Hi, I'm new to the forum. My name is Jason and I recently opened up an online store. Before I explain my problem to you I want to point out a couple of things: 1. I have done extensive research on how to use Adwords effectively 2. The store itself is very well organized, concise and is pleasing to the human eye. 3. I used the "peel and stick" model of Adwords where I designated different ads for my subdivided categories of products on my site. 4. Each category of product, when searched for and clicked in adwords, had it's own landing page, taking the user right where they needed to be to make the purchase happen. 5. This was just a weekend test to see how my store would perform before I opened it to the public. While the store is "open", I'm not receiving any traffic because I de-activated my adwords ads. Here are my campaign stats: Budget: [ $50.00 / day ] Clicks: 203 Impressions: 11,110 CTR: 1.82% CPC: $1.17 Cost: $237.15 I am advertising in a very competitive field. It's for adult novelty items. I invested $237.15 and only got $75 in sales which figures to be a 31.6% return on investment. Questions I have: 1. Would this eventually change over time as you earned repeat customers? 2. How long does this take? (I know it's not an exact science, and I know there are other factors), but USUALLY. 3. Share your personal experience. Did you lose money with Adwords before you turned a profit using it? 4. Am I doing anything wrong? 5. What's the normal conversion rate per 100 clicks using Adwords PROVIDED the landing pages are concise, relevant and easy to use?
There's no such thing as a "normal" or "average" conversion rate. There are thousands of potential variables that can impact conversion rates so "normal" will be different for everyone.
Eh, yeah, I know what you're saying, and I've read that when I googled "normal conversion rates for adwords" .. which is why I told you all of my variables and went into detail as much as I could so that you guys could use that as an indicator of what I should expect. There has to be some kind of measuring stick by which I can expect to estimate how much profit I can turn. To say there's no "average" might be true, but that's very vague and discouraging. If possible, I just need input on what your experiences were, and after X responses, I might be able to figure out whats "normal"
OK, my answers are all very arbitrary, but I'll give it a shot... 1. It will change over time. But I wouldn't count on repeat customers. I can't think of many stores I consciously go back to, except for the real massive ones. 2. Let's say one month. 3. Yes. I lost money on several campaigns before hitting on a winning one. And even the winning one I lost money on until it swung back upward. 4. Products you're selling may not give you a high enough commision in relation to the cost of your AdWords. 5. Per 100 clicks you'll need to make enough to pay off that day's AdWords cost. Over 100 clicks is profit.
i think you should reduce ur cpc if poss, even if it makes u lower down, as u are paying too much in the first place?
trujm, in any business, however competitive, you can find a whole lot of $0.05 keywords. Thousands of them, in fact. Try to reduce your CPC costs.
You didn't even come remotely close to listing all of your variables. In terms of conversion variables (on site only) could be things like payment options you accept, text sizes, locations, product desciptions, your prices vs. the market, checkout procedures, affiliate status, etc, etc, etc. I could go on for hours. I honestly don't know why people think there has to be some kind of "average" data they can work from. There isn't, and anyone who tells you otherwise is misinformed. What's the average response for a TV commercial? How about radio? What about a print advertisement? Even if someone could put this information together I don't see how it would do anyone any good. I'm honestly trying to help you out here - you're chasing the wrong data. Forget about averages and focus on making the numbers work for your business. To help demonstarte that point, I'll answer your questions. You'll find that my answers will do absolutely nothing to help you improve. 1. Would this eventually change over time as you earned repeat customers? It could. Depends on how your customers liked doing business with you. 2. How long does this take? (I know it's not an exact science, and I know there are other factors), but USUALLY. To get repeat customers? Could be 1 day to 1 year...all depends on the life and intended use of your product/service. I buy a new car every 5 - 6 years but I get my dry cleaning done once a week. 3. Share your personal experience. Did you lose money with Adwords before you turned a profit using it? I actually spent about $200 before I aquired my first customer via AdWords. That customer spent $50K+ with my company over the next 2 1/2 years. 4. Am I doing anything wrong? Probably. Look at your data - it'll tell you if you're doing something wrong. 5. What's the normal conversion rate per 100 clicks using Adwords PROVIDED the landing pages are concise, relevant and easy to use? I just checked one of my current campaigns. Based on that campaign, 85% conversion is normal. Theoretical numbers and averages don't mean a thing in paid search. Your data - and constantly building off of your successes and failures is what you need to focus on.
