What is the Difference between Google Analytics and Kissmetrics?

One of the most common questions we get from people is how Kissmetrics is different from Google Analytics. We understand the curiosity. Both services are in the analytics space, so it’s easy to think they’re the same tools.

However, there are a number of differences between the two services; for example, how they handle tracking, what use cases are best, and what you can and can’t do with each tool. We’ll get into all that in this post.

As a matter of clarification, we’ll be discussing the differences between Google’s Universal Analytics and Kissmetrics. Universal Analytics is the next version of Google Analytics and will soon be what every Google Analytics account uses by default.

How Google Analytics and Kissmetrics Track People?

At its core, Kissmetrics analytics is focused on people. As you’ll soon see, every visit to your website gets tied to a person. Google Analytics added people tracking as a feature. It is not at the core of the product. Most people use Kissmetrics to track individual people while most people who use Google Analytics will never touch that feature.

When tracking people, you need two things to verify their identity:

User Identification – Your analytics tool must be able to identify users when they tell you who they are.

Signing In – Users must be able to sign in and identify themselves on each of their devices.

But, even if an analytics tool helps you identify users as they log in, they all handle it a little differently.

Let’s go through how Kissmetrics and Google Analytics handle people tracking.

1. What Happens to Session Activity Prior to Registration or Logging In? 
   When a person visits your website for the first time, both Kissmetrics and Google Analytics assign an anonymous ID to that person.                                                  
   For Google Analytics, the visit and registration must take place in the same visit session. If a person visits your website, leaves, and then comes back 10 days later and registers, only the last session is tied to the user ID. The first session is lost. Google Analytics connects data from only the session in which the user was identified. The only way around this is to find a way to identify people during as many sessions as possible.                                                                                    
   With Kissmetrics, all data from a person’s previous sessions is assigned to an alias. That’s the core tracking summary of the two. But, they can differ depending on the situation.
   
2. What Happens to Data from Sessions after Someone is identified?

   Sayed visits your site, registers, logs out, and closes the browser. He comes back a week later and doesn’t register or log back in. What happens to the data from the second visit?

   Google Analytics isn’t as 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 Sayed’s case, Google Analytics would assume that his second visit was a different person.

   
   

   With Kissmetrics, all this data still gets tied to Joey because his device was cooked.
3.      What Happens to Session Activity from Several Devices?

        Sayed registers on your site from his desktop.

        A week later, he visits your site on his iPad but doesn’t log in.

        Later that day, he visits your site again, this time logging in with his iPad.

        With Kissmetrics, all the data from his desktop gets assigned to hid alias               once he registers. When he visits on his iPad, Kissmetrics assigns his a new           anonymous ID. Kissmetrics doesn’t know this visitor is Sayed until he logs in       on his iPad. Once he logs in, all the sessions from his iPad are tied back to the       ID;    he originally created when he registered on his desktop.

         Sayed registered on his first visit, so the activity from that session gets tied to       his newly registered User ID. Since Sayed’s second visit was on a new device       and he didn’t log in, that data gets lost.

         All his sessions going forward (on the same device) will be correctly assigned       to his. The same goes for when he visits on another device. Once he logs in           on a device, the data from that same session gets tied back to the User ID that       was assigned when he registered on his desktop.

   
   

        Remember that Google Analytics connects data only from the session in              which the user was verified.
   
   

       4.   What Happens When Multiple People Use the Same Device?                                     Brenda is looking for tickets to a show tonight. She visits your site via a hotel               PC, doesn’t find any tickets that she likes and leaves.

    Steve also is looking for tickets. He visits your site using the hotel’s PC, finds     tickets that he likes, and registers and pays for them.

   How do Kissmetrics and Google Analytics handle this?

   With Kissmetrics, the data from Brenda gets assigned to Steve once he              registers. So, all previous visits to your site from that same computer get tied      to Steve. There is no technical way around this.

