Understanding People, Events and Properties within Kissmetrics

The Kissmetrics data model is comprised of three components: people, events and properties. Understanding these concepts is vital to being able to analyze the data you are collecting.


What are people?

People are the visitors on your sites. A person in Kissmetrics represents the physical person behind the computer that came to view your blog, website or app.

Person Live

To understand how people are identified within Kissmetrics, take a look here.

What are events?

Events are the actions that your users are taking on your site or within your app.

Event Live

Some examples of events include:

Event Name Description
Signed Up This event will be triggered when a visitor completes the sign up
Logged in The event will be triggered anytime a visitor logs into your site or application
Completed check out This event will be triggered when a visitor completes the checkout process
Subscribed to newsletter This event will be triggered when a visitor subscribes to your newsletter

For suggested events for your use case take a look at our best practices guides.

What are properties?

Properties are additional bits of information describing your users and their actions. By using properties you are able to segment reports and dive deeper into your data.

Property Live

Properties are passed as key-value pairs. It is important to note that properties are tied to the person and not to the event.

If you are using JavaScript to track on your site, you will automatically track some properties, including:

Property Name Description Property Value Example
Device Type This is the device being used by the user Smartphone
Browser This is the browser that is being used by the user Chrome
Continent This is the Continent where the user is accessing your site from North America
Campaign Source When a link directing to your site is using UTM parameters Linkedin
Referrer The URl that the visitor came from www.example.com/blog/post1

The automatically tracked properties are a great start but you will also want to track your own. Some examples are:

Property Name Description Property Value Example
Plan Type The name of the plan the user signed up for Starter
Product Viewed Name The name of the product the user viewed Leather Notebook
Promo Code Used The promo code that was used during checkout SUMMERSALE
Video Played Name The name of the video that was watched by the user Beginners Guide

Examples

Now that you understand these concepts separately, let’s see how they all work together.

Example 1: Janet is a first-time visitor to your e-commerce site. She originally arrived at the site from a post she saw on a fashion blog. While she was on your site, she viewed 2 dresses, added 1 to her shopping cart, created an account and ultimately left without buying anything.

In this scenario, who is the person? What are the events? And what properties should be passed?

Person Events Properties
Janet Visited Site Returning: No
  Viewed Product (2x) Referrer: blog.highfashion.com/best_new_sites
  Added to Cart Viewed Product Name: Sapphires maxi dress
  Signed Up Viewed Product Name: The blackout dress
    Added to Cart Product Name: The blackout dress

Example 2: Jose is an avid user of a Saas product that helps him keep track of different list. Jose logs into his account, creates a new grocery list for the week, adds 3 items from the drop down list, saves the list and proceeds to email the list to his partner.

In this scenario, who is the person? What are the events they did? And what properties should be passed?

Person Events Properties
Jose Visited Site Returning: Yes
  Logged In New List Type: Grocery
  Created New List Added Item: Milk
  Added Item to List Added Item: Bread
  Saves List Added Item: Apple
  Shares List Shares List Method: Email

Next Steps

Once you understand these concepts and which events you will want to track, you will need to set them up. There are a few different methods to do so, you can get started with the Event Library or the JavaScript Library.

Is anything on this page unclear? Suggest edits on Github!