Hi - Hoping someone can help as I am completely out of my depth. I have recently had a new website developed, as my old one was a characterless template site. I understand that clicks and visits are not the same. HOwever I have brought up a graph that last night told me that in the period of Jan-March 2011 I have had 300 clicks from Adwords and 0 visits. I have noticed a serious decline in people contacting me... the clicks in fact are pretty much on a par with the same period last year but the visits clearly not. I am aware there are problem with my new site that need addressing (e.g. it appears that 50% of people are using incompatible browsers and therefore find the site unnavigable), however this one is beyond me. To compare - Google analytics says I have had a miniscule 18 visits a month (Jan-March 11) compared to 333 a month last year. Approximately 40% of people are landing on an error page - not sure if this could account for anything - and have no idea why they are landing here? Can anyone advise where I am going wrong? Thanks in anticipation of your assistance.
Your analytics tracking code presumably fires when the page has completed loading, right? In that case this might be explained by something causing your site to break whilst loading - it would account for low visitor numbers, people landing on error pages, and so forth. You mention a browser (in)compatibility issue - could this be related? Also, is there a specific http error code that they're triggering?
Thanks for your reponse. I had thought that it would have been standard practice for the web designers to put the tracking code in, but it seems now that this is not the case. The error is error 404(which is built into the website) - I have at least changed the text on this page to now direct them to my old website. I have no idea why but perhaps it could be the incompatibility of the menu bar as it seems quite complex. Having said that I have seen other bars on other sites work like this, but in IE6 it is completely unnavigable and I'm not sure MUCH better in IE7. Fairly mad with my web designers to be honest - that's over £200 down the drain, but I guess at least we are now cottoning on to the problem and can try and do something about it
I feel your pain, addwords seems to be costing a few hundred pounds a month but getting hardly any work from it!