   On the other hand, Google Analytics will report the correct data in this case.    Since Brenda visited the site but didn’t register, her session is lost. Since Steve     registered on the same session as his visit, that data gets correctly tied to him.

5. What Happens When Multiple People Are Logging in on the Same                 Device?

    Let’s go back to the previous example with Brenda and Steve using the same       device to access the same website.

    This time, Brenda logs in, looks at a bunch of tickets, and then logs out. Steve     comes by later that day and registers.

    How does Kissmetrics handle this?

    When Brenda visits the site and logs in, all the data gets correctly tied to her.

    But, when Steve visits and registers, Kissmetrics still thinks it is Brenda               visiting the website. Anything that Steve is before he registers tied back to           Brenda’s customer ID. Once Steve registers, Kissmetrics sees this as a new         person and connects all future data to his customer ID.

    With Kissmetrics, you can do a clear Identity call. This would clear Brenda’s     ID once she logs out and assign a new anonymous ID when the next person         visits from that computer. Then, once Steve registers, all the data from                 Brenda’s blog out to Steve’s registration gets tied to Steve’s customer ID.

    You will be able to do this only during logout events. You won’t be able to         reset all named ID’s after each visit.

    Google Analytics handles this correctly. When Brenda visits and logs in, all      the data from her session gets tied to her ID. Then, when Steve visits and           registers, all the data from his visit gets correctly assigned to him.

• Tracking Summary

Analytics need to make one of two assumptions when tracking users:

· Each visit from the same device is coming from the same person.

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

Kissmetrics assumes that activity on one device is coming from the same person. If one of your users visits your site on their desktop, tablet, and phone, Kissmetrics will recognize them once they sign in and tie them back to their customer ID.

Google Analytics assumes that each visit is from a new person. The only way around this is to identify people in each session in order to see everything that person does.

• Use Cases

Kissmetrics is not a replica of Google Analytics. Yes, they both are analytics tools, but they each have their own use cases. Let’s run through some common use cases and which tool is a better fit.

Tracking Visitors and Visits

If this is what you want to track, go with Google Analytics. While Kissmetrics can track visitors, it doesn’t make sense to use it if that’s all you want to do.

Tracking Bounce Rate, Time on Page, and Exits

Use Google Analytics for these metrics. You cannot currently track these in Kissmetrics.

• Funnels

You can set up funnels in Google Analytics, but there are a few disadvantages:

·   When you set up funnels, you can view data going forward only. You will not be able to view data that happened before the funnel was set up.

·   You can track consecutive steps that people go through only if they are on the same visit. So, the data is gone if people complete a process over multiple visits or drop out of the defined path. If you want to track only sign-up flows or e-commerce checkout (you won’t be able to track the number of people who put an item in the cart), you can go with Google Analytics. You won’t be able to build your entire customer acquisition funnel.

By contrast, the Kissmetrics funnels are able to retrieve historical data. So, you can set up your sign-up funnel and view how it has been performing over the months that you’ve been tracking. And, it doesn’t matter if someone visits your website today but doesn’t complete the funnel until six months later. Kissmetrics retains all their data.

• Conversion Tracking

Some people may want to get a little more advanced with their analytics and begin tracking conversions. By tracking conversions, you’re looking at the percentage of people who have done some important action on your site, such as signing up for your newsletter, downloading a white paper, or placing an order.

With Google Analytics, you’ll have to set up goals. Also, there is a 90-day limit with conversions. By default, conversions have to happen on the same visit. This is useful if you’re testing and want a conversion to happen right away, such as signing up for a trial. But, if you want to go deeper, it’ll get a little more challenging. The only way around this is to use multi-channel funnels. You’ll have to use a specific report and be careful about which conversion data you’re looking at.

In Kissmetrics, you’ll need to set up a funnel report to track conversions. A common funnel report is tracking the number of people who have signed up or placed an order. Here’s how it might look for a SaaS company:

Here, we are looking at people who have visited the site, signed up for a trial, and then converted to paying for a subscription. For an e-commerce company, a sales funnel might look like this:

In this funnel, we’re tracking the number of people who visited the site, placed a product in their cart, and then proceeded to purchase.

