Chief Google economist Hal Varian stirred up debate on Google and econsultancy forums with his comments about conversion rates not being affected by ad position. While Google’s statistical model shows that generally there’s a less than 5% variation in conversion rates across the first 11 ads, reactions from industry watchers suggest that these figures really don’t tell us anything new or meaningful.
Our own customer analysis tells us that the impact varies depending on a large number of variables of which ad position is only one. We have seen that the sector (b2b,b2c), the industry sector (retail, finance, etc.,) the key phrase, the competition against key phrase, the ad copy, the quality score, not to mention the price and product all have a significant part to play in conversion rate.
Inevitably early stage searchers will click higher up the page but if the site itself is not very good or irrelevant to their search, they’ll move further down. PPC agencies have an ethical responsibility to look beyond the ad and advise clients on the site itself as one compliments the other. Too often the builders of the site are separate to the process and don’t see beyond the static finished site they’ve created.
The best websites should be fluid and reactive to small changes in the adverts which can make a huge different to conversion.
Some basic tips are:
1) Always run more than one advert to test one against the other so that improvements can continue.
2) Dynamic insertion is an easy way to improve click through, assuming your ad matches the product being typed.
3) Geo targeting doesn’t work very well as it’s based on where your customer’s IP is located.