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I've recently started using Google Analytics on a B2B ecommerce site with authentication. Users must login and are redirected to the login page if they try to access an internal page without first logging in. The login page is clever enough to forward them to the original page once logged in. Tracking is installed on the login page (/login.aspx), but this means that EVERY session includes at least two page views, which I suspect will affect the bounce rate (?), and every session starts at /login.aspx, which is skewing analysis. I am considering removing the tracking from the login page, and wondered if anyone had any advice for why I should keep it there? TIA

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2 Answers 2

If you don't track the login page there would be no way to know the drop off rate from it. I'd imagine that a very important question for you would be what percentage of your visitors don't log in or sign up.

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Keep the login page tracking, you can use it in multiple ways -

  1. You can look at how many people are dropping if their login fails
  2. You can setup a Register Now CTA and check how many folks sign-up from the login page
  3. Upon submitting the login details, you can mark which user is signing in and track user-wise activity tied to your registered users within GA (the prerequisite is the new UA script though).
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All of these points are valid (inlcuding @stephen-ostermiller above), but I'm more concerned with what happens once customers are logged in than whether a small percentage of customers are not logging in. There are no on-site registrations, so this doesn't need to be measured. I don't want to remove the tracking, but I also don't want it to affect my 'real' usage stats regarding entry and bounce. –  user1133613 Jul 30 at 6:22
When you remove the tracking from login, then for each redirect from a content page to the login page would be treated as a bounce! –  Prasad Jul 30 at 6:34
If you want real usage stats, keep the redirects and code (accept the fact that for non-logged in users you will get reduced bounce rate, due to the redirection to the login page). However, for logged-in users, you will still get correct bounce rates, and you can even go down to the level of individual application users and see who is bouncing off which content. –  Prasad Jul 30 at 6:35
No.1 is valid. No. 2 - there's no on-site registration, but, even if there was, we could still add tracking to the registration page without tracking the login itself? No. 3 - there are other ways of capturing this at a session level, e.g. from session variables, that don't require the login script. However, as the majority (~65%) of users start at the default login and then go to the homepage, removing the login step doesn't really provide too much additional detail, but does remove these other insights. So, I think I'll leave it as it is and try to work around the landing page report! –  user1133613 Jul 30 at 6:45
The redirects to the login page for non-logged in users, do not constitute a pageview. This is one reason why tracking the login page may be required - to understand where user's sessions might be timing out, etc. –  user1133613 Jul 30 at 6:47

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