Phantom clicks on Google Adwords

spyderski

I am currently running a campaign on Google Adwords, spending €75-100 per day.
I have been keeping an eye on site traffic, and have noticed that a lot of traffic comes on to our "Get a quote" page, which is our conversion tracker. This traffic is not converting into quote requests as you would expect, and when we analyze the movement through the site, it seems like the individual is just clicking in & back out.
Has anyone else had a similar experience, and if so what can be done about it?

Peterdalkey

Google are supposed to have a way of stopping say, a competitor from the same IP address, multi clicking ads. I would give my adwords manager a shout. They are quite helpful!

Axwell

Have a read of this and follow the steps there to see how many invalid clicks you are getting.

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2549113?hl=en

Atomico

At that budget level you are probably generating quite a lot of clicks each day, and so you would expect a certain percentage of invalid clicks - like any advertiser.

It's a case of checking to see if the percentage is unusually high, as the behaviour you describe (people going back and forth) is normal site behaviour really.

I'd recommend also taking a look at the quote request page, just to see if it can be made more conversion-friendly, and to check for any factors that might be contributing to people not following through.

bbam

spyderski wrote: »

I am currently running a campaign on Google Adwords, spending €75-100 per day.
I have been keeping an eye on site traffic, and have noticed that a lot of traffic comes on to our "Get a quote" page, which is our conversion tracker. This traffic is not converting into quote requests as you would expect, and when we analyze the movement through the site, it seems like the individual is just clicking in & back out.
Has anyone else had a similar experience, and if so what can be done about it?

Is this just not just down to "bounce", people clicking the add and then not liking what they see when they get there, no offence OP??

What sort of bounce rate is expected ??

spyderski

What we are seeing is way outside any bounce levels you would expect. As I said, our service is pretty specialized, so once someone searches for the terms our ad shows up under, you would expect a pretty high % of people to at least ask for a quote.

Even if they don't like what they see when they hit our site (which I genuinely don't think is the case), we have very little competition, and the only way they can see our prices is by submitting a quote request. If they decide not to use our service then, fair enough, but I can't understand why someone who had the need for our service, and had gone to the bother of searching would not at least follow through to get a price….

Peterdalkey

spyderski wrote: »

What we are seeing is way outside any bounce levels you would expect. As I said, our service is pretty specialized, so once someone searches for the terms our ad shows up under, you would expect a pretty high % of people to at least ask for a quote.

Even if they don't like what they see when they hit our site (which I genuinely don't think is the case), we have very little competition, and the only way they can see our prices is by submitting a quote request. If they decide not to use our service then, fair enough, but I can't understand why someone who had the need for our service, and had gone to the bother of searching would not at least follow through to get a price….

OP, you have answered your own question, I think!!

Personally, if I am searching for something and I find the product or service sought, I click through to the site... I want to see pricing! If I dont, I flee! I generally will not bother giving someone all my details just to see the price. If I behave this wasy ... i would others to react similarly

OK perhaps you do need to custom quote each job/product but I would suggest you add some sample/typical price indications. Selling is all about a "hook" to snare their interest and "call to action" to get them to engage. DO NOT ask for all their contact info at this point or ask ask them to fill out a form. Maybe just "call me" & "email me" tags and a box to type in their phone or email address.


A lot of the ecommerce bods/gurus use this forum too..http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=985.

jimmii

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Personally, if I am searching for something and I find the product or service sought, I click through to the site... I want to see pricing! If I dont, I flee

I am exactly the same and I would imagine a lot of others are too.

tricky D

No pricing is often an immediate bail out for so many. Even indicative pricing is better than no price, if an exact price is not possible. It's far too important a piece of purchase information to omit.

Cianos

tricky D wrote: »

No pricing is often an immediate bail out for so many. Even indicative pricing is better than no price, if an exact price is not possible. It's far too important a piece of purchase information to omit.

It really depends. There are other reasons whether or not to publicise prices that go beyond converting individual website hits.

For example if a company is losing out on individual sales by not advertising prices, but they know that they can make up for that and then some by getting customers on the phone or email before price is disclosed then it clearly makes more sense to omit prices.

M.T.D

For myself I would agree with Peter, Jimmii and Tricky, and I had the same discussion with a client recently, the site with the ballpark pricing in my range gets the call.
If no price indicators no call, (possible exception if there is absolutely no one else at all).

Out of curiosity if your service is so specialised and with little competition why the need for google ads. If you can get placed in 2 or 3 positions in top 5 you will get a big % of available clicks.

Peterdalkey

Despite all the hype about everything digital, online selling is still selling and the basic rules of marketing and promotion still apply. If the punter dont like the shop/site, they sod off... simple conclusion, fix the bits they dont like and give'em what they really want!

Fries-With-That

I agree with all the posters that said no pricing = no sale, or words to that effect.

I think at this stage our household buys almost everything on line first then visits a shop, by this I mean regardless of what I'm looking for I will look at it on line first to gauge the price I should be paying.

We also buy a huge amount of things on line and if I can't get a price on a website I keep looking at sites until I do.

I have no idea what market you operate in, but there are so many multiple product on line stores offering various pricing structures I would imagine its almost impossible to sell anything if you don't at least offer a ballpark to the potential customer.

Graham

Fries-With-That wrote: »

its almost impossible to sell anything if you don't at least offer a ballpark to the potential customer.

I think that really depends on what it is you're selling. If we're talking commodity type products where exactly the same product is available from multiple sources then the above quote probably holds true.

At the same time (as Cianos mentioned) there are many occasions where you can't (or at least shouldn't) even give an indicative price. This is especially true where the product or service to be provided is particularly variable. For example I wouldn't expect to get pricing online for a house extension, a custom website/mobile app or an interior design project.

spyderski, what's the norm for your industry/product? Do your competitors offer pricing information online?

Can you funnel visitors into your sales channel through a slightly more subtle route?

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Peterdalkey

it is extremely hard to know with so little info. I accept that some things are not possible to use pricing, as already suggested. OP is spending lumpy money but he is failing to hook 'em after getting them to click through!
Could it be as simple as he is landing them on the wrong site page.... perhaps he should be showing them his goodies to stimulate their interest/juices!

Graham

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Could it be as simple as he is landing them on the wrong site page.... perhaps he should be showing them his goodies to stimulate their interest/juices!

That could be exactly it. Don't send everyone to the homepage or even the product page. Whatever the hook was that got them to click on the Ad, continue that into the landing page/s. Have at least 2 landing pages and do some basic A/B testing to try and discover which one is the most effective.

The adage "I know half of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which half" shouldn't apply when you can track customer acquisition routes and conversions so accurately. There are some fantastic tools available to help interpret all of this, for the OP's advertising budget it would definitely be worth testing some of them.

Graham

I was trying to find a couple of the tools I described.

mixpanel and kiss metrics both look like they could give the OP some fantastic info. They both offer free trials and usually (if you do a bit of googling before signing up) you'll find they offer extended free-trials, additional discounts etc. Throw the word 'startup' at the end of your search terms.

They're not cheap/free like Google analytics but how much would a 10% increase in conversions be worth?