Google Analytics and KISSmetrics sitting in a tree — K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Internet marketing is now more than just blasting emails.
Customers usually end up on a website through multiple paths – these include
banner ads, pop-up advertisements, links from different social media sites and
search engine results. In order to understand what facet is effective and what
is not, you will need to track all these behaviors through web analytics. So,
what exactly is web analytics?
To simplify and provide the ‘Web Analytics for Dummies’
definition, “Web analytics is an online report on who visits your site, how they’re
able to get to your website, what they do when they land on your pages and
where they go afterward” (Duggal, 2017).
However, without the right analytics software that
fits your businesses’ wants and needs, marketers can find themselves drowning
in data but thirsty for information.
We’ve talked a lot about Google Analytics on my blog. It’s
been more than a decade since Google Analytics started, and it is now
integrated on more than a million websites. Google Analytics is popular,
because it’s easy to use and provides meaningful and clear reports. But with
any business venture, it’s always best to explore your options. Therefore, on
this post, we’ll be comparing two web analytics tools: Google Analytics and
KISSmetrics.
KISSmetrics
KISSmetrics is a customer engagement automation
platform that helps users understand the behaviors of their customer base and
drive higher levels of engagement. They combine the power of behavioral
analytics with automated email campaigns to grow the entire customer journey
(KISSmetrics, n.d.-a).
The KISSmetrics data model is comprised of four
components: people, traits, events and properties. Understanding these concepts
is vital in order to analyze the data you are collecting with them. According
to their blog (2017a), this model can be understood by remembering, “A person is our representation of a user
visiting your site. A person has traits
that describe them, and they can also perform events (the action people take on a site). Similar to how people
are described by traits, events are described by properties.”
Their available tools are broken down into four
categories:
1.
Metrics: A way to
visualize the performance of a single event or property that’s updated live
(e.g. number of site visitors within the last 7 days).
2.
Populations: Groups
of people defined by their behavior and engagement with your site or product.
3.
Reports: These
form the basis for their behavioral analytics features and provide insight on
how and who is using your product.
4.
Campaigns: Emails
that can be automated or manually triggers based on a person’s behavior
You can use reports to answer the who, how, when,
where and what part of your user activity and engagement questions. KISSmetrics
has different types of reports you can run, each providing valuable information
based on specific conditions. This includes a funnel report, cohort report,
activity report, people search, A/B test report (KISSmetrics, 2017a).
Comparing and Contrasting
While KISSmetrics can track things like bounce rate,
page views, etc., it is still very different from Google Analytics. I
personally would not call it an alternative, it’s more of an additive.
KISSmetrics adds an additional layer of personalized analytics that’s not offered
by Google. As KISSmetrics says on their website, “Google Analytics tells you
what’s happening. KISSmetrics tells you who’s doing it” (KISSmetrics, 2017a).
Pricing
Let’s start with pricing as that’s always one of the
most important questions to the business. Google Analytics is free, Yes, free.
They do have an enterprise package, but that’s only needed for giant companies
with heavy traffic like Nike or Amazon. However, using KISSmetrics does come
with a price. They have three pricing levels available (see image below) with the
cheapest being $500/month (KISSmetrics, n.d.-b). This could be a large
determinant for a small-to-midsize business.
Tools
As I stated above, Google Analytics and KISSmetrics is
quite different. Key differences include how they handle tracking, what use
cases are best and what you can and can’t do with each tool.
Tracking
At its core, KISSmetrics is focused on people. Google
Analytics has added people tracking as a feature, but it is not at the core of
what they offer. Google Analytics assumes that each visit is from a new person.
The only way around this is to identify people in each session in order to see
everything that person does. KISSmetrics assumes that activity on one device is
coming from the same person. If one of your users visits your site on their desktop
tablet, and phone, KISSmetrics will recognize them once they sign in and tie
them back to their customer ID.
