Reduce the bounce rates through user engagement

Matomo has its own TMS (Tag Management System) and you need to have it activated before going any further.

How to reduce the bounce rate (?)

Actually, without a real content strategy, you just cant reduce the bounce rate. So what’s the deal?

When a visitor comes to a page on your site and leaves without taking a single action, the length of the visit session is equal to zero.

You might then think that this session reflects the visitor’s lack of interest in our content. However, they may well have scrolled down and read all or part of the page. And this information is not reported to Matomo by default.
You will therefore easily agree that the action of reading a page can be considered as a commitment from the visitor. And that’s just as well, because this type of commitment can be reported to Matomo, and identified as an action.

Let’s see together how to create a page scrolling event in Matomo.

Setting up the page scroll event

The trigger

1. On the dashboard of your container or on the triggers page of your container, click on “Create new trigger“;
2. In the “User engagement” section, select “Scroll reach”;
3. In the Name field, enter “Scroll at 25%”;
4. (Optional) In the Description field, enter “Trigger launched when the user has scrolled 1/4 of the page“;
5. Go to section Configure this trigger;
6. Leave the default Scroll Match Type value, i.e. Vertical – Percentage;
7. In Percentage, change the value 50 to 25;
8. Save your trigger.

The tag

1. On the dashboard of your container or on the tags page of your container, click on “Create new tag”;
2. In the “Analytics” section, select “Matomo Analytics“;
3. In the Name field, enter “Scroll from page to 25%“;
4. (Optional) In the Description field, enter “Tag sending an event to Matomo when the user scrolls to 1/4 of the page” ;
5. (Optional) You should already have a Matomo Configuration assigned, if not, click on “Create a new variable” ;
6. Change Tracking Type to Event;
7. In Event Category, enter “Behavior“;
8. In Event Action, enter Scroll 25 ;
9. In Event name, enter {{PageTitle}} ;
10. Click on Show advanced settings and select Once per pageview as fire limit.

Don’t forget to publish your container to take account of the new tag.

You should very quickly see events linked to page scrolling appear in your statistics, and this will have an impact on the value of the bounce rate on the pages of your site. After a while, don’t hesitate to compare the information for periods with and without events.

To go further

Thanks to the tag we have just created, Matomo is able to integrate the engagement of any user who has scrolled at least a quarter of the way down the page.

Adapting the tag

The value of the scroll percentage should be adapted to the UI of your website. It is important to consider the different interface elements and the layout of your pages. The height of the header, for example, is key.

And what about average reading time?

To refine the average time spent by visitors on your site, I suggest you to create another tag related to page scrolling. This time, send an event when the user has scrolled all the way through your content. The value would then be between 80 and 100% of the page height, depending on the height of the footer.