Forum Moderators: buckworks
-ABertone
Karl
I put AdSense up for products that are out of stock. I see it as a way to serve my customers. If I can not sell them the product, I refer them to several vendors via AdSense that can.
I prefer to take the order, not charge the customer, and set the proper expectation on a delivery date. Often, customers are willing to wait, or I can offer an alternative. If they prefer to order elsewhere, we happily cancel their order, but this is not their normal response.
I would hate to give away a "customer for life."
-ABertone
In the end I decided it looked unprofessional, potentially lost me sales, and added extra clutter to the page that didn't need to be there.
I think for an ecommerce site, every element (well most) on the page should directly drive the customer to make a sale, adsense isn't one of those things.
Jon
I first put it only on my search result pages, for an alternative, if nothing is found. Little or no income there. I kept those on the search result pages, then tried some on my product pages. Just a small rectangle ad. Not ugly to the eye. If my item is out of stock, they have an option. If it isn't out of stock, they can also look at the ads. No big deal to me, with over 12,000 uniques a month, the income from google complements my monthly orders nicely.
I guess, the way I look at it is this, it all depends on what you sell. We sell electronic accessories, which are EVERYWHERE. We get sales, and adwords keywords for electronics pay well. We win, win. But if you are selling a service of some kind, I don't think it would be a good idea, because you then risk that person NEVER coming back, where for me, the possiblity is always there with over 10,000 products.
There are huge sites out there that can crush me like bug and use adsense, but internet shopping is a lot about impulse buying.
More like: Browse, find it, read about it, buy it, DONE!
Less like: drive there, find it, compare it, read about it, 100 people in line, finally buy it, 2000 cars in the lot, run away shopping carts and $3 a gallon for gas.
So, all in all, I think it has more to do with the merch. you sell then your personal pref. or unprofessionalism.
I wonder if you would put adsense on your e-Commerce site. This would run the risk of referring traffic to your competitors and may also look unprofessional.
I've been using AdSense on my "back 40" pages since October 2003. This month, for the first time I introduced AdSense to my main commerce pages. I made the extra effort to work with the colors and ad sizes until I found a combination that blends in well with the commerce page. It looks as professional as anything else I do.
We are pretty good at gaining customer loyalty, and if anything I think this only helps. My customers might be looking for something I don't have, I can still show them a product. For the visitors that are just browsing, I offer them more options. And I do watch my competitors' ads. Fortunately the niche is narrow, and I only tag the most aggressive advertisers.
Now the best part. I've never made any money from AdSense while it was confined to my non-commerce pages. For the first time in 18 months it looks like the first check will be coming in.. we'll see. And sales are still good. That was always the biggest concern.
1.) Filter out your competition
2.) Run A/B testing to determine if your RPM improves or not
3.) Ad Sense may cannibalize some high value pages, so be careful about placing the promotion on those pages
4.) Ad Sense can be a good backfiller in some areas
Good Luck
