How Long To Determine Success Of A Ppc Campaign? Options

[RisaBB]

Hello,

Once a PPC campaign is launched for a brand new website, is there a certain amount of time to wait before drawing conclusions about the PPC ad, the effectiveness of the landing page, the quality of the website, and the desireability of the products?

Once a visitor lands on your site, it's the same as if the visitor found you in the organic listings - it's now up to the quality of the site and products to make a sale. It doesn't really matter how the visitor got there.

I'm wondering if lack of conversions in PPC is indicative of the conversion rate once the site ranks well in the organic listings.

I guess what I'm asking is - Is 7 days enough to draw any conclusions at all?

Thanks.

Risa

[eKstreme]

I wouldn't measure it in time but number of impressions and number of clicks. Both need to be sufficiently high to give you a statistically sound sample. Also, make sure it runs throughout the day in case some countries don't convert as well as others.

Pierre

[Respree]

I would think there is very little residual affect of PPC. I can't think of an ad I've ever clicked on, didn't buy at that time, then x days/months later thought to return to the site to buy. I think most people have short-term memory, when it comes to PPC.

I think measuring the cost of 7 days worth of clicks against incremental revenue/traffic/other metric generated during that same period would be an 'fair' measure of its effectiveness. Of course, the longer the time period measured, the more 'accurate' the initial measurement becomes.

[EGOL]

My experience is that today's results are indicative of tomorrow's results. However, you can never be entirely sure about tomorrow. Things happening outside of your site can influence your results. New bidders, new products, price changes... any of these can happen and suddenly make your campaign fail miserably - and drill a hole in your wallet!

So, PPC is not a set it and forget it venture.

[Black_Knight]

Differing products have wildly differing purchase cycles. As the roughest rule of thumb, the bigger the price tag, the longer between seeing an offer, and thinking it over and discussing it with partners will be following before actually buying.

Also, things that are long-term binding decisions, like insurance providers, mortgage providers, etc, where the deision you make is going to bind you for a long time, again, the more 'thinking time' will follow.

Vacations, especially package holidays as we call them here, often have a period of upto 3 months between the visitor seeing the pitch, and making a decision, for an example. Yet travel tickets, or hotel bookings outside of a package, are often same-day decisions.

So the length of time to evaluate your conversions will vary on the natural "consideration period" for the product or service on offer.

[Jozian]

We all know that PPC conversions are based on many factors. If you have signficant clicks, then statistically, any persiod of time is 'enough'.

But I would not recommend just axing a 7-day old campaign outright without more info.

Click Through Rate
HIGH: If I knew for instance that the CTR on my ad was high, but the conversion rates were low, I would be thinking:
1) The ad was working but the value equation and/or the landing page might be the issue.
2) The ad was working to well in relationship to the value/landing, and I might need to tighten the ad focus in order to increase the conservion rate.
3) I better analyze my landing page to see what is happening. Try CrazyEgg or a high-end analysis tool.
4) Are all systems functioning on the commerce train? Could response times or system errors be blocking sales?
5) Are landers viewing any other pages before they leave? If so waht and why?

LOW: If I knew for instance that the CTR on my ad was low, and the conversion rate was also low, I would be thinking:
1) Is my ad compelling enough?
2) Is my value equation strong enough?
2) Is the competition eating my opportunity before they are getting to me? Do I need to have a higher ranking in order to increase my conversion rate?

Just a few thoughts that might help.

Good point on the purchase size and sales cycle too, Knight.

Respree - don't forget that although a return visit may not happen automatically, it might if I saw the ad again in the same or a new venue. It might begin working on me as a branding play and/or maybe increase my trust enough to overcome a misgiving.

-Jeff

This post has been edited by Jozian: May 22 2007, 02:10 PM

[RisaBB]

Wow! I got the elite here answering this question! Thanks so much, guys.

OK - So I'm not going to despair yet that the e-commerce site I've been developing for the last 4 months almost exclusively (hardly did any work for clients), and still developing lots of content for, is not a colossal failure.

I think you're right, Black_Knight - my items are not cheap. I have to check out many websites over the course of a week or more to make decisions, so maybe that's what's happening.

Risa

[kestrel]

You can test your on site conversion here http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/inde...showtopic=48718

This post has been edited by kestrel: May 22 2007, 02:18 PM

[RisaBB]

I saw that post yesterday, watched the video, and tried to set up Website Optimizer last night (having trouble adding JS code because my site is set up using X-Cart).

I saw a presentation on Website Optimizer at SES NY and it seems super-cool.

Thanks!

Risa

[victor363]

The only footnote about PPC worth adding is that sometimes it takes Google a week or so to assign you a more stable quality score (which affects your rankings and price of course). So pulling the plug on a campaign to early can be premature.