Y vs G conversion rates

[JenniferL]

Our site has good naural listings in Y, lousy natural listings in G which means we use Adwords. What is surprising is that Y traffic has a very low conversion rate, while Adwords does far better with the same amount of traffic. I'm just wondering if that's pretty common or am I missing something?

[eurotrash]

I think that would depend on a multitude of different factors. Wording of ad, landing page, wording on website, type of product/service to name just a few.

[minnapple]

I agree with eurotrash.
I would say product/service is the biggest variable.
My main focus of work is within ecom, and it is extensive.

If gramdma is buying something for the grandchildren, MSN has the highest conversion.

If a teenager is looking for the latest cell phone craze, google will bring a ton of them, but mom and dad will purchase it.

They will shop for price using whatever price site they know of but are unlikely just to hit the buy button of the first site listed in any search engine.

Repeat buyers often go back without a search.

Panic buyers purchase from the first one offering the product regardless of the search engine.

[EstoreSeeker]

I also second eurotrash here. You are not missing something but the factors as mentioned by eurot.
And while minapple correctly said that type of product/service is important, i also think that most of us don’t pay the needed attention to proper wording on website although we all know how crucial it is. Hope you have done it thoroughly.

[JenniferL]

We have G ads for most of the same keywords that we do well in Y with naturally. Our site wording is great, but the difference in conversion rates is pretty big.

[Wlauzon]

We have found it really hard to track conversions, because so many of our high priced items end up being called in by phone instead of direct purchase online.

Sometimes we are tempted to just stop all ads for a month and see what happens :/