lower sales than usual on google

anyone else experiencing this?

[mwilliams]

i know that you will have good days and bad days with AdWords. i've had a few bad days in a row, though.... 1-3 sales a day when i usually average around 6, and order totals have been much smaller this month, too. this always gets me thinking about why, and what i can do about it. what frustrates me is that while i can control my CPCs, my daily budget and even my CTRs there's no surefire way to guarantee conversions as far as i can tell. especially in my industry, which attracts a lot of browsers. any thoughts on this? has anyone else seen lagging sales lately? is it naive to blame the overall state of the economy? (i've seen gas for 2.99/gallon near my house) am i grasping at straws here? i'm getting a little discouraged.

[dmholdings]

Very odd. I too have seen a decrease in sales generated from G. I was thinking this had something to do with Spring Break, but found sales have still not picked up. My normaly was abou 2-3 per week - but for the past 2 weeks I've seen nothing.

I have had some decent traffic, but no conversions

Wondering too...

[marcs]

Maybe people finishing up their tax forms (less time for shopping).

Maybe they owed on taxes and are waiting on their next paycheck before buying anything. Maybe they're waiting on a refund to buy some goodies.

[eyeinthesky]

Same situation here. Conversions are way down these few weeks although clicks are about the same.

Tax month? Spring break? Or is Adwords getting stale?
Or is it something else?

Only time will tell. Let's see how the rest of the onth pan out...

[wolfgang]

Have seen the same thing. Across the board. Maybe there are more fraudulent clicks getting through leading to lower conversions. Anyone have experience in detecting fraudulent clicks? Where did you first notice it? Are you using analytics software? I'm interested in any comments with this regard. Thanks.

[shorebreak]

Some of our clients are seeing this, and it's to be expected given that tax payments aren't entirely planned for in households.

[skibum]

Sales are down about 50% in the affiliate stuff compared to Dec/Jan/Feb. As for clients who have lots of brand keywords in their campaigns sales are about even, though a larger percentage of their sales always come from brand searches which tend to stay pretty steady.

The one sector that has been on fire since Janaury and continues to sizzle for us is luxury homes, not selling online of course, but the leads are flooding in, home sales are off the charts and cost per lead has been at an all-time low for about the last 3 months from AdWords.

[eWhisper]

In the offline world, shop owners compare monthly histories to past years to gage how expected sales will do for a month. It can become very predictable for a merchant to realize that February won't be a strong month for AC sales, and pass the time until April (A very obvious example, but this can be repeated for new carpeting, house sales, computer sales, etc).

In the online world, we have better access to data than in the offline. One can pull total clicks, sales, keyword views, etc for PPC campaigns. Online sales often mirror offline sales for many stores as far as % increase and decrease go.

Using the historical data for many accounts, predictions can be made how online sales will do as well. Most industries have peak and non-peak months (or weeks/days in the case of some industries (i.e. flower sales). Look at your historical data to see how your industries preform and if you should change a PPC budget for any given month.

For affiliates, this will be a little bit more work as you have to examine each industry. However, if you can start to see how various industries preform in each month, it makes it easier to shift your budgets around to the industries who are in their peak sales seasons, and remove budgets for industries who are in the off-season for sales.

[rustyzipper]

Ours conversions on overture & google are both down about 42% for april 1-15 vs prior 15 days.

Both are down about 33% over April 1-15 last year.

This in spite of refining Google this year to just US ads, which had been giving us better conversion rates.

Hope this is just an anomoly, but our overall revenue per visitor across the board is sharply down the past two weeks, regardless of where the visitor is coming from.

Are other people seeing strong year over year sales for April so far?

[metakomm]

One of my money makers in february and march had an epc of $50, so far in April it is under $25...And nothing has changed on my end. Same ads, same links, same banners.

I also noticed impressions were down 50% too...

And I don't see why there would be such drastic changes in this industry...I don't think tax season had anything to do with it...This is a relatively inexpensive service...

Thank god I spend/spent a lot of time diversifying...I hope sales pick up soon!

[blaze]

April was a low point for me last year as well.

But yeah, sales are down.

[blaze]

Yeah, I got hit by suprisingly low sales today.. Lowest in probably a year.

Or am I a statitistical oddity?

[bodi413]

lead generation is way down for the past 2 weeks. Very frustrating! I thought I was the only one!

[cline]

Anybody notice that daylight savings time has kicked in, the weather has turned nice, and people are outside doing things other than being online?

[blaze]

I guess the idea here is that we're discussing issues beyond seasonality.

[cline]

mwilliams asked

has anyone else seen lagging sales lately?

[moto]

While I haven't been at this game long enough to really determine sales patterns, I have noticed a surge in visitors on some days, without my doing anything extra. So much of a surge at one point that I start thinking it's too good to be true. So, like wolfgang, I wonder how to detect fraudulent clicks, and if there's anything an individual can do about them.

For instance, do the fraudulent clickers only target the higher placed (more costly) ads, or do they also go after the lower placed (and less financed ads)?

[wrgvt]

For instance, do the fraudulent clickers only target the higher placed (more costly) ads, or do they also go after the lower placed (and less financed ads)?

That depends on their intent. If they're AdSense publishers looking for maximum income by clicking ads on their site, I imagine they'll go for what they assume are the most expensive ads. If they're AdWords competitors, they may click on your ads to run up your cost or help you exceed your daily budget.

My impressions and clicks were way down over the weekend. I attributed it to a combination of tax time, great spring weather, and possibly school vacations (it's that time here). By Monday everything was back to normal.

[jschmitz]

No, its all because of the pope thing.

:)

[pshea]

There is a definite change in joe/jane consumer's buying pattern this Spring. I began to notice the change starting in the first week in March and the trend has continued to this date. It is not good. I sell low cost novelty products, not something you need, but something you just want for fun. My March sales were half of 2004 and my April is running down 30%. This hit me over the head and I've been struggling mightily trying to figure out what's going on out there.

The number of visitors exceeds last year in this period, just about every other piece of the puzzle aligns well.

I have also noticed quite definitely that a lot of people who make purchases want it delivered right away. If you can't ship it out in like 5 minutes, forget it. It wasn't like this in 2004. People were reasonable then. Now I'd say that about 30% of the customers want it delivered quickly. A lot of this has to do with the fact that my products are not something you need, it's just something that you want for a specific event, but the high percentage of customers who demand same-day or overnight shipping is a marker of some sort. But of What?

This should probably be another thread, but I'm on a roll. So if anyone wants to ramble on with me about it, split off and I'll jump in. Heck, with sales down this week, I've got time.