Google Ads is a tried and tested method of getting qualified leads to a website. So when you invest heavily into PPC advertising services and fail to achieve conversions, it can be incredibly disappointing and frustrating.
It’s easy to blame the set-up or structure of your ad campaigns, and sometimes rightly so. However in actuality, the issues could be a lot closer to home, with your website and landing pages. If you’re getting clicks but no conversions, or not enough sales to break even, it’s time for campaign and site analysis.
If you’re getting clicks into your site but no conversions, there are two main possible issues; a poorly managed ad campaign or a poor website. And you might be surprised at how often it’s the latter.
Now when I say “a poor website”, I don’t necessarily mean that your website looks or works badly; only that it doesn’t do everything possible to encourage conversions and install trust in your brand. At Koozai we don’t just offer PPC services, we also provide website design and development services, so we know a thing or two about what can cause a poor website.
The following two-step guide is designed to help you identify the cause of a poor conversion rate and provide ways to increase conversions.
The first place to check for reasons why your PPC visitors aren’t converting is the campaign itself. An experienced AdWords expert could review any number of factors within a campaign to identify issues, but for a simple way to establish whether or not the clicks through to your site are relevant qualified leads you can simply check your Search Query Report in Google Ads.
If your campaigns haven’t been running long or you haven’t had enough exposure, you may find a lot of your search queries are grouped in the “Other Search Terms” section at the bottom of the Search Query Report. If this is the case, try the Matched Search Query report in Analytics (see below). This gives you the search terms of each click through to your site from your paid campaign:
Although this will not show you details on searches triggering impressions, it does list all the searches which were actually clicked. This allows you to see exactly how relevant the searches were.
For example, if you sell red leather shoes and see search queries for “red leather shoes” and “buy leather shoes in red”, you know that the leads going to your site are very relevant and qualified. However if you were to see things like “shoes” or “red horseshoes”, you need to look closer at the campaign and establish how unspecific and irrelevant search terms are resulting in your ad being shown. This would involve adding negative keywords and refining campaigns to ensure this cannot continue to happen.
If you are satisfied that at least a proportion of the traffic coming to your site from your ad campaign is relevant, it’s time to look at your site in a bit more depth to understand why visitors aren’t turning into customers.
When users arrive at your landing page from a paid ad, they can be very quick to judge your business, product offering and website as a whole. This judgement can affect how long they stay, which pages they check out and ultimately their likeliness to buy.
It is critical that your site installs trust in the user; trust in your brand, trust in your products and trust in your site. No-one buys from a site that doesn’t look and feel professional and trustworthy.
To critically analyse your site you need to get in the mind-set of the customer who may know nothing about your business. Just because you think your site is great, that really doesn’t mean it is. Try getting friends and family to look around and find out if they would trust your brand and product offering enough to buy online. Also check out competitors’ sites and see how yours compares. What do they do or have that you don’t?
User Experience (UX) and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the process of optimising your site to try and improve a key action, such as increasing sales. There is huge number of tried and tested methods to increase conversions and some things work better for some sites or industries than others. As a guide, the following are the sorts of questions you should ask yourself and things to consider when reviewing your site:
Do you have a clear navigation for users to browse your site and quickly find what they are looking for? Ensure that key pages (contact page, about us page, products/services pages, etc.) are easily accessible with a clear and logical navigation structure.
Does your site look professional? Is your site design in keeping with other sites in your industry? Does the site feel fresh, modern and sleek or clumsy and out-of-date? Style and design plays a huge part in user perception of your business so it is critical you get this right.
The landing pages you use for your ads should be as relevant as possible and take the user as close to the point of purchase as possible. For example, for a search for “red leather shoes”, you should direct the visitor to a page all about red leather shoes, not leather shoes or red shoes.
CTAs are essential for getting visitors to engage with your site and purchase. Make your “buy now” or “contact us today” buttons obvious, bright and easy to find.
