KISSmetrics is a highly-flexible solution that allows you to track and analyze nearly anything. However, we’ve determined that for most Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies, tracking a few key events can give business owners powerful insights.
After integrating the SaaS API, you’ll be able to calculate key metrics for your business such as:
KISSmetrics will help you set up the metrics that answer these questions, and then guide you through setting and achieving the goals that align with how you’re currently trying to improve your business.
In order to calculate these metrics you’ll need to set up KISSmetrics to track a few key events. Most of the time this means inserting a bit of code in your application to call the KISSmetrics API at the appropriate moment. The key events you’ll want to integrate are described in SaaS Events.
It is highly recommended that you read through this documentation first before continuing.
There are several ways you can send these key events to KISSmetrics:
We’ve built a SaaS specific API on top of our standard KISSmetrics Javascript API that makes tracking the key SaaS Events easy. This is the option we recommend for most users. You can read more about it in Javascript SaaS API.
You can use our Ruby API, PHP API, Python API or any of our other APIs to send us the events directly. Just be sure to use the same event names and properties described in SaaS Events.
Many of the events and data described in SaaS Events might already be living in your existing application SQL database. If you are interested in importing your existing data please read Importing Existing SaaS Data into KISSmetrics.
If you’re currently using KISSmetrics and you’re already recording events like the ones described in SaaS Events, then all you’ll need to do is use our forthcoming UI to configure the metrics to use your events instead of the preconfigured ones.
It’s OK if you are using different event names than the ones we use - you’ll be able to tell KISSmetrics to use your event names instead. If you have questions about this please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Yes! There is no reason you can’t use the Javascript SaaS API in combination with imported data from your database or data recorded with the Ruby API, PHP API or other API. In most cases you’ll use the Javascript SaaS API for most events, but you’ll use a server-side API for recording Billed events.
If you do use multiple methods just make sure you use the same identity for each data source (such as the same username, email address, or user id for each user of your site). This way we can tie all the data together. You can read more about this under Identity Management.
Filed under Getting Started