The phrase "sporting widgets" has a lot of competition, so I've been running AdWords ads for that phrase. The ad headline is "sporting widgets," the first line is "Acme Blue Widgets," and the third line is "Low Prices, Fast Free Shipping."
I've had about 50,000 impressions, 170 or so clicks, but not a single sale. As far as I can tell, nobody has even started the checkout process.
Meanwhile, I've spent a bit over $100 at .75 per click.
I can't think of another way to phrase the ad. So, give up, or are there other ways to test?
I can't think of another way to phrase the ad. So, give up, or are there other ways to test?
What conversion rate did you anticipate for this line of products? Based on this expectation, is 170 clicks statistically valid? Is your pricing for this product MSRP - or are there differences with your competiton? Is the landing page optimized to encourage immediate purchase for this product? Are you capturing queries on the traffic you're receiving? Have you added any negative keywords?
Almost every time I've encountered this scenario, it was the landing page that lost the potential customer after they got there. I've had clients or potential clients with no call to action, no easy way to order, tiny phone numbers hidden at the bottom of the page or it takes 4 or 5 clicks to order or sign up. In some cases, it was the wording on the page and by changing the way the text was written or by re-writing the headline, we increased the number of conversions.
The other possibility...the keyword is broad and Google is using expanded match so people seeing your ad may not be looking for what you have to offer but your account is so optimized and your positioning is so good that people are clicking on your ad because its in position one, two or three.
I didn't have any conversion rate in mind, as I'm new to this and didn't know what to expect. But after all of this time I'd expect at least one order. Other widgets from other manufacturers that I sell are going great.
As far as price goes, I'm nowhere near MSRP. I've researched what other sites charge, and tend to price near the bottom.
I don't understand the concept of negative keywords, so I can't address that question.
Justshelley, maybe it is the landing page, although I'm using the same format as for other products. The visitor finds an .html page with general information about Acme sporting widgets. Then there are links to the specific models. I use phrases in the title and <h1> headlines such as, "low prices, fast free shipping," etc. The specific model pages also use those phrases in the title and <h1> headlines. The first paragraph after the photo on the models pages gives the list price and then my price in bold. After that I have specifications about the model, the model number, repeat the list price and my price again in bold, mention the free shipping, then have a "Buy Now" button with various credit card images displayed. That button takes the visitor to the cart page.
So far, these widgets and another brand of widgets have not sold at all. Besides the common formats for the landing page and the model pages, they share in common a high price. These are $350 to $650 items, compared to my other products which run $100 to $200+.
Maybe I haven't been around long enough to establish some kind of trust.
Other suggestions or questions are much appreciated.
the concept of negative keywords
It's just as important to think about searches where you don't want your ad to appear as where you do.
For example, suppose you were selling Pearl brand drums and bidding on the word "pearl".
There's not much point having your ad displayed to people searching for information about Pearl Harbor, and you could prevent that by adding "-harbor" as a negative keyword. Block the alternate spelling "harbour" while you're at it.
Pearl Jam, Pearl Bailey, and Pearl S. Buck would be other searches to block. Add -jam, -bailey and -buck as negative keywords.
Spend some time playing with at least one keyword tool and watch for search phrases that happen to include your target term but are actually off target. Those will be searches you want to block.
Also, where are your ads positioned in the search pages? Alot of the time, the higher you are in rankings, the more random clicks you are likely to get, which will reduce your conversion rate. If you lower your bids and appear lower down the page, you might get less clicks, but those that do click are people who have taken the time to look for your ad. Also, since your paying a lower cpc, this will allow you to get more clicks within a finite budget.
I would suggest lowering your max CPC and easing into the deep end.
Test different landing pages.
Find out what those 170 people did when they got to your site. How long does the average visitor stay on your site after they got there?
Depending on the price range of your product, you should have probably had some sales converted with 170 visitors. I have to agree with the earlier post which said that you should really look into why your landing page is not converting.
But I paused the ad in question and instead tried running an ad for a product that's already selling well on my site. I haven't used AdWords for this product; instead, the sales have come from internal links on my site.
