A common mistake that many eCommerce companies make when measuring the success of their Google Search Ads is tracking how many clicks they are getting. Obviously getting traffic to your site is essential, but many eCommerce companies mistake traffic as the goal. For eCommerce, the goal should always be sales, which involves not just generating traffic, but strategically setting up your campaigns to get high-quality visitors that are likely to make a purchase.
Because you pay per click with Google Ads, you want to make sure you’re not paying for the clicks of users who may not actually be interested in your product. With seemingly endless ways to set up your Search campaigns, it can be overwhelming and difficult to know exactly how to make sure you’re getting the right traffic. Below, we’ve compiled 6 Google Ads tips that every eCommerce company should know to get your ads in front of the right people.
1. Set up accurate conversion tracking
For Untitled, having accurate conversion tracking is one of the most important of these 6 Google Ads tips. This is one of the most common issues we see when conducting Google Ad audits for eCommerce companies. Many times companies have some form of conversion tracking setup, but it is not accurately pulling in actual sales data from website purchases. It’s important to make sure that you are optimizing campaigns for optimal return on advertising spend (ROAS), instead of traffic.
2. Use price extensions
We suggest using as many applicable extensions as possible. However, for eCommerce companies specifically, price extensions should definitely be utilized. Any extra information you can provide the user will either encourage them to click your ad or, in some cases, deter them — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
If your product is in a competitive industry or more on the expensive side, you wouldn’t want to continuously pay for clicks just to have the users immediately bounce once they see the price. With price extensions, they can see the price and move on if not interested, at no cost to you. On the other hand, a user may see the price, see it’s within their budget, click the ad and possibly purchase.
3. Opt out of Google Search Partners
Google automatically opts you in to serving on Search Network and Display Network. However, at Untitled, we always recommend opting out. These networks typically have lower click-through and conversion rates than the standard Google Search network.
While more places for your ads to show may sound like a great idea, you have no control over placements on the partner sites, leading to no guarantee that the users are actually interested in your product. It’s better to reallocate that budget to clicks you know are very interested in making a purchase.
4. Change Your Target location
Google automatically has you target “people in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations”. If your eCommerce company only ships within the U.S., this can cause an issue. This means that people in other countries searching U.S. related topics, for example U.S. news or celebrities, will be served the ad, but will not follow through with a purchase because you cannot ship to them.
5. Make bid adjustments (30% or more)
Bid adjustments enable you to show your ad more frequently depending on where, when, and how the user searched. Bid adjustments ensure your ad shows for a user that you know is worth more to you.
For example, if you sell custom iPhone cases and you know the majority of your sales come from females ages 18-26 on mobile devices, you should make a bid adjustment on that gender, age group, and device. If your eCommerce brand is new and you aren’t sure of your exact target market yet, you can monitor conversion data and make adjustments as you see trends in real-time. This is a great use case of the Untitled platform.
We suggest making an adjustment of at least 30%, as anything less may not cause any significant change and you want to be aggressive in making sure your ads show for people in your target market. Once you have enough data, we recommend making as many bid adjustments as possible.
6. Use Responsive Search Ads
Responsive Search Ads allow you to add up to 25 unique headlines and 4 descriptions to a single ad and Google will use the most relevant headlines and descriptions that match the users search terms. We recommend having a Responsive Search Ad in every single ad group, as oftentimes these ads generate the most traffic. This allows you to use various forms of your keywords and highlight unique attributes of your company that make you stand out from competitors.
In Summary
We appreciate you reading our 6 Google Ads tips every eCommerce company should know. We believe these tricks will help every eCommerce brand take their Google Search Ads to the next level.
If your company is new to Google Ads, struggling to generate quality traffic, or has customer data but isn’t using it to guide your Search strategy, Untitled would love to chat.
Contact us today — we’d love to give your business a competitive edge.
