Pay Per Click and sales conversions

Hi, I think the only way to know your conversion is to religiously ask your clients how they found you, even this isn't foolproof as they could say 'on a search engine' and may have found you on there on a normal listing rather than a paid listing, or they may not be able to remember where, or be able to specify which search engine. I use a lot of pay per click, but am very naughty and do not track it very well and so am not sure of the exact conversion. Regards Amanda www.trulyace.com Logo/Graphic Design & Commercial Illustration
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Regards

Amanda


Truly Ace Graphic Design Blog


Logo Design I Web Design I Print Design

When I was promoting Adult sites we tracked the ppc using ref codes, ie mysite.com?ppc=overture so we could then track everywhere that surfer went in the site and eventually track the sale. Thats really the best way ive seen to find out what the ratios of each ppc engine is. -- Simon Meech http://www.hardwiredesign.com
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Simon Meech
http://www.startups.co.uk/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2990 - Startups Web Design offer!
http://www.hardwiredesign.co.uk

Espotting is a waste of money, overture is okay, google adwords is awesome. Three months of statistics can prove that. Alex
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Indigo Clothing - Customised Clothing Specialists
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www.indigoclothing.com

Thank you all for your comments, Alex... What would you say the % of conversion would be on these 3 search engines? Regards,
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F Khan

Conversion rates... There is absoloutely no way to provide an average conversion rate, whther you use a mean, or median average, the results will be entirely subjective. We provide search engine marketing to a specialist in super car imports (Ferraris, Lambroghinis, etc) They gets huge amounts of traffic through the search engines, but of course will only convert maybe 0.01% of those visitors. Most are just ogling the machines on display. We know that he has converted customers as he has had overseas customers contact him, explain they saw his ad on the web and then make a purchase, he has recently increased his expedniture on the service as a result. On the other hand we market a specialist hire company services on the web through search engines and they receive much fewer clicks as their kit is very unintersting to non-specialists. However, they make a much larger number of sales conversions. Perhaps as much as 1%. So I think you are asking the wrong question when looking for a conversion rate. The average of these two campaigns would be very misleading for you to base your analysis on. Unless you can find out about similar companies in the same market, the results won't be in any way accurate. Regards James Hirst A4 Internet ltd 0845 108 0411

I think you also have to remember there are two conversion rates. The number of times the key words appear to your add being clicked And the number of times your advert is clicked to you getting business. When using my uktaxshop website below (which I actually designed purely for getting tax returns on Google - I have another site under development which better reflects what I do) I think the conversion views/clicks was around 1.5%. The conversion clicks/sales was around 0.5%, with what is a very basic site. Ie out of people searching for "tax returns" on Google, I got on average one sale in 13,000 or searches on the key words. I have actually switched it off now as I have work from other sources, but Google can work to an extent - i find it is a useful "filler" when my other sources run dry as you can turn it on in 5 minutes. James Smith Chartered Accountant www.uktaxshop.co.uk 01284 764436
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James Smith
Chartered Accountant
www.jamesesmith.co.uk
01235 536 773

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Your indispensable guide to Small Business Bookkeeping, Self-Assessment & VAT

I have to agree with a lot of the points made in the last 2 posts. There are so many variables to consider. Conversion of views to clicks depends upon (for example)

• how much competition there is for your keywords
• accuracy of keywords
• effectiveness of your copy

• the effectiveness of your landing page (how specific is it to the search terms, how strong are the calls to action, how easy is it to buy etc)
• the extent to which visitors are pre-qualified (which of course relates back to keywords & copy)
• the nature of your product/service (as in James's experience, the more expensive or complex, the lower the actual conversion rate. Then of course there are all the competitors, window shoppers and just plain curious)

Thanks all you all for your valuable comments. I am prepared to spend on online marketing in the most effective way and have some very vibrant ideas. It's so hard to predict realistic sales conversions. As you can appreciate it the cost of the website, and service provisions will be high to provide a service and brand that will be trusted, it's just hard to predict if all this will be achievable as an online business and relying on these search engines to get the business in. Kind Regards,
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F Khan

Another query, After searching through Overture and espotting there are on average over 25000 searches per month (I have been tracking every month). I will want to bid on top position for maximum exposure, but was wondering does this mean I will get 25000 clicks in the month? Can any of you relate to keyword suggestions and searches being made, and what kind of costs and results you incurred? James Smith mentioned 1.5% click through rate and 0.5% sales, was this conversion based on 13000 clicks or 1.5% of 13000 clicks which would equal 195 clicks ? I'm really confused.
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F Khan