I’ve found six reports for Twitter client statistics from Many Eyes/IBM, TwitStat, Sysomos, Twalytics, Funkatron, and TweetStats, however there are some big differences among their reports. For example, web (twitter.com) usage varies from 18.9% to 48%; TweetDeck varies from 6.6% to 13.8%; and Hootsuite varies from 0.6% to 5.2%. That’s a lot of variation considering these reports were all generated on the same day (Feb 5, 2010) with the exception of the Sysomos report (Nov 16, 2009). Averaging the results among all six reports reduces the variances likely due to the different data collection methodologies.

When we average the results we can see that 38.1% of all Twitter activity takes place on twitter.com (Web), and 2.4% takes place on m.twitter.com (mobile web), for a total of 40.5% of twitter activity coming from the twitter.com domain. Why does this matter? Marketers need to be able to measure the volume and quality of traffic coming from Twitter to determine an ROI for their efforts. If you’re only measuring visits from twitter.com in your web analytics tool, you’re only measuring 40% of all the activity.

Here are three possible solutions…

1. Trackable URL shortening services

Services like bit.ly, cli.gs, tr.im, and HootSuite’s ow.ly will provide statistics on how many clicks were generated from your twitter posts. This is especially useful if you just want the number of clicks, but any good analyst knows that it’s what happens after the click that really matters. These services cannot measure any of the activity that happens on your website post-click, so using URL shortening services alone can only provide limited insights.

2. Append tracking codes to all links posted on Twitter

Most web analytics tools, like Google Analytics, allow you to append tracking parameters to links in order to report certain visits under a specific campaign rather than direct traffic. Links posted to Twitter are perfect opportunities for tracking codes since around 60% of your Twitter traffic could potentially be reported as direct visits. If you use Google Analytics, Google offers a free tool to help you add these parameters to your links.

So instead of posting your link as:
http://www.mydomain.com/abc

You could use this link instead, with added Google Analytics tracking paramters:
http://www.mydomain.com/abc?utm_source=twitter-feed&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=twitter-abc

These parameters can make links really long, so you’ll need to use a URL shortener to post them on Twitter. When you add tracking parameters to all links you tweet, you can start to measure the actionable fun stuff like goal conversions, time on site, visitor loyalty, visitor recency, and bounce rate for all traffic from Twitter, rather than just 40% of it. This information can be a starting point for generating an ROI on your social media efforts.

If you give utm_source a value different than “twitter.com”, you can be sure that all visits from “twitter.com” originated from links posted by tweeters other than you (a good thing!). Comparing your own efforts (traffic from the twitter-feed campaign) to your fans’ efforts (traffic from twitter.com) can yield some pretty neat insights. This can be a good way to gauge how energized the twittersphere is about your brand. To get the most accurate view possible, I’d recommend using a multiplier to estimate the total number of visits from twitter.com (details below)

3. Use a multiplier to compensate for visits from Twitter clients

Since 59.5% of all Twitter traffic could be reported in your web analytics tool under direct visits, a quick (and dirty) way to estimate the number of visits you’re really getting from Twitter is to multiply the number of twitter.com visits by 2.47 (which is 100%/40.5%). This calculation assumes that your audience’s twitter client usage matches that of the overall Twitter population (40.5% use the website), and that the audiences among different clients are uniform (TweetDeck’s users behave exactly like UberTwitter’s). Of course, this is likely not the case, but the more traffic you receive from Twitter, the closer this estimate will be.

Using tracking parameters is definitely the better way to go for accurate & insightful Twitter stats, but the multiplier is a good starting point. And as explained above, tracking parameters can’t be appended to links that are posted by your fans, so applying a multiplier is necessary to estimate the total number of visits generated by all tweeters other than you.

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1. More effectively evaluate your traffic sources

You have likely defined a couple goals which are crucial to your success such as submitting a lead generation form, or buying a product. You likely also have some other secondary goals which you want to track, but are not as important in the grand scheme of things, such as posting a comment or entering a contest. If you do not define goal values for each goal, the only way you can get a holistic view of which traffic sources perform the best is by using the average conversion rate for all goals which essentially treats all goals equally. By assigning goal values, you can adjust the weighting for each goal. Submitting a lead generation form could be worth $100.00 to your business whereas submitting a comment could be worth $1.00. When you make this distinction, you can see that while traffic source A has a lower average conversion rate than traffic source B, visitors from traffic source A are more likely to submit the lead generation form (worth 100 times more to your business).

