I am the process of redesigning my site to be "less cluttered". The site is a "resource site", but also has a store component. The thought is to create a few paths for readers, thus directing them further into the site or into my store. I'm also striving to keep the look of the site super clean. I've seen sites that have nice implementations of the Adsense code. That being said, does having Adsense "cheapen" a site or make it less professional/corporate? I don't know. That's one of the considerations. The other is e-commerce. My old site had millions of links going to my store (which was good). Going with the "less is more" theory, the new site will have less links, but they will be more prominent due to the lack of clutter. So, here's my dilemma... Am I cannibalizing my business by leaving Adsense on my pages? It appears that the bulk of my commissions are coming from links off the homepage. Is the typical end user likely to a.)type in a new address b.) follow one of the links on the site. I wish I knew the answer to this and would love to hear opinions/past experience related to this issue. Thanks in advance. Chris
I have them one some of our shopping pages. But only way down; you don't want them to go to your competitors. If one guy buying the product you offer is worth more to you than all the clicks it generates from non-buyers I'd get rid of it altogether. I think of it this way (simplified)... You advertise a page in AdWords. They click your ad costing you money. They read the page. Like it? They'll buy it. Don't like it by the time you've read the spiel? Here's an ad to relevant resources you might want to check out. That way you recoup some of the AdWords spend.
I personally would never put Adsense on a site where I am trying to sell my own product. I wouldn't want to do anything to disrupt the sales process. If I am selling OPS (other people's stuff) on an affiliate site then I like to give people options. I just try to not let the Adsense over power the product.
I'd say by the time people spent 10 seconds on your site they know whether they want to give you business (buy from you) or go elsewhere. By adding AdSense you are giving them exit points that you actually profit from. It does not work this way for 100% of ecommerce sites. Neither does it mean that you won't lose occassional sales to adsense clicks, but I would experiment with both options to see which brings most revenue. Moreover, If you sell cheap stuff and your sales volume is low, AdSense could be what will keep you from going under. If integrated well and used sparsely, AdSense won't "cheapen" your site.
I personally had run an AdSense campaign on one of my ecomm sites for 2 months as an experiment. The site has fairly high traffic (aprox 30,000 uniques per month) but sales were only so-so because our suppliers were not the best. Dropship costs + wholesale prices make it difficult to compete with the big boys as far as pricing goes.. For the 2 months i ran AdSense i received a nice flow of income. The ads were off to the right side of the page and not easily seen unless the user was running 1024 resolution.. Anyway, i had this same dilemma. Is it cheapening the site.. am i losing sales.. I have since removed the ads from the site and i'm a little suprised to say that sales never increased or decreased either way. In fact, we received more 'contact us' comments that lead to sales when the ads were running. The only difference i saw in 2 months of running AdSense on an ecomm site was that i received extra income from Google.
I average roughly 100k uniques per month. Without divulging my actual Adsense rev, my sales for a day match my monthly Adsense. So, while it's a nice extra bonus at the end of the month, I'm thinking it won't take much to bump up my sales a bit to offset the loss of Adsense. I guess I could always put it my forums to keeps some stream of income from Google. Right now, most of my clicks come from the homepage -- and the ads are borderless in the middle. It almost looks like your clicking on one of my links. Effective for Google, but over time I might be losing customers. I appreciate everyone's input on this... I've been agonizing over the decision. It's a very hard decision. I guess I could start by pulling from the homepage. -Chris
One more comment... Ask yourself this: Would you hang signs in your window (if you had a B&M store) advertising your competition, even of they paid you a small fee?
Not a fair comparison, the internet works different than a retail location. Conversions are dramatically lower (usually in the 2% range) - may as well make money on the 98% of people who probably won't buy for you anyways.
That is why I said "in your window". Conversions for people driving by your store (and not actually in it) are pretty low too. That makes it a fair analogy. Also, if your conversion rate is 2%, can you really afford to risk losing even a small number of those sales? BTW I like your TV Products site
I think its different for all sites. I put adsense on my sites and watched conversion rates over a week or so. They didn't dip, so I kept it. Sales have stayed the same or climbed all year long, so I cannot say adsense has been a hurt. Plus the 4 figure check google sends me each month makes it a helluva lot easier to keep money in the bank - especially in a low profit/high expense field like retail. Thanks Its my favorite site that I own, right now.
I should have described my site correctly. It's actually a resource site, but obviously I look to drive traffic to the store portion. My current site is guilty of too much crap on the homepage. My new site is going to be less cluttered. Based upon what I've heard here, I'm going to keep them up on the old site -- and then remove them when I transition to the new site. It might make it tough to judge if the new site is responsible for increased sales, the removal of Adsense or the combination of both. As long as the numbers go up, I'll be happy!. I'll add them back in my forums to "lessen the blow". I might sprinkle them in within pages (other than the homepage). Adsense..."it can be addicting". Good point. ..let's say they don't find what they need "down the corner"...who's to say they make their way back to my site. -Chris
I have a medium to high volume ecommerce site, on which I put adsense in an inconspicuous location on every page. I did not make it front and center, however, it is there. There has been no measureable loss in business from the time that I began using Adsense and, in fact, my business has steadily risen at roughly the same pace as it was rising prior to my putting adsense in. I have been careful on a couple of things: 1-I have filtered out the three or four sites with pricing that is competitive to mine (mine is a small operation so I'm normally the lowest pricing on just about every item out there). So, in filtering out the three or four other site with pricing that is competitive to mine, I've essentially helped advertise sites with pricing significantly higher than mine. I believe this may actually help, with people doing "price shopping." 2-I've made sure, as stated above, NOT to make the adsense the main focus of the page. In doing that, my CTR and CPM are significantly lower than what they would be, however, I don't feel I lose any sales because of this. This has added a nice little revenue stream I wouldn't normally have had, to the tune of about $1,000 per month in pure profit. JP