• A/B Testing

In Google Analytics, you can set up content experiments to act as your A/B testing tool. To run the test, you’ll have to build out two separate URLs (i.e., www.example.com/control and www.example.com/variant1). This can be challenging if you’re testing your home page, as there may be hundreds of backlinks to one URL. You’ll be able to get around this if you have developers on your team. But, it’ll be more difficult if you’re left to your own devices.

Another downside is the conversions must happen on the same visit. If people leave your site between steps, they won’t get counted.

With Kissmetrics, you can integrate with an A/B testing tool like Optimizable and connect that data to the A/B test report. All your data gets connected back to actual people. Here’s what the report looks like:

You can view people by clicking on a number under the People column, which shows you all the people in the variation. Or, you can view only the people who converted by clicking on a number under the Conversions column.

• Cohort Reports

People can be divided into groups, or cohorts, based on actions they took. A prime example of this would be tracking login retention over time. With a cohort report, you would track people who logged in during a specified time range (typically a day or week), and then you would see how often those people log back in (by day or by week) after that specified time range. Here’s what a report like that would look like in Kissmetrics:

You can’t get anywhere close to this with Google Analytics.

• Using Google Analytics in Conjunction with Kissmetrics

Google Analytics can provide a world of insight into how visitors interact with your website. Nearly every website you visit uses it, including the blog you’re on now. We also use it on our main Kissmetrics.com page.

At the end

Many of our customers use Google Analytics alongside Kissmetrics. We use Google Analytics to get session data, view a general engagement on a page (time on page and site), and check referral data. We use our own product for our web app to get insights into how our customers are using our product, discover our customer acquisition channels, track our acquisition funnel, document our A/B tests, and gather data that can help us make better decisions

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Top Places to Share Your Blog Posts

You’ve spent the morning typing up your best blog post yet. You put so much time into this one, you just know people want to read it, and should. Hmm. How will they find it? How do you get the people to the post? Where do you share the link to get the traffic you’re looking for?

Well, you could wait on Google to rank it and see if it turns up in the search results. But, that takes too long. You could pay for ads on Google or Facebook. But, that’s too costly. So, you do what all bloggers do, you share it.

There are many, many ways to share and promote your post, but I’m going to highlight what I feel to be the Top.

Best Places to Share Blog Content for Traffic:

1-Facebook

is a place to interact with your fans. Most people are going to hit that LIKE button because they want to hear what you have to say. Blog posts definitely need to be landing here. Always include an image, always. Images are noticed. Images are shared. A link with an image is great. You could also post an image and put the link to your blog post in the description area. It’s been said that images get shared more often than links, but I doubt links get clicked when just attached to an image. Either way, make sure some interesting image is included when you share your link

You may definitely using Facebook groups to promote your content. What I have noticed is that bloggers join too many Facebook groups in sake to get more referral traffic. However, it’s not true. If you join limited and quality groups, then you’ll get more productive results.

Follow these steps

• Join limited number of groups.
• Target Niche related groups with the maximum number of members.
• Look for the active groups, joining such groups where members don’t take interest to view your posts is really a waste of time.
• The limited number of the group are easy to manage, you can easily be active there. First like and comment on other’s submission and then share your own links. Believe me, you will get best of the best exposure towards your each post.

2-LinkedIn Groups:

Same as Facebook, LinkedIn also allows it’s users to create and join groups. It’ll be tough to share your content all the time on each place, but do share your best posts in LinkedIn groups.

Points to be noticed here:

• LinkedIn is full of professionals. If you share outdated or non-valuable content there, then sorry to say, LinkedIn groups are not for you.
• Being a group member, you must care about your activeness in the group. Don’t be hungry only to share your articles. Give value to other’s content and help them to get shared their submitted posts. Try to make a bond with them. You’ll notice as a valuable group member and other members will love to read and share your content with their social friends.
• Bonus Tip: Add members from UK, US in your group if you want to attract traffic from these countries.

