If so, the advertising may just be attracting the wrong people, instead of potential customers. Play around with the ad title and description. See if that leads to better conversion rates (fewer clicks, but just as many or more potential customers.)
The problem could also be the site itself, which could discourage (or at least not encourage) purchases. You can try to estimate whether this is the case if you can compare to other sites in your industry (hard data to come by) or do some log file analysis to determine most popular pages, average length of time spent on site, etc.
Theft does occur (usually called fraud) but that's not always the case. You can eliminate some of the potential for fraud if you turn off the content match on your campaign.
The clicks I get are great! Averaging about 10%CTR. However....who cares about CTR when sales don't happen.
In my experience, Shelbesmom, when you are getting traffic to your site, but very few folks actually buying, or signing up, or otherwise converting - it often means you have not met the 'clicker's' expectations in some way.
Beren spoke to this already, saying:
The problem could also be the site itself, which could discourage (or at least not encourage) purchases.
So do take a look at your site. I often suggest that people take themselves out of their 'expert at their own business' role, and look at their site purely as a consumer. In fact start with your keywords, your ad, and then your site.
Imagine you are a consumer. Search on one of your own keywords. Look at the ads that comes up. Would you click on yours if you knew nothing about your site or business except what appears in the ad?
Now click on your ad. Having done that, what do you think of the site you're taken to? (Remember, you are a consumer, and have never seen it before.)
* Does the site present a business you'd want to deal with?
* If the site is selling 'memberships' are you happy with what you are told about the business which now wants to collect information about you, and probably take your credit card number?
* Do you see what you were expecting to see?
* Are you given enough information to feel comfortable?
* Do you have recourse if you are not satisfied?
* Do you trust the business, based on the tone of the site?
* What do you think of the prices? And so forth.
Bottom line: if all you knew about the business is what you saw in the ad, and then on the site, would you do business with you?
I think you see what I'm getting at.
I hope this exercise will help a bit. It has worked in the past with advertisers I've talked with. It can even be fun to take yourself out of your expert role, and look at your site with entirely fresh eyes.
AWA
What happens AWA when you were converting fine before the AdWords change, and now you aren't? You haven't changed a thing, yet the sales are way down... Weird huh?
C.K.
P.S. Nothing against you, as I know you don't control it... But.
Well, right now, while I am learning, I am just an affiliate. The sites, to me, are something that I WOULD buy....I like the colors....accessibilty....And also, like the letter writer before me, I had great sales, before the change....now, the CTR is the same...but sales are almost non-existant....
I will keep digging!
Thanks
Have you looked to see if the checkout process has stayed the same? A slight change in the checkout process or shipping costs can dramatically affect conversion rates.
It's not just if you would buy the product yourself, its if you would buy that product from that site and not get distracted throughout the process.
I've seen a few sites that have complained about lower conversion rates in the past couple months, and the first thing that jumps out at me is that they have AdSense on their pages. For merchant sites, this amazes me. If you're in the process of buying something, why would you want to serve an ad for a competitor for the exact same product? Sure you get a few cents for the click, but it's not worth the money you just lost in not conveting that customer.
Also, have you double checked your urls to make sure they are carrying your affiliate ID through the process?
A change in either of the above would have an impact on conversion rates.
I am facing a similar problem: for one and a half year, I´m running a -more or less unchanged- campaign with somewhat 0.5% CTR and an average of about 50 Clicks per day. Sales through this campaign were stable at a certain niveau.
Exactly on April 19th, the campaign went nuts: A CTR of 8-10%, 500-800 clicks/day, exploding costs and: zero sales.
Even worse: Until now, my own server logs and stat-software matched the google-numbers. - Since Apr. 19th, google claims to have delivered more than 10.000 clicks, while my own stats report 900 clicks from google for the entire month!
Anyone else?
Fred
