What is reasonable click-thru to inquiry rate / roi?

Marketing consultant site inquiries VS clickthrus

[Newbie2]

We have had about a 2% overall click-thru rate from our Google AdWord posting. However, the rate of actual inquiries generated on our site from the Google click-thrus seems low.

Can anyone provide a ballpark acceptable range or rate of click-thrus to inquiries based for a service industry / consultant?

I need to know this before we look at revising the site.

Thanks

Newbie2

[Shak]

newbie,

welcome to webmasterworld.

as much as I would love to give you a figure, its absolutely impossible.

factors include:

industry
pricing
site design
usability
call to action
the weather
last nights supper

absolutely impossible to tell.

however this topic along with some interesting threads about "increasing conversion rates" has been discussed in length a number of times in the past.

try giving "site search" a try :)

I would post urls for specific threads, but there are so many relevant 1s that its best if you explore yourself.

Shak

[oliver_w]

Click-throughs are impossible to tell, though you can try setting up a few different sites and seeing which one is performing better.

I calculate acceptable click-throughs based upon my profits.
I use the following formula for the widgets I sell:

(cost/click) * (conversion rate) < lowest acceptable profit margin

In other words, my markup on my product is $60. I won't sell it for less than a profit of $30.
I am not as concerned about the click-through rate as I am the cost of getting the sale, which is mathematically defined above.

[markusf]

I would assume if there are 6 addword listings on the page. people who want to make a purchase will click on the first one they see so they click on the top one. People who shop around will probably click on ones lower on the list. So when all is said and done, conversion rates for the ones closer to the top are higher then the ones at the bottom of the list.

[lgn]

Another point is to stick with the program for a few months. It takes on average 5 visits to your site, before a customer will buy, so this will add a time delay between advertising and your CTR. By the end of the second month, your CTR should begin to stablized.

Every industry is different, however I suspect that every industry will have this lag between advertisng and results (sales).

[markusf]

lgn how are you going about calculating your ROI on something like addwords?

[lgn]

All our adword traffic goes to a specific site
which is a mirror of our regular site. This
way we can track the performance of Adwords.

[markusf]

doesn't that get you in trouble with google? IE duplicate site/duplicate listing?

[Receptional]

Looking at one service industry site that we manage (cleaning service) we get about 2% of visitors enquire (fill in the web form). My best service industry site for this metric (in finance industry) gets nearer 5%. I think that is very high without brand to back up the site.

On the lower end, we get less than 1% conversion on our murder games site, but OH - the numbers make it worth every one.

Hope that helps. Interested to get other poeple's answers...

[markusf]

I get 20% conversions.. but that doesn't really count as my site is all free. I am sure if i made people pay it would go under 1%

[lgn]

doesn't that get you in trouble with google? IE duplicate site/duplicate listing?

You can use a robot exclusion file, so google
does not scan the duplicate content.

Frankly, I have never had any problems with Google with regard to duplicate content. Google seems to be smart enough to realize that their are valid reasons to have duplicate content other than spam,
and will just filter out the duplicate content. I don't use a robot exclusion file, and never had any problems in over five years on the web.

Use a robot exclusion file, if it makes you sleep better at night. There are tons of threads on
how to use robot exclusion in the webmaster world.