with Google reporting 0 second visits. In fact, quite the opposite, Google reports very hig…

With all due respect that's a long time to use GA without understanding how it works. Here's a good article by Google's GA evangelist I would highly recommend to everybody in this thread who are throwing out anecdotes.

http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/29/understanding-google-anal...

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#52

Post by robryan »

orangethirty wrote: post #50
Smerity wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed but that's only applicable when you have a product. I should have specified that I was coming at this from the point of view that someone's writing a single page article or blog post with no conversion target other than to have it read. If you're actually aiming to achieve anything concrete with a web page, then the only way to improve that is exactly as you said: directly track conversion to your goal.

I do think one should always have an offer of sone kind. Even if its an email subscription to a blog. That way you can develop a redership for possible future offerrings. Specially useful if you see startup in the near future.

This is measuring something different though. I could have a bad article that heavily pushes an offer and a very good article that doesn't.

The time on page can give you a relative statistic to compare your articles and develop a more engaged readership over the long term, not just optimize to try and sell them something right now.

An example would be something like patio11's posts, some of them are pushing for a conversion but I don't think that each would be best measured in terms of a conversion made right now.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#53

Post by orangethirty »

robryan wrote: post #52
orangethirty wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think one should always have an offer of sone kind. Even if its an email subscription to a blog. That way you can develop a redership for possible future offerrings. Specially useful if you see startup in the near future.

This is measuring something different though. I could have a bad article that heavily pushes an offer and a very good article that doesn't. The time on page can give you a relative statistic to compare your articles and develop a more engaged readership over the long term, not just optimize to try and sell them something right now. An example would be something like patio11's posts, some of them are pushing for a con…

There are three factors you have to keep in mind when writing content: Message (the content), Media (how you distribute it (a blog)), Market (who reads it). The better way of adjusting for those three (optimizing) is to measure conversions on the Message. Otherwise, you are tracking fluff. Of course, my opinion based on experience.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#54

Post by lingben »

thauck wrote: post #51
adventured wrote: post #42

I believe this article is false. I have a site that is extremely heavy on front page traffic. Basically 97% of all traffic is front page traffic, and 75% of all traffic is single visit (they hit the front page and nothing else). 55% of traffic does not generate multiple page views on any given day. I have absolutely no problem with Google reporting 0 second visits. In fact, quite the opposite, Google reports very hig…

With all due respect that's a long time to use GA without understanding how it works. Here's a good article by Google's GA evangelist I would highly recommend to everybody in this thread who are throwing out anecdotes. http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/29/understanding-google-anal...

Thanks, I think what most people, including adventured, do is to make an assumption about GA and then forge ahead without ever checking it. The link you posted was very illuminating.

Personally, this stresses the importance of measuring events or interactions rather than time on a page. It would be nice to have both but if given the choice, I'd rather have event/interaction data.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#56

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

kzrdude wrote: post #13
untog wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's a downside in the sense that no-one will ever see how you use web sites, so when they change their behaviour and break functionality you used to use, you'll have no-one but yourself to blame.

I don't like google and/or facebook having their tentacles reach out on far more websites than their own. I'm against centralized data gathering, even if it's futile in this world..

If you live in the EU, Facebook are not allowed to use the data gathered from their like buttons for advertising purposes, by order of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#57

Post by blablabla123 »

I'm coming to the conclusion it's best to write your own Analytics if you want reliable and precise information. Google Analytics is an out-of-the box solution targeted at websites between 1 and 1000000000... visitors per month. (Regardless whether it's a blog, an online game or you name it.)

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#58

Post by bluesmoon »

At lognormal/mPulse, we have boomerang set up to send a beacon on page load and on page unload. The unload beacon tells us when someone has left the page. If they go to a new page, the next load beacon overrides the previous unload, else the unload tells us how long they stuck around.

It's been pretty reliable. All current browsers will make a GET request in the onbeforeunload event (onunload in Opera). Firefox is the only one that blocks the next page's load until a response is received, and Opera is the only other browser that handles the response though it doesn't block while waiting for it.

Our primary motivation is to measure session engagement (bounce rate, conversion, duration, pages, etc.) versus average page load time across the session.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#59

Post by shurcooL »

daemon13 wrote: post #39
shurcooL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a sample in action here [1]. The page should list every single person in the world (whose browser supports websockets) who is currently on that page. You can open multiple tabs and see that whenever you close/navigate away, your corresponding entry will disappear. [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8554242/live-status.html

Error: TypeError: sock is undefined Ubuntu, Firefox 20.0

I just debugged this. The issue is that Firefox doesn't allow insecure websocket connections from https.

So either change the url to http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8554242/live-status.html or override the network.websocket.allowInsecureFromHTTPS setting in about:config to true.

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