Google adword help

new and not converting

[goldjake]

So we are the manufacturers of the car covers and we have a lot of competition. Some of it is people we sell to which we are stopping as soon as possible. THe problem is i am paying .50cents or more for adwords. I cannot get any exposure without paying a lot of money. I do not know how my competition does it. I have used many combinations of types of cars, trucks, vans and suvs combines with covers and many other words. My ads show the price of the cover and it is less expensive than any cover out in the market. One of my titles is Budge covers start $25 (the bottom line is) Cost leader on the internet. Other ads are truck covers lowest price on the internet. I have been able to get a lot of impressions but a very low conversion rate to sales. As long as its profitable i can set my budget at any price. We are a million dollar company that sells to many of the biggest retailers in the United States. We do not have phone lines and we answer our email pretty quickly. I am finally getting a bonus next week after working here for two years promoting the website. THis is my first job out of college. I made the website my username and use .com. If there are any suggestions, resources or anything please let me know. I am little frustrated. We are developing a new site with a search inside the website, link exchange program, affiliate program and coupon maker. Any suggestions would be great. I am here to answer questions. I am looking forward to your knowledge.

[ccam96]

I've been advertising on AdWords for over 2 years now. I'm not in your industry , but I have a few suggestions..

One suggestion I have is to continue to split test your ad copy in Adwords. Sometimes it only takes a small change to your ad copy to begin to get a decent CTR. You don't have to pay $0.50 / click if your CTR is healthy. This is how your competition is doing it.

I am a firm believer of NOT putting your prices in the ad itself. I've found that this actually puts off visitors as you've already "given away " the information that they are looking for without visiting your site. They will just go to other sites and soon forget your price. Let your website do the selling for you. The idea of the ad is to get them to visit which in turn lowers your per visitor advertising cost.

Use a catchy title such as "Great Truck Cover Deals" , or something along these lines. 2nd line.. "Check Out Our Unbeatable Prices Today. Fast Shipping. "

Always use a call to action such as "buy today" or "find out now" and always state in your ad body any specials or anything else that "sets you apart from your competition"..

Always us All Caps for the first letter in each word of your titles and descriptions. Most of my tests confirm that this gives a better CTR. See my example above. I also believe that capitalizing your URL is an improvement as well. Example would be BestTruckCovers.com . It is easier to read and improves your type ins.

Anyway, good luck and send some of that bonus my way if any of this works out ; ) .

[Scruffy]

You say you aren't getting conversions.
Are you getting clicks?
The fact that you say it costs a lot of money suggests that you are.

If you get clicks but no sales, then it's not the ad, it's the website.

[goldjake]

that was really good suggestion thank you. I am averaging about 5000 dollars a week but it is defiantly could be a million dollar company. I will take out the price on the website. I really like that ad line you used. Anymore suggestions would be great. I am getting clicks but urchin is telling me that they are not converting to sales. The strange part is i have a lot of direct sales. Very strange. Thank you for your help- i really appreciate it

[goldjake]

O and i am not plugging my website here but my website is empirecovers and put a .com on the end. It is a very easy website to use.

[Scruffy]

I'd say that needs a little work.
The menu system is 'clunky', the page loads slowly and it throws a server security warning at each refresh.

[goldjake]

how is it clunky- we are redoing the site in two weeks the new version will be up with coupon machine, affiliate program, and many other tools to maximize seo.

[Scruffy]

OK, I'll be specific.
The output is in XHTML. I am viewing in IE6 which doesn't handle XHTML at all well. The menu response is sluggish and much of the time a grey band (the background) appears and disappears over the menu.
The page reloads itself (slowly) at every mouse action.

At every reload, the browser puts up a warning that the page contains mixed content (secure AND unsecure items)

All of this would seriously frighten the average customer.

In Netscape it isn't so bad but the security warnings persist.

[goldjake]

Sorry to bother you but what is better- doing it all in javascript that the search engines hate or do it in a way that it reloads everytime. The new website will still reload but will not be an https format. It will not be secure till the check out. That was one of the main problems with the website.

