Tracking PeopleWith Analytics

kissmetrics.com

Table of Contents

1. Overview 3

2. Session activity prior to login 4

3. Data from sessions prior to registration 5

4. Data from sessions post identification 6

5. Session activity from different devices 7

6. Multiple people using same device 12

7. Multiple people log in from same device 13

8. Summary 14

Tracking People With AnalyticsIn order to start connecting all your data to actual people,

you’ll need two things:

But even if an analytics tool helps you identify users as they

log in, they all handle it slightly differently. And in some cases,

your data becomes pretty limited.

Let’s work through a few examples to see how KISSmetrics

and Universal Analytics (the new version of Google Analytics)

handles people tracking.

• USER IDENTIFICATION — Your analytics tool must be

able to identify users when they tell you who they

are

• SIgNINg IN — Your users must sign in or identify

themselves on each of their devices (PC, iPad, etc.)

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ExAmPlE #1

What happens to session activity prior to registration or logging in?

A user browses your site for 10 minutes before they tell you who they are. Then the user registers.

Does the visitor activity from that first 10 minutes get tied to that user in your analytics tool?

It starts when KISSmetrics gives a new visitor an anonymous ID. As soon as the visitor is identified

during the registration of login, the anonymous data gets added to the user’s profile. Everything’s

connected seamlessly.

First visiton desktop

1

Page view(anon123)

Page view(anon123)

Page view( john@doe.co)

Page view( john@doe.co)

Userregisters

2

Anonymous ID(anon123)

Identify an AliasTie Customer ID ( john@doe.co)

to anonymous ID (anon123)

Google Analytics also handles this well. When you identify a user in Google Analytics, it will associate

all the data from that same session to that user.

kissmetrics’ customer id assignment

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ExAmPlE #2

What happens to data from sessions before the one with a registration?

Example: While looking for a digital camera on his computer, Ben clicks on an ad from Google AdWords

and arrives at the B&H site. He finds a camera that he likes but decides to search for a better price. A

couple of days later, he comes back to the B&H site and purchases.

We know that we can connect all the data from the session with the purchase. But what about the data

from the first visit? Can we connect the purchase to the AdWords campaign?

As long as you identify the user during the purchase, KISSmetrics merges the data from the first visit and

will credit the purchase to the original marketing channel. In this case, AdWords gets the credit as it should.

No other tool connects anonymous data from previous visits to the user when you identify them.

What about google Analytics? It only connects data from the same session that the user was identified.

So all the data from the second visit gets connected to Ben’s user ID. But the data from the first visit

gets lost. The only way to get around this is to find a way to identify people during as many sessions as

possible. You won’t be able to just wait for them to register or log in.

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ExAmPlE #3

What happens to data from sessions after someoneis identified?

We know how historical data is handled (from the same session or previous sessions). But what about

data from sessions after a person is identified?

Julie visits your site, registers, logs out, and closes the browser. A week later, she comes back but

doesn’t register or log in. What happens to the data from her second visit?

This one is easy for KISSmetrics. Since Julie was cookied by KISSmetrics, her data will keep getting

tied to her named ID even if she logs off.

Google Analytics isn’t so simple. You’ll need to send the user ID every time there’s a Google Analytics

hit. So every piece of Google Analytics data needs a user ID attached to it. There is session unification

that will stitch together any other hits that happen in the same session. But every session needs a user

ID defined in order to connect that session to a person. In Julie’s case, Google Analytics would assume

that her second visit was a different person.

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ExAmPlE #4

What happens to session activity from several devices?

Now let’s look at an example that includes multiple sessions across multiple devices. Here it is:

1. During her first visit, Jane registers on eBay from her desktop.

2. A few days later, she uses her iPad to look for a digital camera on eBay, but doesn’t find anything.

3. Later that same day, she uses her iPad to search for a specific camera. She finds what she’s looking

for, logs in, and makes a bid.

Create a newAnonymous ID

(anon789)

Create a newAnonymous ID

(anon123)

Identifyan Alias

Tie Customer ID ( jane@doe.co)

to anonymous ID (anon123)

Userregisters

2

Identify and merge an Alias

Tie Customer ID ( jane@doe.co)

to anonymous ID (anon789)

User logins

5

Track same iPadAnonymous ID

(anon789)

Second visiton iPad

4

First visiton desktop

1

First visiton iPad

3

Everything gets tied to the user correctly

With kissmetrics

Ideally, the analytics tool should show 1 unique visitor with 3 visits.

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Remember, google Analytics gets most of the data but misses the first iPad session. Since Google

Analytics only connects data from the same session that the user was identified, Jane’s second visit

gets lost. The first and third visits (which both have a user ID) get connected to the right user, but not

the second visit.

Create a newClient ID(device500)

Create a newClient ID(device100)

AssignUser ID

Tie User ID (anon456)

to Client ID (device100)

Assign User ID

Tie User ID (anon456)

to Client ID (device500)

User logins

5

Identify aClient ID(device500)

First visiton iPad

3

First visiton desktop

1

Userregisters

2

Second visiton iPad

4

Correctly assigned to user Correctly assigned to userNot assigned to user

With google analytics:

KISSmetrics merges the two identities from each device and does it correctly. You’ll find

documentation on the alias and identify methods here. In a nutshell, KISSmetrics links the current

anonymous ID with the identified user every time the identify method is called. As long as the user logs

in on each device, all of their visitor data will get tied to the correct person.

