Pinterest’s rapid growth has now made it the third largest social network. It recently passed LinkedIn posting a 145% increase in daily users since January 2012. This remarkable growth is not the only reason Pinterest’s growth is exciting. There are also an increasing number of metrics that point to Pinterest as the best driver for sales and traffic to sites off of the network.

Boticca.com, an online jewelry vendor, says customers coming from Pinterest average $180 on their purchases. Users coming from FaceBook, however, average $85 purchases. Women’s Health magazine says 25% of its referral traffic comes from Pinterest. Convertro, a marketing analytics firm, says the above anecdotal evidence is typical. By the end of 2012 Q2 Pinterest represents 17.4% of all social media based revenue.

Gabe Donnini, a Data Solutions Engineer at Chitika, has a survey of some metric systems for the social media agency’s presence on Pinterest. Donnini then offers his take on the important Pinterest metric’s the agency needs to observe. Re-Pins Per Pin is akin to shares or retweets on the other social networks. Clicks Per Pin is the most important because t measures how often people are leaving Pinterest for a web site, where the conversions take place. Another important metric is the Average Visit Duration. This helps the agency measure which pins are generating interest and might be on the cusp of providing clickthroughs.

Pinterest needs to be a part of campaigns run by the social media agency. Some products will lend itself better to a visual base campaign and some not so much, but Pinterest is for now the best place for generating sales when there is a visual component to be emphasized.

Pinterest best driver for sales