[Scruffy]

Well, the search engines don't object to script, they just ignore it. but in this case anyway I think you would have a bigger problem trying to do it in javascript because you would have to download your entire database to the client.
So the way you are doing it is fine,

I think the biggest problem you have (after the https question) is the image download times. You might consider using a more highly compressed jpeg, you will lose some quality, but on the Internet, speed is the utmost importance. Try to get your image files below 10k bytes. (Consider using a thumbnail linked to a larger version)

Good luck - apart from these points I think it's a good site. Customers are easily frightened ;-)

[jtara]

Why would you want to stop your wholesale customers from advertising? That is a good way to lose dealers. Unless you are completely changing your business model and abandoning your dealer network, this is really a bad move, IMO. It's always touchy selling direct to retail customers when you also have a dealer network, but this sends your dealers the clearest message that you can that you don't give a damn about them.

You'd be undermining your company to do this. While you might look good and get a promotion for increasing Internet sales, you'd be canibalizing your wholesale sales. Good luck when your boss figures out the cost of your "improvement" to sales.

What is going to get you more sales? One ad sending customers to your directy, or 10 ads sending customers to your dealers?

[goldjake]

Its potentially a 6 million dollar internet company and we are selling about 20,000 dollars a month to this one wholesaler who makes satelite companies. We also sell to many of the biggest retail companies nation wide. We are not going to compromise those companies but losing these small companies is nothing compared to what we can do. They compromise our market brand and make us waste a lot more money than we should on keywords and advertising. We have a bigger budget than them but they keep on saying they are the official sellers when they are not and lying to potential customers. It is just a big mess but there money is not that profitable to keep on using them.

[ronburk]

Hopefully your redesign has already done all the obvious stuff:

Cache Graphics Use the Expires: header to tell HTTP clients they can cache those highly repetitive graphics instead of continually having to retransmit HTTP If-Modified-Since requests to see if they changed since 5 seconds ago when I last downloaded them.

Ungraceful ActiveX Degradation go through the order process with ActiveX. Then with ActiveX set to "always ask". Then with ActiveX set to "off". Nuff said.

Below the Waist on First Date that's how it feels when a company makes you setup an "Account" just to buy one damn item. Making an account should be an option. Insisting on it totally kills the mood for an impulse buyer. I should be able to do the complete order in one page, two at the most.

And Then They Never Call you'll send me the tracking number if I email you and ask real nice? Yeah, right. How about you automatically email me the tracking number right away, and help keep me from suspecting you're actually a teenager running this out of his parent's basement?

The Hidden Zinger of Death have you really been working on this 2 years without hearing that customers want to know the Full Price Including Taxes and Shipping before they start giving you personal information? Ever wonder why the big e-commerce folks have so many "free shipping" deals? Because it can make a big difference in consumer behavior if they don't have to wonder whether or not they're looking at the real price. Go do an online price comparison for a popular digital camera. Pick the absolute cheapest seller, then go try to buy the camera. Notice how it turned out that it wasn't even close to the cheapest, after all? Notice how you gasped when you saw that shipping and (the dreaded) handling was $35 for a 1-pound package shipped the slowest possible way? That's what you subconsciously tell shoppers you're going to do to them when you don't make the taxes and shipping 100% up front, plain, visible, and reasonable.

IMHO :-)

[goldjake]

Thank you so much for helping me out. We are making a system where people do not have to sign up to buy a product. That is the first thing I wanted to do with the new website. It is difficult because we are working with fedex which has a terrible integration to send the tracking number to the customers. We would love to do it but Fedex makes it impossible to do it. Fedex is so bad, and I do not recommend anyone using fedex, that if you want to buy two items that are totally different, the second day shipping gets totally messed up. Fedex told me its my problem and I have to deal with it. I am putting in a shipping calculator before they have to buy. Any other suggestions would be great. I would rather have the lowest price than put in free shipping. It is just the way I feel in this competitive environment.

[ronburk]

I would rather have the lowest price than put in free shipping.

Totally understandable. Now, which would your customers rather have?