Brilliant concept. Not sure I trust data.
December 18, 2012
Brilliant concept. Not sure I trust data.

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Overall Satisfaction
Pros
- KISSmetrics is a brilliant concept, and when it works, it works really well. I love the data granularity that it generates, and it's really good at funnel analysis (measuring site visitor progression through a specific flow). It's also great for enabling the firing of events based on specific interactions.
Cons
- The biggest issue, is that I have lost faith in the accuracy of the data.
- There have been a few examples of the system producing what looks like spurious data. I triangulate the data using Google Analytics, and on a few occasions, there have been very wide discrepancies that indicate a potentially serious problem. For example, Google might indicate 1,000 page views, while KISSmetrics indicates 5,000.. This is not a constant problem, but it has happened enough where my faith in the data is shaken.
- It really doesn't matter how good the front-end functionality is if my faith in data accuracy is not 100%.
- A/B testing is much more difficult than it needs to be. It is possible to structure the product to enable A/B testing, but this involves reading a bunch of help files and writing some code. I would have expected this to work out-of-the-box. In Google Analytics, for example.you only have to enter two URLs and then it works. This was a surprise.
- Assuming that the data is accurate, I would say that the ROI is pretty high. All my funnel reporting and KPI reporting is done in KISSmetrics and these are the metrics I report back to our investors. It was essentially, the main reporting tool for our company. However, due to the data validity issues already described, I have really switched back to Google Analytics as the primary tool and use KISSmetrics as the secondary.
Product Usage
4 - The executive team: CEO, CSO, CTO, and our Marketing Executive. This is half the company.
2 - CEO and CTO.
- We use the tool for marketing analysis. As a venture-backed young company, marketing metrics are critically important to us. We track: conversion rates, customer usage (where people go on the site; what are the most popular features; what do people like, etc).
Evaluation and Selection
We didn't switch to KISSmetrics from anything else. But we continue to use other tools like Google Analytics in parallel.
We looked at Chartbeat, Mouseflow, and some others.
We chose KISSmetrics because of the ability to track individual interactions. We can see individual user journeys, and fire events based on user interactions (like filling in a form, reading content, etc.).
Mouseflow is a slightly different kind of tool that tracks interactions in a quantitative rather than qualitative manner.
We chose KISSmetrics because of the ability to track individual interactions. We can see individual user journeys, and fire events based on user interactions (like filling in a form, reading content, etc.).
Mouseflow is a slightly different kind of tool that tracks interactions in a quantitative rather than qualitative manner.
Implementation
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
Training
- Online training
Configuration
Custom code was mainly around event triggering.
Support
No - This is not offered.
Usability
Reliability
Integration
- We have integrated with a payment processor called Recurly.
This is a new integration offered by KISSmetrics and it is a bit of a mixed bag. The problem for us is that our payments are recurring subscription payments, not one-time purchases. The integration does not support recurring payments and hence all the exciting stuff they talk about like revenue tracking, churn measurement, calculation of customer lifetime value etc. do not work for us. This is a major flaw.
Vendor Relationship
No. Product is inexpensive and not worth haggling over.
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