KISSmetrics moves from analysis to execution with Engage, a new conversion optimization tool

Since the word “metrics” is in the company name, it’s not a shock that KISSmetrics has been all about analysis.

No longer.

KISSmetrics is unveiling a new product, and in some sense, a new identity. The company is launching Engage, a conversion rate optimization solution that is focused on taking traffic to your website and turning it into dollars. Engage will join the company’s existing product, which is now called Analyze.

“It is definitely a shift for KISSmetrics, but the ultimate goal stays the same: make it easier for marketers to increase conversions,” KISSmetrics CEO Brian Kelly told me via email. “Analyze shows you what to do and now Engage lets you do it.”

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Install Engage on your site and you gain the power to create pop-ups, bumpers (think an intro or an extro to your content), lightboxes, and other dynamic content “modals,” the company says. These modals can be triggered by configurable combinations of time on page, form completion status, scrolling, idle time, or other user behaviors. Alternatively, they can be activated based on targeting criteria, or can simply live in designated areas of your web pages and be seen by all visitors.

KISSmetrics is a popular solution in our VB study of 36 major conversion rate optimization tools.

Notable customers include Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, WordPress, and UberConference. Its core penetration has been in the small and medium-size enterprise space, and its most-used features have included web analytics, funnel analysis, and mobile analytics.

That may now change.

The new Engage product adds the ability to do more than collect and analyze data. Now, nontechnical staff such as marketers can do something with that data — right inside KISSmetrics.

The current challenge is that most marketers — 63 percent — update their website based on intuition or best practices, KISSmetrics says. In other words, they’re not using data, and more specifically they’re not using the most applicable data of all: user behavior on their own websites.

Engage works pretty much as you’d expect: Embed a line of Javascript into your site, and you can create and edit conversion elements right on your pages in a web browser. You can add popups, bumpers, or other modals to your entire site, or just to a single page. After creating a conversion element, you can then set up targeting, placement, and frequency options; publish the element; and track the improvement.

Basic options are free in the KISSmetrics freemium product; advanced options are only available in the company’s paid plans.

While Engage is currently web-only, KISSmetrics says it will soon be available on mobile, as its statistics and analysis tools already are.

Clearly, this is a shot across the bow of companies such as Optimizely, which have long allowed you to run A/B and multivariate tests on your web (and recently mobile) traffic. Optimizely currently has about 50 percent more market penetration than KISSmetrics across the 3.1 million U.S. websites we studied.

KISSmetrics, obviously, would like that statistic to change, and sees moving to an active role in helping marketers convert traffic to customers as part of the solution.

“Marketers spend lots of money and time driving traffic to their websites and landing pages trying to get conversions,” Kelly said. “Engage is focused on getting more of that traffic to convert by delivering concise, compelling, and personalized messages at just the right time.”