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This is some raw traffic data from KISSmetrics. As you can see, user1000 had two different anonymous

IDs (one starts with “qz…” and the second starts with “rLJ…”). Some of the page view events were

related to the first anonymous ID, others to the second anonymous ID, and one page view was related

to user1000 (after the second alias).

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Searching for people who have viewed at least one page gives us the correct number of visitors with

just 1 person:

And by looking at the individual activity feed from user1000, KISSmetrics successfully tied all page view

events to user1000, including page views that were fired before signing in:

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KISSmetrics definitely has a huge advantage over Google Analytics for this. If you need to track users

across multiple devices go with KISSmetrics!

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ExAmPlE #5

What happens when multiple people start using the same device?

In the previous examples, we only had a single person using each device. Now let’s look at a few

examples that involve multiple people using the same device.

Greg is looking for tickets online for a show tonight and uses the hotel’s PC. He clicks on a Facebook

ad, and accesses the ticket sale site. But the show is sold out so he closes the browser and leaves

the computer. An hour later, Jack uses the exact same PC and goes directly to the ticket sale site. He

registers and purchases tickets to a different show.

KISSmetrics will merge the identities and present this data as one single user. So data from Greg’s

visit gets tied to Jack’s purchase. In this case, KISSmetrics doesn’t show what actually happened, it

assumes there’s only one person.

On the other hand, google Analytics will report the correct data in this case. Data from the first visit

doesn’t get tied to Jack’s purchase so it reports 2 visitors, one of which was identified.

But what if both visits were from Jack? Then KISSmetrics would have the right data and Google

Analytics would be incorrect.

There’s no technical way to solve both scenarios at the same time. You need to either assume that

previous visits from the same device came from the same person or from different people. You won’t

be able to do both. KISSmetrics assumes that previous visits on the same device are from the same

person.

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ExAmPlE #6

What happens when multiple people are logging in on the same device?

Let’s go back to the example with Greg and Jack trying to buy tickets on the same device. But this time,

Greg logs in, looks at a bunch of tickets, then logs out. An hour later, Jack uses the exact same PC and

registers a different account. How does KISSmetrics handle this?

When Greg visits the site and logs in, all his data gets tied to his account and is correct up until this point.

But when Jack starts using the computer, KISSmetrics still thinks that Greg is shopping for tickets.

Anything that Jack does before registering will get tied to Greg’s customer ID. As soon as Jack

registers, KISSmetrics sees that this is a new person and starts connecting all future data to Jack’s

customer ID. But the data collected after Greg left and before Jack registered gets incorrectly assigned

to Greg’s account.

In KISSmetrics, there is a way to clear a named ID for a device. So if someone logs out, you can clear

the identity on that machine. This assigns a new anonymous ID as soon as the old one is cleared. You

can do this with the clearIdentity call.

In this example, clearIdentity would clear the named ID for Greg when he logs out. When Jack visits,

the device is using a new anonymous ID and all of Jack’s activity gets connected to his named ID when

he registers.

You’ll only be able to trigger the clearIdentity during logout events, you won’t be able to reset all

named IDs for each visit.

Google Analytics happens to get this one right. The data from each visit is split across different

sessions which works well with Google Analytics. When Greg visits and registers, all the data from his

session gets tied to his user ID. Then when Jack visits and registers, his data goes to his user ID.

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SUmmARy

Analytics need to make an assumption when tracking users:

• The majority of visits from the same device are from the same person

• Each visit should be treated as a new person until they identify themselves

KISSmetrics assumes that activity on the same device is from the same person. And it seamlessly

connects data on your users as they identify themselves. Data from the very first, multiple devices, and

multiple browsers all gets correctly tied to the right person. As long as your users identity themselves

on each device, everything gets tied to real people.

Also feel free to use the clearIdentity method to reset named IDs when your users log out. This will

help keep your data clean when multiple people are logging in on the same device.

google Analytics, on the other hand, assumes that each visit is from a new person. There’s no way to

change this. You’ll need to identify people during every session in order to see everything that person

did. There’s several other major limitations with identifying users in Google Analytics:

• You can’t use emails or other personal info as your identity, you’ll need to use an internal account ID.

• Implementation is more difficult. Google Analytics wants you to send the user ID with every hit of

Google Analytics data. KISSmetrics only requires that you identity users when they tell you who

they are (registrations, sign ups, logins, purchases, etc).

• User ID data will only show in a new Google Analytics View, you can’t view non-user data and user

data in the same reports.

• User ID reports will only show data from the last 90 days.

• Web and app data from the same user ID cannot be viewed at the same time. Cross-device analysis

only works on one or the other, not both.

• You won’t be able to query user IDs in Google Analytics reports or through their API.

KISSmetrics doesn’t have any of these limitations.

KISSmetrics Identity Resources:

• Understanding Identities

• How KISSmetrics Handles Identities When Using the JavaScript API

• Multiple People on the Same Browser

Google Analytics Identity Resources:

• User ID - Feature Reference

• Session Unification

• User ID - Web Tracking (analytics.js)

• Understanding Cross Device Measurement and the User-ID by Justin Cutroni

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