Web Analytics: How KISSmetrics Stacks Up to Google Analytics

         Since it’s invention in 1991, the World Wide Web has proven itself to be invaluable in connecting people, dispersing information, and marketing businesses. In the last 35 years, the web has grown to over one billion websites and 3 billion people who access the internet. In the United States, 84% ofcitizens use the internet, that is about 270 million people looking at websites and surfing the web. This huge marketing pool has made web analytics essential for businesses.

As far as web analytic tools go, Google is king. As of 2013, over half of websites used Google Analytics to measure their web traffic and success. With Google Analytics being the go-to (and free) tool for measuring web metrics, other companies had to create offerings that go above and beyond Google’s free measurements to lure businesses to switch metric providers. One such company is KISSmetrics.

Founded in 2008, KISSmetrics focuses on helping marketers better than website and other digital media performance. Unlike some data tools, KISSmetrics takes the approach that it is marketing that “influence our actions and ultimately drive revenue.” The company hopes to simplify the immense amounts of data so marketers can plainly see what is working and what isn’t and then provide actionable insight.

KISSmetrics has many great features including real-time data that let’s you capitalize and view trends as they happen. They also utilize a data funnel feature that helps identify your companies weakest and most costly conversion points. This is an extremely helpful feature in the path-to-purchase journey that other tools may not give great insight into. KISSmetrics API is easily integrated into your website to help you begin viewing traffic and visitor stats.

While Google Analytics has the demographics and audience insight features, KISSmetrics allows companies to look deeper at their audience and see the path users take from interest to conversion. KISSmetrics engage feature allows companies to set up triggers in hopes to better engage your audience. They also provide templates and segmented testing to see what triggers work best for different audiences. This is a feature that Google Analytics does not offer.  KISSmetric goes above and beyond to help decode data.

            G2Crowd developed and advanced matrix to compare different web analytic software. As you can see from the graph left, Google Analytics ranks high in market presence as well as being an industry leader. KISSmetrics is almost equally as high in market presence, but straddles the line between a high-performer and an industry leader.

            The biggest difference between Google Analytics in KISSmetrics is the way they track. KISSmetrics focuses more on tracking people so it lack some of the traffic features that Google Analytics provides. Though Google ramped up it’s people features, KISSmetrics allows you to track individual people. Here’s how the tools handle tracking:

1. Identifying users: When someone visits site Google Analytics and KISSmetric assigns him or her an anonymous ID. For Google, only the last session is logged. If a user visits again a week later, Google only logs that visit and the data from the first visit is lost. KISSmetrics assigns previous sessions an alias so the data isn’t lost.
2. Tracking through cookies: Once a user as identified through the log in process, KISSmetrics ties all future visits to that person, even if they log out and close their browser. They do this through cookies. For Google, every session needs a user ID. Google Analytics would catalogue that logged out visit as a new user.
3. Tracking multiple devices: With KISSmetrics, if a user visits from their desktop logged in, they are assigned an alias. If they later visit your site unlogged in through a mobile device, they are assigned an anonymous ID. Whenever they log into your site through a mobile device, KISSmetrics merges the data from the alias and anonymous ID to one profile. With Google Analytics, the two IDs keep logging independent data on that user. The chart below illustrates the different processes.  
4. Identifying multiple users on one device:  If one person is logged in and the other isn’t, like in the case of public devices, KISSmetrics attributes all the data collected during the sessions with the logged in user. Google Analytics on the other hand, only logs the most recent session for each person they are tracking so the logged in data will be correctly attributed and the non-logged in person will appear as a random anonymous ID. 
5. Multiple users logged in on the same device: The way KISSmetrics attributes sessions on a public or multiple used device changes if all parties are logged in. In that case, KISSmetrics correctly attributes all data to the correctly logged in person. If a second person does browsing before logging in, that bit of data is attributed to the last logged in person. With Google Analytics, the correct data is attributed to the correct person.

Based on the way they track, KISSmetrics does a much better job overall giving a full picture of a persons journey and experience on a company’s site. Google Analytics, however, appears to better handle data and session attribution on public or shared devices. This is definitely and area I suspect data companies will look to improve on in the future.

Funnelfeatures are another area where Google Analytics and KISSmetrics differ. While you can set up funnels with Google Analytics, they lack some of the functionality KISSmetric provides. The biggest perk of KISSmetrics being that their system is able to go back and restore funnel data from before your funnel was set up. Google Analytics only records the data going forward.

There are plenty of other areas where the tools differ, but as with all innovation, they are catching up to one another. For example, KISSmetrics has advanced cohort analysis while Google Analytics launched a beta of this feature. Fortunately, the world of web metrics is not a one or the other decision. You can use both Google Analytics and KISSmetrics together. Using multiple tools allows you to easily create reports and see trends. Using the tools together can strengthen the weak spots of the other tools so that you have a more comprehensive look in your company’s website visitors, conversions, and other data.