As people have already said, it's nigh-on impossible to analyse a campaign based on a few numbers. That said, here are a few thoughts... What is your average conversion value? And what's your margin on that sale? If your average conversion is $25, with a $12 margin, this is the most you can afford to pay per conversion. If you're paying $1.20 per click, you'd need a 10% conversion rate just to break even. This would be an ambitious target. Obviously, I don't know the true numbers involved, but you need to do sums like this in order to put an upper limit to your cpc - in reality, you'll want to bid substantially less than this to maximise your profit (or minimise your loss). It takes time to optimise a campaign like this, as you'll need to identify which keywords are/aren't converting, and you haven't got many conversions to go on. Perhaps in this instance, I'd go against my general approach of throwing every keyword I could think of in, and see what works - if you don't have the budget to do that, start with your most promising keywords, and build the campaign adgroup by adgroup as you get things working... To briefly answer your questions... 1) A bit, but many of those will bookmark your site, or search for your name (are you bidding on that?) 2) The lower your conversion rate is, the longer it'll take to seperate the wheat from the chaff. Yours sounds quite low, but if one or two keywords are dominating your clicks, you may want to exclude these. 3) I've managed many campaigns for different clients. Some were profitable from day 1, others never showed a profit. 4) Probably. What position are you appearing in? Cut your cpc, and you'll get more clicks for your money. Your daily budget should ALWAYS last all day - it doesn't sound like it is, so you're just throwing away clicks. 5) Could be anything, but for a relatively unknown website, with specific keywords, a good range and reasonable prices, maybe 2% - 8% would be a sensible range to expect (maybe)...
That's how I had been running my campaigns, and I read somebody say, "I'd rather spend .30 on keywords and get a sale, instead of .20 and not get any sales.". That's what happened to me, ofcourse I just started my campaign a few days ago, didn't see any results, but did see traffic. Raised it to .30 and got a sale yesterday. Although my daily budget is closing quicker. Do you think it's coincidence? I honestly would rather go back to .20 I would much rather get more traffic my $1. I figured this logic would work since my .20 clicks would be more targeted. Ofcourse a $50 a day budget is nothing compared to mine, I'm at $5/day so maybe .20 and .30 isn't a big difference, what do you think? Also when you said, daily budget should last all day, do you mean all day and night or only day time hours?
I've never seen a campaign where the conversion rate was higher for adverts further up the page. If anything, the opposite tends to be true, as you get less 'casual' or 'information-seeking' clicks... If you can bid less, and still spend your daily budget, you'll get more clicks for your money, and hence more conversions.
Your cpc seems really high. I recommend creating and testing many different ads. You would be able to then weed out the low clickthrough ads and keep the higher ones. Ads with higher clickthrough rates will lower your cost per click. Also I recommend going deep with your keyword lists to find noncompetitive keywords that you can bid the 5 cent minimum on. Putting the price of your products in your ads will also help keep away tire kickers and more serious buyers will usually click on those ads. I also recommend turning off the content match if you are using that. The sales conversions for content match is very low. If you do all those things you should see an improvement in your ad costs and profit. Adwords success is all about continually refining and using new ads and keywords and getting rid of underperformers.
This is good advice I'm going to try it.. All I ever had with Google adsense is I spent alot of money but didn't get any sales.. so I stop it everytime before I go broke
i am trying to learn something now about the normal conversion rates and i found out that normal conversion rates for an e-commerce user vary from 1-2% with 2 being good, to 12% being best. World wide organisations might get higher rates but i believe that a 12 percent is veeeery good, even 1 percent is very good with proper use of adwords. Normal conversion rate is a bit higher than your CTR in adwords, that is by worldwide researches made on multible e-commerce sites1 but it always depends mostly on how good is your ad targeting. I agree with taballantyne describing above a more proper use of adwords as your cpc is very high and that is the main reason you have negative reasults, though i do not know what is the content match he mentioned, if any one knows ... please i d like to know gmaltezos@gwebdevelop.com
try to read this forum as much as you can also i will pm you url of some sites that will help you to learn more about ,how to set up good campgain for adwords , day by day you will learn new things and get more knowledge of this webmaster world where any one can easily earn some good bucks.