
This Is What Happens When Publishers Invest In Long Stories - crisnoble
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3009577/open-company/this-is-what-happens-when-publishers-invest-in-long-stories/
======
regal
The site appears to have Google Analytics placed multiple times into its
source code. This messes up tracking and artificially dramatically drops
bounce rates.

In my experience working with content sites, the real bounce rate reduction
you see in moving from shorter articles to longer ones is closer to 5% or so -
from, say, 77% to 72%. Still dramatic, but not nearly as dramatic as the drop
you'll get by double-inserting GA code.

~~~
true_religion
I'm not seeing multiple inserts per page, and I checked their 'stub' pages as
well. They only have GA in the head.

~~~
integraton
_utm.gif is apparently requested 3 times with the same google analytics
account id.

~~~
true_religion
_utm.gif is the generic way that Google Analatics communicates back with its
servers---there's no rest API.

So if you're doing things like event tracking, without counting the event as a
page view, then you'll still see another request to _utm.gif

They appear to have one normal _trackPageView call in the header, then one or
more other calls coming from within minimized JavaScript files.

Here's one:

    
    
         _gaq.push(["_trackEvent", e, t, n.toString(), parseInt(r, 10), !0])
    

This is the signature for _trackEvent

    
    
        _trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)
    

!0 evaluates to true in javascript so this event is marked as non-interactive,
and thus doesn't count as an extra page view and won't be used in bounce-rate
calculations.

Presuming the other calls are identical, then their reported bounce rate
should be correct.

~~~
integraton
Looking at the two additional requests, they do currently have the utmni
parameter, marking them as non-interactive.

However, the top comment references Google Analytics events on scroll that
don't appear to be there now. One of FastCo.Labs folks also made the following
comment:

    
    
      This made me curious as well. It turns out there was a
      technical change made at around the same time that is
      going to account for some of it. We're running an
      experiment now and will update with results.
    

I don't see the update from him. Given all of this, I would guess that they
were triggering events incorrectly and have since fixed it (the article is 3
months old).

~~~
irollboozers
That's extremely embarrassing.

------
marquis
Since I became wedded to my Kindle for consuming journalism thanks to the
superb sites such as [http://longreads.org](http://longreads.org) and
[http://longform.org](http://longform.org) * my reading time has exploded,
plus I pay for services where possible as I am in need of their curation.
Since using these sites I feel better informed about the world and I have a
deep, deep respect for longform journalists. I'd love to see this stub idea
extend to the Kindle being able to manage updates - it seems to be an exiting
idea for readers and journalists alike and I'd willingly pay a subscription.

*fixed url typo

Also - these sites can send articles directly to my Kindle email, or I use the
Readability plugin to right-click on any url and have the contents delivered
on demand.

~~~
eli
Yup, I feel the same way. With Instapaper and my Kindle I'm spending a _lot_
more time reading articles.

If you're interested, I recently started curating my picks here:
[http://esd.io/worthreading/](http://esd.io/worthreading/) Some I got from
longform/longreads, others I "discovered" on my own.

------
petenixey
I love it that these guys are experimenting with content and analytics but the
stats look contradictory.

Bounce rate is 1- n_visits_with_more_than_one event/n_visits.

The default GA setup doesn't register any events except page views so "more
than one event" means more than one page view.

However the charts in this article showed that while the bounce rate fell, the
average pages per visit stayed constant. For bounce rate to drop you'd expect
pages per visit to rise... unless there's also a new event being fired.

My guess (as suggested by some commenters here before me) is that they shipped
some type of event which fires for a fraction of visitors - scrolling a
certain distance down the page perhaps.

If this event fires, the visit won't (by default) count as a bounce. it will
also effect time-on-site. Time on site is normally zero _unless_ you visit
another page or fire an event. In this case it's determined by the time of the
last page view or event that google registers. If they did ship an "on 400px
scroll" event (for instance) then for each visitor for whom the event fires
for, the "time on site" will be registered as the time of the event.

