Choosing an analytics platform that’s right for your business
Choosing an analytics platform that’s right for your
business
“It’s a game,” Steve said “Google’s running the game and we
are all trying to uncover the rules as they change…” I didn’t say it, but I
agreed with him. There seems to be this incredible opportunity to promote our
business, with super-insightful information into how to optimize our promotions
and yet, the rules do continually change and the game evolves. Players play to
win and some are in the game to block you and others are just watching and
participating from the sidelines.
If you are actually playing the game to win, you need a
dashboard that gives you insights into how your board (your site) is performing
and actually pulling people in from the sidelines for at least a little while;
preferably more than once.
To that end, it matters what part of the game you are
playing, or in other words, what are you trying to accomplish (sales, content
sharing-which translates into lengthier time spent on your page, etc.) to
determine what you are looking for in a marketing analytics platform.
You also want to consider your growth plan and the
opportunities ahead before investing in a platform that doesn’t have the
capability of growing with you.
For this blog, I’ve compared the capabilities of Kissmetrics
and Google Analytics as prescribed in an exercise of comparing a platform to
GA. During the process of looking for the contender (Kissmetrics) I learned a
lot about the other available platforms, such as Mix Panel and Amplitude and
decided to go with Kissmetrics only because the demo was more readily
available.
One thing that I will say about all of contenders to GA is
that they appear to make the interface for the dashboards more visually
appealing and user-friendly. It’s not that GA is difficult, but it’s almost not
as intuitive as it could be. Spending time with the User Experience is
something we all should consider; including GA.
Dashboards:
Kissmetrics dashboard gets stratight to the numeric point.
GA’s overview can be displayed in graphs and is accompanied by the correlating
numbers, however, Kissmetrics simply showcases your numbers with +/- indicators
so you can immediately see if there are issues and from there you can drill
down into data to see what you need to uncover for optimization.
History
Another key attribute of Kissmetrics is that you never lose
your history. You will always be able to revert back to it. Changes to
campaigns and over time, with the free GA, you do not preserve your data.
Curated Reports
Kissmetrics takes on the “load” of curating data and serving
it to you, rather than one having to dig into GA for the insights needed.
Free or Paid
GA, however is a great way to start for free – as Kissmetrics
starts at $500 a month.
You can find all the data you need to extract from GA, and
if you ask me, it’s probably THE BEST way to be the one who knows your data
first-hand. If later, as the organization grows and you need to expand your
capabilities or, if you need more time for some other tasks, then investing in
Kissmetrics might be a way to go to relieve some of the time taken to build the
reports in GA.
- At the end of the day, evaluate all the available platforms.
- Think about your growth and potential future needs
- Determine if free is a good way to start (know your data!)
- What behaviors are you looking to optimize and which platform is best suited for your needs
- Research and if possible, try before you buy.
At the end of the day, which part of the game are you playing? What do you need to position yourself and how many team players need to see the same insights? Just some of the questions to ask when jumping in!
Have fun jumping In!
REFERENCES
Interesting post! I think to some extent, preference here depends on what you learn on. If I work through learning Google Analytics, and how to export data and build custom reports and dashboards first, I'm not sure I would necessarily switch to Kissmetrics. That said, there are a few features of Kissmetrics that are different from Google Analytics and I think if your main focus is conversion and tracking specific customer paths, Kissmetrics may be better. Kissmetrics may also be better/easier for events, but there are features of GA that I also like.
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