Retailers running Ecommerce websites are faced with many challenges when it comes to driving relevant, buying traffic to their websites. The quickest and most moldable methods of driving traffic to a site, is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
The most common forms of PPC are search related advertisements on the 2 main networks provided by Bing and Google. Bing’s PPC platform is called Microsoft AdCenter for use with Bing and Yahoo’s paid search result ads and Google’s platform is called Google AdWords. AdWords is the most sophisticated of the 2 platforms and offers a wider range of advertising types, such as product listing ads and display network ads to name but a few.
The beauty of these 2 platforms is that the paid advertising instantly drives traffic to your site by paying for the clicks that deliver users to your site. As with any retail business you want to convert as much of the visitors to your store into sales, this is the same online. There are a few key steps to follow that can help increase the conversion rates of your PPC campaigns.
Land Visitors on a Relevant Page
Delivering people who click on your ppc advertisements to the correct page that holds relevancy to the ad is key in keeping them engaged and can reduce bounce rates dramatically. This is a basic process, the best example is that your keywords are specific to a product e.g. iPhone 5, the ad features messaging specific to the product e.g. ‘iPhone 5 only £XXX with FREE Delivery’, that will deliver visitors to an iPhone 5 product page. The higher the pages relevancy and the more key information displayed in your ad, the higher your ads will convert as less relevant traffic won’t click the ad and more buying traffic will be delivered to where they need to be.
Deliver Visitors as far into the Ordering Process as Possible
Your campaigns should be as targeted as possible, not only does this keep the ad text as engaging and as relevant as possible, increasing click through rates(CTR), but it will also allow you to deliver visitors as far as possible into the buying process as possible. If your ad is targeted at one specific product then delivering visitors to that product page is the most effective and furthest stage of the buying process possible. By alleviating the amount of steps and clicks that a user has to make to purchase, you can increase the conversion rate of your campaign.
Conform PPC Ads to Landing Pages
We have already covered the basics of delivering visitors to relevant pages, so taking this a step further, conforming the landing pages content, headings and paragraphs should be similar to that in the ad text. This instantly helps the visitor see the symmetry of the ad that they have clicked and the page that they are delivered to.
An example of this is a user searching for ‘buy iPhone 5 on Orange’ in Google, your ad is displayed in the results with the title ‘iPhone 5 available with Free Delivery on Orange’. When clicked your ad delivers a user into your ecommerce sites iPhone 5 page which has the heading ‘Apple iPhone 5’ with prominent ‘Free Delivery’ placement and clear identifiers for selecting an Orange tariff. This instantly gives the user all of the elements that were identified in your ad text, which based on their search, was clicked because they found it to be the most relevant result in the prominent ad positions.
Clear USP’s and Placements on Landing Pages
As mentioned before having key messaging on landing pages is another key component to increasing the conversion rates of your PPC Campaigns. Free delivery, delivery time, price based reductions, offers, security or trust elements and any other messaging that is present in ads that give visitors key reasons for purchasing with your site need to be as prominent as possible.
Clear Product Information on Landing Page
A key factor for increasing any form of conversion rate on an ecommerce web site is to give the user as much information as possible to make an informed decision on purchasing. Product descriptions, product information, pricing, discounts, delivery information, multiple product images and trust value for your site, to name but a few elements that need to be present on the page a user is delivered to from your ads.
Remarketing Campaigns
The final aspect to be covered in this article is the use of remarketing to visitors on your site. Google have the facility within AdWords to create remarketing campaigns as part of the Google Display Network, which can be an effective method of re-engaging visitors, bringing them back to your site and converting them into sales, in turn increasing your paid campaigns conversion rates.
The Google AdWords remarketing campaigns can be setup within your account in the same way that you would an ordinary campaign, but require the addition of a script to your site, which basically drops a cookie on a visitor’s machine, then will display your campaigns remarketing banners on any site that they visit that is part of Google’s Display Network.
The most effective form of remarketing are animated banners that include all of the key points that you would include in a standard text based ad. Make the banners as relevant as possible, for instance if they are initiated on a particular product page, setup a campaign for that product that includes an image of the product, an actionable button, your company brand and logo with key messaging to engage a user and get them to click through and convert. Try as many banners as possible for all of the various stages, products and pages for your site, creating multiple sized banners to give your campaigns the most scope available when being displayed.
Hire an Expert
To further maximize the return on your PPC campaigns or help you grow and develop them, turning to a consultant or Digital Agency that have a skilled team of professional available to manage your campaigns. Due to the experience and knowledge base that these individuals or agencies have at their disposal the outlay to employ them will generally be much smaller than the increase in ROI and is something worth considering.
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