This might seem trivial in this example, but if you are utilizing goal tracking as effectively as possible, you should have at least 5 goals set up. With this many goals, you NEED to use per visit goal value to truly see how valuable the traffic source is to you.

2. Easily determine ROI on your Pay Per Click campaigns

As mentioned in #2 above, if you’re not assigning goal values, you are evaluating traffic sources on average conversion rate, thus treating all goals equally. With PPC campaigns, goal values become even more important because they can tell you if you are losing money or making money on a specific campaign. If you are using Google Analytics and Adwords, your PPC campaigns are already integrated to your web analytics software – nice! If you’re using another set up, there are likely some steps you’ll need to take so that your PPC campaigns are integrated with your web analytics software. Comparing RPC and CPC, your web analytics package can compute the ROI and Margin – essential information for determining how to best optimize your PPC spending. You could be spending $100 a month on a PPC campaign that has a low average conversion rate, but high RPC and speding $10,000 per month on a PPC campaign that has a high average conversion rate, but low RPC, and you wouldn’t know unless you actually assign goal values.

3. Use “$ index” to choose which pages to optimize

Many web analytics packages will calculate a metric for each page on the site called “$ Index” or “dollar index”. Calculation of this metric is slightly complicated, but analyticsmarket.com did a great job of explaining it:

[$ Index is...] A measurement of how influential a page is to conversion. It doesn’t indicate how much money a page brought. Rather, it’s a score. The higher the number, the more frequently it was viewed prior to a purchase or conversion. It’s calculated by taking the goal conversion value or transaction value of a visit and applying it evenly to all the pages prior to that conversion. Seen in aggregate, it just attempts to correlate pages to conversions.

So, the more important a page is to a goal conversion, the higher the $ index. And, the more important a page is to a high value goal conversion, the higher the $ index, because all goals are not equal. If you do not assign goal values, $ index for every page will be $0.00.

In your top content reports, you can see the $ index for each page on your site. You may find a few surprises of your top landing pages that have exceptionally high or low $ index values – take a look at these pages to see if you can learn anything from them. Is there anything we can learn from the high $ index pages, and apply to the low $ index pages? Do you have any hypotheses you’d like to test with a multivariate test? $ index is a great metric for deciding where you want to focus your optimization efforts.

4. You will never have complete information, so just jump in now

If you have been putting off assigning goal values because you don’t have all the necessary information, do not let this hold you back – you could be missing out on key actionable insights. Gather whatever information you can find to help you determine the value of one conversion for the specific goal, and assign the value to that goal. In web analytics, it’s very rare that you will have every piece of information you need, so just do your best with the information you have. You can always change it down the road (although only future goal conversions will use the new goal value after the change).

The most important consideration when assigning goal values is not the absolute value of each goal, but the relative values. In other words, if submitting a lead generation form is 100 times more valuable to your business than posting a comment, make sure the lead generation form goal value is 100 times the goal value for comment posting. Try to get the goal values as accurate as possible, but in most cases, it’s impossible to have perfect information, so just do your best.

5. Show your boss/investors/CEO the dollar value of the website

You could go to your CEO and say “Our website had 413 newsletter signups, 285 comments, 14 lead generation form submissions, 1030 social shares, 79 RSS subscriptions, and 306 account registrations last month,” to which she will probably reply, “Great – so what?”

When you can speak to your CEO in a language she understands (dollars and cents), you will get a better reaction, and get your point heard. What if you said “Our website had 413 newsletter signups, 285 comments, 14 lead generation form submissions, 1030 social shares, 79 RSS subscriptions, and 306 account registrations last month, representing $42,864 in value to our business, up $8,477 month-over-month.” This clearly communicates the value the website brings to the company, and you’re much more likely to receive the support you need.

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