Web Analytics Consultant

Recently there has been quite a buzz about how much money Dell has made from sales in which the referring source was Twitter.  I really appreciated Kevin Hillstrom’s take on it.  Especially since I’ve been up in the air regarding the validity of social media as a credible marketing tool and have been looking for anything negative to be said.  It’s so easy to be swept away.  But putting this aside for a later post, back to Twitter sales and mathematics…

Online sales conversion rates are generally accepted to be between 2% and 5%.  I really like to using the FireClick Index to keep an eye on this.  They are currently reporting the top line conversion rate at 5.00%.

So let’s assume that 5% of your traffic from Twitter makes a purchase on your site.  That’s nice, 5 out of 100 visitors from Twitter bought your products/services.

Now the hard question.  How much effort does it take on your part to get 100 of your Twitter followers to click through to your website?

Taking the general marketing conversion rate to be between 2% and 5%, we’ll optimistically say that 5% of your followers will click through.  Applying Bayes’ Theorem, that means that 0.25% of your Twitter followers will make a purchase on your website.  To make one sale, you need about 400 followers.

Now let’s look at Dell to see if this math is credible.  DellOutlet has about 1.5 million Twitter followers.  The report stated that Dell made $6.5 million.  Assuming 0.25% of their followers made a purchase makes the average purchase price at roughly $1,750.  I suppose that could be realistic considering that there are some enterprise level items available through the Dell Outlet.  [To someone in the know at Dell Outlet, I'd loooove to know how close I am to the average purchase price for Twitter visitors.]

I’m no expert at Twitter strategy, but my guess is that you need to dedicate some serious resources to get enough relevant followers to merit it as a marketing channel.  I would say it will be easier to do so if your products/services appeal to a large, diverse audience.  But if you are in a small niche, Twitter might not be the best solution.

Bottom line – Twitter is another marketing channel and requires effort too, this isn’t an easy way to profit.  It’s new, but it appears that there has been some valid success.  In the end, you really have to test out new marketing channels and compare them to how those you already use are performing.  So I wouldn’t write it off, I’d test it!

My brother-in-law shared an experience a Google candidate had with me.  Aside from the fact that a college graduate shouldn’t expect to get a management position, I felt bad about her experience.  However, upon further consideration, I came up with my own analytical thinking question.

How would you go about determining the most used color in website design?

Today I saw @cjpberry ask on Twitter, “Why can’t I have both quality and quantity talent in web analytics?”  This led me to the following realization.

Do you remember the computer science landscape before the dot-com growth? Candidates with the experience were hard to find and were easily demanding high salaries. It was the good life.  Fast-forward to the height of the dot-com era and they were a dime a dozen.  Fast-forward to now and many are jobless.

We have always understood that web analytics was an afterthought of the internet.  It was the hip thing to throw money at, then executives finally saw money drying up and started asking questions…deep business questions.

So here’s my prediction – Web Analytics jobs will imitate the path that Computer Science jobs took.

We’re seeing it already.  Everyone wants web analysts now and they’re not cheap.  I couldn’t have planned a better career strategy to stave off this economy.  And as Christopher Berry pointed out, there isn’t exactly a glut of quality web analysts.

However, in five years (or less), this will shift.  There will be as many web analysts as there are corporate websites.  Just a few years beyond that, there will be twice as many web analysts as there are corporate websites.  Small businesses will be able to afford full-time web analysts.  I’m not even going to approach how that will level the playing field for them.

From my viewpoint, there are only two ways to get a good web analyst right now:

1. If you can afford them, pay for them.
2. If you can’t afford them, find someone that you can trust that at least has some experience and will learn quickly.

Understand that with option #2 you will eventually have to pay them like option #1.  However, they will have earned it and made it possible for you to afford it.  Hey,Maybe they’ll even make it fiscally possible for you to hire more web analysts.

So that’s my take on the future of web analytics careers.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.