So far over the last few days I've had 4,992 impressions for this ad and 108 clicks. No purchases, though.
The CTR ranges from .29% to over 6% depending upon the keywords and phrases.
Why would the same landing page result in sales from people already on my site, but not from people clicking on AdWords ads?
Any ideas or suggestions again are much appreciated.
Why would the same landing page result in sales from people already on my site, but not from people clicking on AdWords ads?
I'd guess that's at least partly due to the content on the page they click thru from.
As hard as you've apparently worked at this it's hard to imagine that your page would be less successful as a source than a serps page. I'm guessing your pages work as presell pages to some extent.
Secondly the shopper is already on your site and in part is making the decision to click based on some level of trust you've established with them.
With a 0.5% conversion rate, 1 in every 200 clicks converts. However, because there is a high margin associated with every conversion, it's still a very profitable campaign.
At the moment, for you, I'd say 108 clicks is still very early (depending on how much these clicks cost you though). If the new two clicks convert, suddenly you have a conversion rate of nearly 2%, which could be fantastic, depending on your margins.
It looks like you are doing everything right though from an AdWords perspective - sometimes these things do just take time to begin working, & there will always be other, non-Adwords elements involved (competitiveness, pricing etc). Depending on your costs/margins, it may be that there are cheaper solutions out there for you - affiliates, referrals etc
And then, back to the landing page. You need to find out why your landing page is not converting. I would set up a completely separate page just for AdWords, one that does not link back to the main portion of your site. Then play with that page to see what starts converting.
Also, and I'm sure you already have, make sure you are advertising with relevant keywords. I could get a ton of clicks on an ad advertising free nude pictures of [insert celebrity name here] but if I'm sending those people to a site selling dog food I'm not going to get many conversions. Don't be afraid to use very specific, long tail keywords to bring people to the site that are looking for what you have specifically. Instead of "dog food" for a keyword, try "healthy organic dog food".
My margins are very slim. My profit on a sale of pretty much any item is roughly $20. So it would take several sales just to cover what I've already spent with AdWords.
I can't put prices in the ads because the prices for most of the widgets vary depending upon the model.
As for the keywords, I'm being very specific. I could get a lot of clicks if I advertised "blue widgets," but it wouldn't be targetted traffic. Instead, I'm advertising "Acme blue widgets."
I do have one product for which the price for every model is the same. I'll try creating a separate landing page just for AdWords as Limoshawn suggested and see what happens.
Thanks again for the suggestions and advice.
Once I added the option of paying directly with credit cards, the number of orders went up significantly. Plus, I'm only paying 1.7% on each credit card transaction, instead of PayPal's 2.9%.
For my best-selling widget I'm now trying the Google Optimizer tool and will do A/B comparisons.
If anyone is interested in looking at my landing pages, just PM me.
Thanks so much for all of the replies.
[edited by: tedster at 5:49 am (utc) on Feb. 18, 2008]
[edit reason] move to the original thread [/edit]
I can't put prices in the ads because the prices for most of the widgets vary depending upon the model.
You may need to try a separate landing page/keywords for each model. If that’s simply not possible, try headline "Buy Widgets $100 And Up".
The point of this is to eliminate people looking for information.
Once you have your ad sending buyers, keep the landing page "check-out only" simple. Click here to buy [keyword]- sort of page. You should not need to provide a lot of information about your widget on the landing page, simply a check out. simple- "welcome to widget.com where would like for us to ship your widget?" and begin the checkout process.
I'm tracking conversions on just four ads for four different products.
Over the last couple of weeks, the AdWords ad for my best-selling product has had 11,000 impressions, 320 clicks, but no sales. The sales are coming through people clicking on banner ads or text links within my site, or from organic search results.
Perhaps I do need to build up some trust factor, but I also wonder if I'm not just throwing money away.
My distributor has told me that the items I'm selling are their best-sellers. My ads are first-page. And I know that my competitors are selling.
This is very frustrating. Maybe I should explore promoting my online products through a different venue.
Try to find "buying" keywords instead of "browsing" keywords.
