Most of Google’s products seem to be top of mind when it comes to
the digital landscape – and Google Analytics is no different. Although it is an
accessible tool, there are many other tools available that offer similar services.
One huge advantage working for Google Analytics is “Google.” Google is a brand
that implies credibility and leader in the space.
As I have been diving more and more into the space of web
analytics one resource I have come to rely heavily on is Kissmetrics. Although
I have referenced many articles, case studies and findings from Kissmetrics, I
didn’t actually know they were also a web analytic platform. It’s easy to get
caught up in finding resources serving our goal without truly appreciating the
whole picture of who they are.
“We believe. Good data is
actionable data. Data-informed insights grow every business. A good product is
always evolving. The best approach is to keep it simple.”
Furthermore, Kissmetrics aims to turn visitors into customers –
increasing conversions and retention and they have grouped their purpose into
three categories: increase conversions, drive retention, fuel growth (Home,
n.d.).
Increase conversions – See why visitors convert, or not. Identify and remove roadblocks
to increase conversions
Drive Retention – Understand what leads to user adoption, engagement and
churn. Be proactive to drive retention
Fuel Growth – Aligning your initiatives with customer behavior is key to
fueling company growth.
WooRank rank looked at various web analytic tools other than
Google Analytics to provide pros and cons of each. Kissmetrics was included in
the evaluation and the results are below:
Pros
- People Tracking: This tool gives you an event-based analytic package that conveys data beyond just page views. It gives you details of each customer activity and answers to questions what, why and how for that particular activity, right in their reports. Hence, it is more productive for businesses that deal directly with customers, such as an e-commerce business.
- Unlimited Reports: You get unlimited reports and unlimited A/B split tests.
- User Segmentation: Unlike other tools of this genre, Kissmetrics provides information of every individual website visitor even before they become a customer. This data is stored so that you can use these for future marketing campaigns and segmenting your customers.
- URL Parameters: The tool allows you to track click on your links by adding parameters to the specific URLs, with no additional Javascript code required. Read this section to know more.
- Mobile App: It has a mobile app called My Analytics.
Cons
- The real time metrics is not very accurate.
- Since the pricing is slightly on the higher end, it is not fit for websites with insufficient budgets.
According to Finance Online, Kissmetrics is rooted in actionable insights
and highly flexible data. The system tracks a visitor and records all visits
and records all activities before they even convert to an actual customer. By
having this level of data brands are able to know and understand the consumer
before they make a purchase. How can we more effectively talk to them? What
attributes do they find most important? What are they looking for and how will
this improve their daily life? What can we offer them in addition to “x”?
Having this type of data early on in the customer journey allows brand
flexibility in messaging and tactics.
The Finance Online review highlights the following key features:
- Free Setup Guidance,
- Unlimited Funnel, Cohort and Retention Reports
- Unlimited Customer Profiles
- Unlimited Group Contact Lists
- Unlimited A/B Test Reports
- No-Limit Conversion Periods
- Email Support
- Unlimited Testing/Staging Sandboxes
- Segment Data By Any Point in Time
- Real Time Dad Monitoring/Debugger Tool
- Multi and Cross Platform/Device Support
- Data Support
In contract, Finance Online also provides a Google AnalyticsReview highlighting Google Analytics as “the world’s most popular freemium web
analytics service, used worldwide by thousands of companies (n.d.).” The Google
Analytics dashboard is nimble and allows for data summarizations in various
forms to provide invaluable data informing strategy, optimization and budgets.
The Finance Online review highlights the following key features:
- Advertising Reports
- API
- Campaign Measurement
- Cost Data Import
- Mobile Ads Measurement
- RemarketinG
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Advanced Segments
- Annotations
- Content Experiments
- DashboardS
- Mobile Traffic
- Social Reports
- Traffic Sources
- App-Specific Metric and Dimensions
- Crash & Exception Reporting
- Multi-Channel Flows
- Alerts
- Event Tracking
- Site Search
- Site’s Speed Analysis
- And many more…
After reviewing
Kissmetrics in comparison to Google Analytics I think there can be a place for
both in the word of data. Specifically for Kissmetrics, I think their most
beneficial attribute is in regards to eCommerce. If a brand or business is
looking for eCommerce specific insights and data points, Kissmetrics may be
more beneficial than Google Analytics.
Through
Kissmetrics approach of following a visitor from their very first touchpoint
with the website, these analytics are able to inform stronger insights to the
path to purchase. These insights allow brands to create actions to drive
conversions based on history. Most importantly Kissmetrics offers data into the
referral revenue – not just the referral source of where they came from but the
data provides an idea as to how each source is driving sales and where paying
customers are coming from. As eCommerce becomes a great piece of the marketing
pie, these analytics tools will continue to become more and more important.
So often we look
at reporting tools as either or. As with most things in life we look for the one-stop
shop with all the bells and whistles to eliminate creating a more convoluted
landscape. Unfortunately this isn’t always the right solution. A lot of these
tools can benefit from each other and the more insight and data we have at our fingertips,
the more powerful we are.
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