High bounce Rate Goal on Variation in a Split URL Test

Sometime when doing a Split URL Test, you might notice that there is a higher bounce rate on the Variation of the experiment.

What happens is that the Bounce Rate is falsely sending goals when the user gets redirected, so automatically the Variation has a higher bounce rate.

Explanation and example

Control: https://www.example.com/pages/homepage-a

Variation 1: https://www.example.com/pages/homepage-b

The variation JS code of the experiment usually looks like this:

window.location.href=’https://www.example.com/pages/homepage-b’;

So, basically, all the Variation does here is a redirect to a different page.

Now, to explain how the data is registered:

1. The user visits the page where the experiment should run.
2. The experiment is triggered for the user.
3. The user is bucketed on Control or Variation, depending on traffic allocation.
4. The user is registered in Explore (the user and view count in the platform for that experiment increase).
5. Let’s assume that the user is bucketed on Variation. 
6. So, the variation code is applied.
7. Since the variation code is a redirect, the user is sent to the redirect URL.
8. The bounce rate is increased because the user was immediately redirected to a different page.
9. This is normal, expected behavior.

In conclusion, this is the reason you might see a high Bounce Rate on the Variation in a Split Test URL experiment.