The sales are coming through people clicking on banner ads or text links within my site, or from organic search results.
What's the conversion rate on these clicks?
I don't understand why you're saying this. Are you selling any of these products? How do you know the Adwords ads are not selling products? If I was in this situation I'd be looking at the competition for differences in:
Payment terms
Payment methods
Free shipping
Prices
Return policies
Customer Service
Contact us
Warranty
Customer support
Overall look of website
I'm also using Google's Optimizer to see how many people clicking on the AdWords ads get as far as the first step in the buying process, the cart page. For this one product, which is the best seller, only four people have gone from an AdWords ad to a product page to the cart page.
I have hundreds of pages of individual models of widgets for which the widget I'm selling would be a popular accessory. So I've inserted a sentence at the bottom of these pages that says, "Looking for a doo-dad for your Acme model XYZ? We have [link]Blue Widgets[/link] for all models of Acme widgets."
I don't have a tracking code in these pages, nor on my online store page, so I can't tell how many people who are buying are coming from these pages. But these pages, as well as the online store, get thousands of page views a day, so I'm assuming that the buyers are either using those text links, the banner ads I have across the entire site, or the online store page, which is the third most popular page on the site. It's had 15,000 page views so far this month.
>>I don't understand why you're saying this. Are you selling any of these products? How do you know the Adwords ads are not selling products? If I was in this situation I'd be looking at the competition for differences in:
Payment terms
Payment methods
Free shipping
Prices
Return policies
Customer Service
Contact us
Warranty
Customer support
Overall look of website<<
I am selling the products. My prices are at the lower end of the price range of all of my competitors. I accept all charge cards, as well as PayPal. Shipping is free 2-3 day Priority Mail. Return policy is, I think, very lenient. Peope who've bought have said my customer service is terrific. I have contact links, and I contact buyers to let them know the progress of their orders. Warranty is factory warranty, with me helping them if necessary. I've received a lot of compliments on the look of the website.
Hiccup, my Adwords ads read, "Blue Widgets--Blue Widgets for [insert brand names]--$189.95 With Fast Free Shipping." I'm using just about every keyword and phrase combination I can think of.
Per Limoshawn's suggestion, I've created a separate ad that's brand-specific, and links to the Acme brand page for the Blue Widget accessory within the shopping cart area of the site. The visitor can view the brief description and click to Buy Now, or can view the detailed description and then click to Buy Now and go directly to the shopping cart page. Once the ad is running, I'll see how that converts.
Sorry for the long-winded post. If anyone has other comments or suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them.
I deleted one ad group because I'm now #5 in organic results for the phrases "Acme widgets," "Acme blue widgets," "Acme red widgets."
Is there any forum on Webmaster World or another forum where consultation--paid or otherwise--is available for AdWords and landing pages?
So far this month the cost of AdWords is over 50% of my profits. That's not good.
Layout, get rid of the extra space at the bottom, add content to the right side or add an adsense 120 x 600 block on the right maybe..
On longer articles maybe break the pages up so they have to click to read more.
I wouldn't know which adwords phrases are really better but as much as thats a factor I think instilling confidence is a huge factor.
Add an about us page, if you been in law enforcement or military, write about it.
Dress it up to look pro, a few smaller images, or a background image logo at the top, whatever you can add to make it a little busier. Authorized Dealer ! in big text, Sale ! etc... Limited Time Offer !....
The other thing i would think is because of the nature of it, you must get a lot of kids, and curious people just wanting to see what is out out there so you might have a high rate non qualified visits because of that.
Might not be a lot of help, but maybe theres something there you hadn't considered.
Since January 21st:
Clicks1,430
Impressions144,641
CTR0.99%
Avg. CPM$2.67
Avg. CPC$0.27
Conversion Rate0.75%
Cost per Conversion$28.87
Total Cost$386.10
There were four conversions, two of which were mine (I was testing to see if AdWords conversion tracking was working). So, I've made about $50 in profit from spending $386.10.
I've also followed the advice given by previous posters, as well as folks on other forums.
This is very frustrating.
