Tracking people with analytics

Tracking People With Analytics In 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,

Tracking People With Analytics

kissmetrics.com

Table of Contents

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

Tracking People With Analytics

In 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.)

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 visit

on desktop

1

Page view

( anon123)

Page view

( anon123)

Page view

(john@doe.co)

Page view

(john@doe.co)

User registers 2

Anonymous ID

(anon123)

Identify an Alias

Tie 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

Tracking PeoPle WiTh analyTics — kissmeTrics

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

ExAmPlE #3

What happens to data from sessions after someone

is 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

Tracking PeoPle WiTh analyTics — kissmeTrics

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 new Anonymous ID

(anon789)

Create a new

Anonymous ID

(anon123)

Identify

an Alias

Tie Customer ID (jane@doe.co)

to anonymous ID (anon123)

User registers 2

Identify and merge an Alias

Tie Customer ID (jane@doe.co)

to anonymous ID (anon789)

User logins 5

Track same iPad Anonymous ID

(anon789)

Second visit

on iPad

4 First visit

on desktop

1

First visit

on iPad 3

Everything gets tied to the user correctly

With kissmetrics

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

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 new Client ID

(device500)

Create a new

Client ID

(device100)

Assign User ID

Tie User ID (anon456)

to Client ID (device100)

Assign User ID

Tie User ID (anon456)

to Client ID (device500)

User logins 5

Identify a Client ID

(device500)

First visit

on iPad

3 First visit

on desktop

1

User registers

2

Second visit

on iPad 4

Correctly assigned to user Not assigned to user Correctly 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

Tracking PeoPle WiTh analyTics — kissmeTrics

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)

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:

Tracking PeoPle WiTh analyTics — kissmeTrics

KISSmetrics definitely has a huge advantage over Google Analytics for this If you need to track users across multiple devices go with KISSmetrics!

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

Tracking PeoPle WiTh analyTics — kissmeTrics

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

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 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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