Where are you getting the conversions?

I recently created a site to post about online marketing analytics stuff.  I haven’t out right promoted it yet, so the traffic isn’t much.  However, of the traffic I do get, 50% comes from Twiter– 41% specifically from the ones I tweet out.  How do I know this?  I put campaign tracking codes on all the tweets I send out that generate traffic to my site.

Anyway, let’s note that Twitter is the main driver of traffic to my site.  It’s clearly working better than the other channels so far, so if my goal is to generate more traffic, I should focus on getting more followers.  I had a Twitter button on the sidebar, so at least that’s a start.

So I thought about it some more and decided I should test to see if I added another Twitter button on the bottom of each post, that would generate more followers.

Sure enough, I started getting some followers the next few days.

Cool… but which button are they coming from?  Are they from the newly added buttons on the bottom of each post, or the one from the sidebar?  I assume it’s the buttons on the bottom of each post, but I’d rather not guess.  Or are they even coming from the buttons at all?  Maybe a random person with a lot of followers happened to recommend following me.

So how do I track to see: 1) if the buttons are getting any actions; and 2) which buttons are getting me the followers?

The key is to put in a “Track Event” into the buttons. Since I use the latest Google Analytics async tracking, the code looks like below for event tracking.

The arrow indicates what is categorized as “Labels.”  With labels, I can add the same code as above into the posts Twitter buttons with a different label name and see results of the different buttons.  The below shows an example of what I have in the Twitter button at the end of my “Old Spice parody video.”

This way, not only do I track whether an event was triggered from the button on the sidebar or the post, but also which post generated the event.

Now, let’s take a look into my Google Analytics account.

All the events shown are for users clicking on the Twitter buttons.

Sweet! What the heck happened on 7/21?  That’s when I put up my “Old Spice Parody” video.  Did it come from the button on the post or the sidebar?

First, go to Content and select the “Labels” under “Event Tracking.”

Wow. 91% of the events for clicking on the Twitter buttons have come from the button at the bottom of the post on the “Old Spice Parody” video.

Bottom line:  the button on the bottom of the post killed the sidebar button.  I need to focus my call to action for Twitter events within the post.

Takeaway: Find out your goal, figure out what is going to support the goal, track specifically, and think about next steps.  Track Event is a great way to track where your successes and failures are and to use the data to further optimize your site.

Find out which call-to-actions pack the most punch.

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Posted by Naoshi Yamauchi Director, Analytics
Friday, July 23, 2010 AT 9:30 am

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