For my money, I think that bounce rates for content-driven sites _should_
actually be set by a threshold time-on-site. Most visitors don't read more
than one page so it's a very weak indicator of a "bounce". Someone could read
for 10 minutes and still count as a bounce which isn't a fair appraisal of a
very successful article. The raw "bounce metric" makes sense for a
transactional site where onepage view == no Revenue but makes little sense for
a site where one ten minute read of an article is exactly what the author
hopes for.

~~~
coolsunglasses
A content site wants them to explore and traverse the rest of the site.

An article that gets read is a success for the article, not for the publisher.

------
hga
Previous discussion of this item:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689157)

------
integraton
There's obviously something wrong with the numbers. It's too dramatic of a
change, both in terms of magnitude and in immediacy, for it to be due to a
simple content tweak.

Pages/Visit is stable yet Bounce Rate suddenly dropped significantly.

------
hashtree
It is critical to understand what you are measuring. I see misunderstanding
constantly, particularly with GA. Were events being fired prior, because they
are now. That alone could account for this behavior.

There are many nuances in regard to how metrics are measured in GA. It is
often the case that people think it is measuring one thing, when it is
measuring something completely different. I've posted this before, but this
GitHub project explains/addresses some of it:
[https://github.com/rockymadden/gap](https://github.com/rockymadden/gap)

------
mtgx
Is it necessary to change the URL with each new addition (while keeping that
ID the same)? I didn't really get that part.

If so, is there any Wordpress plugin that helps you do that, or how could you
achieve that?

~~~
styrmis
Having a different URL for each update would allow them to track readers'
entry points into the article at a finer-grained level than if there was just
one URL.

Not sure about plugins for Wordpress but I wouldn't be surprised if someone's
already started working on one.

Regarding the multiple URLs I wonder if it is more just so that they can be
posting what look like new stories that ultimately just lead back to these
long form story series.

~~~
keithpeter
The reference number seems to act as a permalink, so

[http://www.fastcolabs.com/3009577/](http://www.fastcolabs.com/3009577/)

leads to the original article, and I assume will continue to link to the
article as they add content.

I wonder how the _adding_ of new content rather than the reorganisation and
re-editing of the article will work from the point of view of prose style?

~~~
mtgx
But isn't that the same as the automatic redirect you have in Wordpress when
you change the URL of the post anyway? I'm trying to understand if there's any
advantage to having this number stub over how WP redirects the URL's, but I
don't think there is one. You're still going to get redirected links either
way.

------
MRSallee
Even assuming the analytics are correct, what is the value in driving down
bounce rate? Lower bounce rate doesn't inherently mean more revenue.

I can, of course, use my imagination. But I am more interested in reading why
a lower bounce rate is the future for media revenue. The quote near the end
from Vox CEO is the best part of the article, but even it doesn't make the
bounce = revenue connection explicit.

I will also add that, if those analytics are correct, that is a crazy-low
bounce rate. A 50-60% bounce rate seems super strong to me. Dipping well below
50% seems unlikely for any site with significant traffic coming from disparate
sources.

------
nonchalance
How exactly do they track if people actually read the entire article? Merely
based on time?

~~~
sigkill
Google Analytics can track pages and average time spent on page. It can even
track visitors flow.

Everyone should get an analytics account and see the insane amount of things
that Google can track for YOU, for FREE with just three lines of extra code on
your page.

~~~
hashtree
It ONLY tracks the latter if they click on another page. A huge difference.

------
lutusp
Quote: "So, it's like having many URLs and many headlines which lead back to
the same big, multi-faceted article."

Translation: old wine in new bottles.

------
cliveowen
So much for ever shortening attention spans.

~~~
joeg8
Good riddance.

If this becomes a business case to bring back something closer to real
journalism, it is a good day. The NSA/prism story is really well-suited to
this format. Connect the Guardian interview to administration concessions to
POTUS conference. Would have been more valuable to the public than the soap-
opera story that developed around Snowden's asylum seeking.