3-Google Plus Communities

Almost we all have our G+ profile and Google plus the page of our blog. Right?

But sharing with circle friends and page followers is not the best use of Google Plus for blog posts promotion. As Facebook and LinkedIn groups, there are many communities on Google Plus. Make use of those communities in following way:

• Join Google Plus communities where there is your targeted audience.
• Start hitting +1 button on their posts, comment on them and appreciate their content.
• Keep patience to share your own posts, first make a friendly relationship with other members.
• Once you do follow these three steps, soon your name will be noticed by other members. In addition, this should be your goal. Grab their attention and prove that you are not there only to spam the community with your own links.
• Once you feel that you have made a solid presence in those communities, it’s time to share your posts links.
• Share your article’s links, add the attractive description and use #Hashtags.

4-Blog Communities

Blog communities are the best places of active and targeted audience. As same as above places, you have to be active in blog communities too to get impressive results.

Below list, few best communities and places for bloggers that are truly worth using for blog posts sharing:-

Bizsugar

Blokube

Blog Engage

Triberr

Inbound.org

Note: Try to make use all of them effectively. If you are already using them and have any related doubt, query or suggestion, then feel free to leave a comment. I’ll surely the response to your comments.

You must take care about your activities you do there in terms to get your posts vital. For best of the best results, perform below steps:

• Register for an account.
• Log in to your account and fill all of your profile information.
• When you are ready with the basic things, it’s time to submit links. However, wait, some communities set moderation on the submitted links. To get easy approval, you have to be smart there. For first time submission, do submit a post of any big blog. It’ll help you to get instant approval on your submitted links. Once your submissions start getting approval, do submit your own links.
• Vote for other’s post, build the relationship and get votes to your own posts.
• Maximum votes will bring your posts to the homepage of these communities, means your posts will be shown to a wider audience. Hence, more free and targeted traffic to your blog. 

5-Twitter

Another, smaller, place to interact with your fans. Do not assume that your Twitter followers are also on your Facebook list. I definitely have some people/sites/things that I follow on Twitter and not on Facebook and vice versa. It’s partly my way of organizing my stuff. You should definitely tweet every blog post! When you post to twitter, include your blog title or something catchy and a shortened link. Be sure not to use all 140 characters, leave some characters free. Your goal is for people to retweet, possibly with a comment of their own

6-Bookmarking Sites

Users of Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Technorati are looking for things to read. Submit your blog post and give them something! You don’t need to use all of these, just pick one if you want. I don’t have time to focus on them all so I plan to only use one. This would be a great place to get blog ideas as well. Bonus!

7-Email SignatureEmail Signature

I don’t recommend doing this for every blog post, but definitely the good ones. Just add a link to your email signature. I use Wisestamp for this purpose, easy to set up, easy to use. It works! I’m running a fundraiser for my son, I put the link in my email sig, and I have actually had people follow the link and donate.

8-Newsletter

Yeah, yeah, I’m telling you to do something I don’t do, yet. Oh, well. If you run a newsletter, add a blog post link or two to the next one you send out. People subscribed because they want to hear from you. I’m sure you’re looking for newsletter content, use what you’ve already written. This is just another avenue to reach out to the people that have expressed interest in you.

At the End

At the last, I just want to say that try your own ideas to promote your blog but never ignore the working ideas tested and shared, I hope to enjoy reading.

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Promote Your Blog Posts While Sleeping

As a blogger, are you ready to publish your newly written article for visitors? If yes, then what will be the next thing to think about? It's promotion of your article in social media websites. The best way to attract and grab wider audience is to promote your stuff on social media websites and blogging communities.

But sharing on Twitter, Facebook etc. will only be effective for your website when the blog posts are shared to relevant and targeted audience. The time of sharing is also important to grab more audience for your posts. You have to analyze what is the best time for sharing your posts on social media. The best time will benefit you in return with maximum traffic.