Use Cases
Tracking: If all that you want to do is track visitors and
their number of visits or track bounce rate, time on page or exits—go with
Google Analytics. If you want to delve deeper into behavioral habits of users
and know more than just page numbers—go with KISSmetrics.
Funnels: You can set up funnels in Google, but there are a few
disadvantages. First, when you set up funnels, you can view data only from that
moment going forward. You will not be able to view data that happened before
that funnel was set up. Second, you can track consecutive steps that people go
through only if they are on the same visit. So, the data is gone if people
complete a process over multiple visits or drop out of the defined path.
If you want to track only sign-up flows or e-commerce
checkout, you can go with Google Analytics. However, you won’t be able to build
your entire customer acquisition funnel.
By contrast, the KISSmetrics funnels are able to
retrieve historical data. So, you can set up your sign-up funnel and view how
it has been performing over the months that you’ve been tracking. And, it
doesn’t matter if someone visits your website today but doesn’t complete the
funnel until six months later. KISSmetrics retains all their data.
Conversions: With Google Analytics, you’ll have to set up goals to
track conversions. Also, there is a 90-day limit with conversions. By default,
conversions have to happen on the same visit. This is useful if you’re testing
and want a conversion to happen right away, such as signing up for a free trial.
But, if you want to go deeper, it’ll get a little more challenging. The only
way around this is to use multi-channel funnels. You’ll have to use a specific
report and be careful about which conversion data you’re looking at. In
KISSmetrics, you’ll need to setup a funnel to track conversions. However, you
can track all steps of that conversion from the user first visiting the site,
to signing up, to their card being ran for completing a purchase. It’s all in
one report.
Tools
In addition to the suite of analytics reports, KISSmetrics
also has two additional tools: populations and campaigns. Populations can be
used to track key groups of people across their buyer journey. Populations was
made to help marketing teams track key metrics across their growth cycle. With
Populations, you’ll be able to answer questions like:
·
How many active
users do I have? And where is the trend heading?
·
How many users
have used this feature in the last week?
·
How many one and
done buyers are there?
·
How many people
are browsing without purchasing?
You’ll track the trends, compare how that Population
is performing against X amount of days ago, use the Population in a report and be
able to see who is in each Population.
With campaigns, you can send automated, triggered
emails based on the user’s behavior. This is a real differentiator from Google
Analytics because in Google Analytics, you cannot send emails. While you can
hack together away to track email marketing effectiveness, you cannot measure
and engage the audience solely through Google Analytics. In fact, you won’t be
able to pull together a list of email addresses because Google disallows the
ability to identify people by email address. With KISSmetrics, you’ll identify
people by their email address and be able to send them email messages and track
their effectiveness – all within the same platform (KISSmetrics, 2017b).
Using Google Analytics with KISSmetrics
Google Analytics can provide a world of insight into
how visitors interact with your website. Nearly every website you visit uses
it, including the blog that you’re on now. Google Analytics is great for
getting the “big picture” insight of your web analytics to get session data,
view a general engagement on a page (time on page and site) and check referral
data. However, KISSmetrics works great in tandem with it to delve deeper into
your customers and their behaviors. KISSmetrics is great at capturing insights
into how your customers are using your product, discover your customer
acquisition channels, track your acquisition and sales funnels, document your
A/B tests and gather data that can help you make better decisions (KISSmetrics,
2017b).
References
Duggal, S. (2017, February 7). How to
Choose the Right Web Analytics Tool for your Business. Retrieved from https://betterthansuccess.com/choose-right-web-analytics-tool-business/
KISSmetrics. (n.d.-a). About Kissmetrics.
Retrieved from http://support.kissmetrics.com/article/show/36714-about-kissmetrics
KISSmetrics. (2017a). Understanding
People, Traits, Events and Properties within Kissmetrics. Retrieved from http://support.kissmetrics.com/article/show/4975-understanding-people-traits-events-and-properties-within-kissmetrics
KISSmetrics. (2017b). What is the
Difference Between Google Analytics and Kissmetrics? Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/google-analytics-and-kissmetrics/
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