Can your customers easily get in touch with you via phone and email? Many customers expect to be able to call a business and not having a contact telephone number can make you appear untrustworthy.
Can you easily see where the business is located? A physical address is an important factor for user trust.
Are you using high quality images for your products that clearly identify all variations of your product? For example; if a dress is available in black or red, can they easily see both versions before they buy? Customers do not expect to have to visualise their product when making their decision.
This might seem like an obvious one but it is often forgotten. Is your price right? If visitors are comparing prices and you are not competitive it goes without saying that you are unlikely to get the sale. Carry out fresh competitor research, looking at other sites whose ads appear for your target keywords and see what they charge.
Don’t be afraid to try new things to improve CRO because small things such as moving a “buy now” button higher up the page or adding a contact number to your header can make a massive difference.
These points are just some of the things you should be considering, but conversion rate optimisation is a massive area and there are a great many things you should consider or try to improve your conversion rate. For more information, check out our free Conversion Rate Optimisation whitepaper.
If you have any comments or feedback I’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to comment below if you have any questions or thoughts on turning clicks into conversions.
If you would like more information on conversion rate optimisation or our Google Ads management services please do not hesitate to give us a call.
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Hello,
I do not have any google ads, but google says that I have over 300 views a month but only 20 – 50 click throughs. Is this something you can help with?
Hi Charlotte, thanks for your comment. It certainly is something we can help with. If you fill out a contact form we can get in touch and discuss how we can help you. :) Contact form is here: https://www.koozai.com/contact/ thanks, Stacey
Hello Emma…
Link below… take a look.
Is it poor management or a poor website?
How much to fix?
Richard W
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Hi Richard, thanks for your comment. If you’d like some help with your digital marketing, we can set up a free digital clarity call if you like. https://www.koozai.com/free-digital-clarity-call/ Thanks, Stacey
Hi Emma,
I am facing this problem, getting too many clicks but no conversion. I will focus on the points you have mentioned here. I hope it will help me.
Thanks
Thanks Emma. I appreciate all of your points. They make a ton of sense. I sent off for the free whitepaper. I look forward to learning with you. Tim
Great tips Emma! Already started making some adjustments and applying these methods. Will see what happens tomorrow with the next AdWord round.
Good to hear Aaron, I hope you find they help :-)
I agree that you need to take a dual view of the problem – traffic relevancy and the site itself. I certainly agree that often it is the “rubbish website” issue but more often than not it’s a case of “rubbish website for this visitor context”.
I’ve seen huge differences in traffic conversion by keyword intent. When one such keyword “bucket” dominates the data set, the conversion metrics follow suit and you lose sight of the smaller keyword “buckets” which perform well. This dual-view matters. Without it you have no context for determining why your website might be “rubbish”.
Great read, Emma. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Carmen, completely agree. Careful and regular analysis of the search query report and matched searched queries in GA is essential for understanding user intent and ensuring that clicks are as relevant and targeted as they can be, blocking off anything that’s too vague or irrelevant through negative keywords.
For a new campaign this is obviously crucial as it’s where you find your feet and refine around the high performing keywords, etc. It’s also where you find out if the site isn’t performing as it should; when you find a wealth of qualified, targeted clicks and get no conversions.
Thanks again for your feedback.
Thank you! I was wondering why I wasn’t converting as much as I’d like. I have a massive amount of hits but nothing to show for it. I’ll apply this and get back to you. Let you know how it works for me.
I hope it helps; please do let us know how you get on.
Hi Emma, another great post… thank you.
I’m surprised how many sites don’t have a clear CTA with obvious contact details and then wonder why visitors don’t convert!
Thanks Hazel, glad you think so. And I completely agree; it’s surprisingly common for people to invest in smart, snazzy sites and completely forget the basics like CTA’s!
What I find is that many times the clicks are there but the site is not set up for entering the email via cell phone thus no leads
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