Let’s clarify this concept with an example. Suppose your readers love to follow, your posts shared in a night and your traffic increases in a night. If you are sharing blog posts in the morning rather than night will effect in your traffic as readers love to see your posts in a night but you are sharing in morning or daytime.

You will think that how anyone can sit online for the whole day and promote their content. Well, there is a solution for this problem. Now you can share your website content at any time you want. The interesting thing is that you will not need to be online at the time of sharing. You can schedule your posts for sharing on social media networks.

There is a website named Buffer. This amazing website will allow you to share your content on social media networks without getting online. You can schedule your blog posts for certain time

Buffer is Google Chrome extension

So, let’s learn how to use Buffer to schedule blog posts

1. Go to Buffer and register for an account or log in with your twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account.
2. Click on Install in Seconds button to add Buffer Extension in your browser.
3. Now you’ll be enter into your Buffer account. Simply click on Schedule tab to schedule your blog posts for auto-sharing and add posting time there.
4. Now click on what you want to share the field at the top left corner of the page.
5. Add your post description and link and click on Buffer button to schedule it.
6. That’s it. Now your posts will be automatically shared at your scheduled timings.

Additional Benefits

We are not limited to only share and schedule our blog posts for automatically sharing; there are other benefits too of using Buffer.

1. There is a cool feature that allow us to check Analytics of our shared posts to get the clear view how much benefit we are getting. For example, one of my posts attracts 1 Comment and 18 likes while I was sleeping.
2. It’s time-consuming to open buffer account every time to schedule blog posts. Right? Here we have one more cool option that is Buffer’s Extension for the browser that we have already installed. Whenever you want to schedule your any post, simply open that post in your browser and click on buffer button icon at the top right corner of your page. It’ll automatically fetch all of it’s details and you just need to click Buffer button. That’s it.

At the end

Therefore, this is the simple way to use Buffer for scheduling posts. By using this software, you can easily target your relevant traffic in a time when they become online. The most important thing about this software is that you will not need to become online at the time of posting of scheduled post through the buffer. I hope you enjoyed the topic.

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Smart Tips To Drive Traffic From Pinterest To Your Blog

There’s hardly anyone left in the world of blogging who is not aware of Pinterest. However, what some people do not know is the fact that Pinterest is not only meant for pinning your products, rather it also helps in driving more traffic toward your blog / website. Over time, Pinterest is seen to be driving in more traffic as compared to all the other prominent social networking websites. Looking at the severity of its importance, we are bringing to you few effective ways of driving traffic towards your blog via Pinterest.

Here are a few quick tips, which you must look into Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

1-Emphasis on trending and lifestyle topics

Who does not like to read hot and trending articles? It is a known fact that people always prefer to spend their time on the latest happening and events. This will surely get you many followers along with a long array of re-pins, likes and comments. Movies, social affairs or anything latest will do the best for you.

We are part of an ever-growing society and people need to be kept familiar with their surroundings. Make your blog a mixture of everyday tips, household products, images, videos and you are done. The number of clicks that you will receive through these simple yet useful posts will be surely amazing.

2-Go for a personalized blog board

Do not let your blog put your readers in hocus- pocus. Always make it a point to arrange your blog in a systematic manner. This will definitely make it easier for your followers to find your latest pins and will save their time as well.

Also, remember to add good keywords in the title of your posts. This way they will find high page ranking in all the major search engines. Isn’t it great to have a well-managed blog as well as a good ranking all in a single go? 

3-Combine text with images

No one likes to read a long and boring post. Make your posts interesting by including as many catchy pictures as possible. Alternatively, to make it more appealing, you can also add text onto the pictures. Images catch people’s attention and it compels them to click on the link to know more about your pin. For this purpose, use large and attractive fonts on your image while pinning them on Pinterest. This is due to the reason that a lot of people access Pinterest through their mobile phones and small font will not be visible to them.

