How should we measure time spent in app for a session with KISSmetrics

[nicolashery]

Off the top of my head I'm thinking of starting a timer when the app starts, and adding a sessionTime property to each event.

I would also send a Started session event when the app authenticates (from login or cookie). It would allow us to measure the number of times someone "connects" to the app (regardless of wether it's a login or a saved auth token).

I would need to send a Finished session event, which would fire anytime:

• a logout happens
• after a period of inactivity
• a tab closed (I think I can catch that event but not 100%) sure

I'm thinking of emailing KISSmetrics support to see if they have any suggestions/best practices on that.

[cheddar]

I'd be very surprised if KISSMetrics didn't provide a method of segmenting events into sessions for us. Sessionization is commonly done on the server side after-the-fact so that you can adjust the period of inactivity required to determine that a session has terminated.