4-Show the magic of URL description

While pinning images or posts on Pinterest, always add the URL of your blog in the description. In case you are repining, do the same. Use the URL of your blog or website, which will have the similar posts as that on Pinterest. Also, do not use shortened URLs for this purpose. When people will re-pin your post, they will be redirected to your blog automatically.

5-A contest for your followers

Interact with your audience as much as possible. An easy way for this is by running a contest on your blog. All you need to do is pin that contest on Pinterest. This will work as a promotional strategy for your blog/ website by driving in more people via Pinterest.

The best part is that people actually spend a lot of their time on such contests and eventually the traffic towards your blog increases.

6-How about adding a “pin it” button?

Not having a visible, “pin it” button for your post is like not having “tweet button” on Twitter. Include a “pin it” button below each post of yours. This will make it easier for your followers to re-pin your posts.

7-Add author bio

The key to having tones of followers is to have a great interactive relationship with them. The more people know about you, the better. Also let them know about the people behind your amazing posts.

Make a separate pin board featuring all your authors, including brief introduction about them. This will make people feel more connected with you as well as your blog.

At the end

It’s not actually tough to use social medias to increase blog readers but the fact is that many of us are not trying to explore them. Just try it and you’ll fall in love with the result you are going to get with Pinterest...  I hope you enjoyed the topic.

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Tips To Increase Google Plus Followers For Best Online Reputation

Even the most diehard social media enthusiast would agree that Google plus can never be half as much fun as Facebook or Twitter are. On the other hand, perhaps Pinterest and Instagram can be, in the near future.

While casual surfers can pick and choose the network they want to or enjoy the most, online entrepreneurs, bloggers and internet marketers cannot choose to ignore Google plus.

Since more G+ shares can improve your search engine rankings, generate traffic to your website and make your posts or articles more visible across Google search, it makes sense to work harder on increasing the number of Google plus followers.

“How to increase your Google plus followers” is a question, which would, therefore, be of interest to any person who works online for a living.

Here are a few quick tips which you must look into (if you have not done that so far) to improve your G+ presence:

1-Complete your G+ profile

While most of us do create a G+ profile, not many go-ahead and complete it by furnishing all the details like education, address, employers, adding a profile picture, etc.

Select the “Edit profile” to add all relevant details to your profile. Also, take care to furnish details of all websites and blogs to which you contribute regularly by adding to the “Contributor Section”. This is of utmost importance to claim your Google authorship.

2-Integrate G+ profile with other social networks
This will make your profile look more authentic and will thus help you attract more G+ followers in the end.

3-Follow other people 

You are likely to be followed back by people whom you follow.

Look for people who share the same or similar interests as you and follow them. Besides the possibility of getting more followers, it will help you get more exposure in your chosen field.

4-Help other people
Merely creating a G+ profile and not working on it will get you nowhere. Spend a few minutes on your profile every day to help other people.

If you are, for instance, an affiliate marketer, look for people who have posted questions regarding Affiliate Marketing or are looking for information on that topic. Provide them meaningful information on that topic, so that they will want to follow you back.

5-Invite people to follow you

Add your Google plus profile link to your Author Bio, to your email signature and invite all friends and family to follow you on Google plus. It would be a good idea to place them in a different circle though, and not in the same circle as your business acquaintances or online contacts so that their profiles do not get spammed by your posts which do not interest them.

6-Add a Google Plus badge
Besides that, adding the Google plus badge to your blog or website really helps. You can add one by checking out on the widgets in your Dashboard. If you know how to place your “Facebook Like box” or “Follow me on Twitter” box, this should be easy for you.

7-Join Google plus communities

Share your posts, views, ideas and opinions with like-minded people by joining Google plus communities with similar or same interests as yours. You can even create your own community and invite people to join it.

At the end

Follow these simple tips and tricks to attract more followers on Google plus to build up a following for yourself. These tips will surely help you get more G+ followers.  I hope you enjoyed the topic.

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