Can’t Fix That ‘Click Through Rate’?

I’m sure many of you are using Google AdWords to advertise your business, it’s a popular way to quickly generate traffic for your site.

After a bit of time using AdWords you soon run into the tricky issue of CTR, or Click-Through-Rate. It is basically a percentage based on the number of times your ad has been clicked compared to the number of times it has been displayed. Unsurprisingly, higher CTR’s are better…

So the dance begins, you want the best CTR you can possibly manage, but you have to keep in mind the eventual goal of the site. If that’s to make a sale then crafting your ad to best convey your products unique-selling-point will more likely bring a higher CTR.  Here are a few tips to getting a better CTR:

• The actual text contained with the ad is also enormously important, simply restructuring the information can lead to massively increase in CTR. One of the best ways is to run a series of trials using the same ad as a starting point. E.g. Try an ad where the price is included in the title, is that better? Try another with the percentage discount in the title, is that better? Very small details can make substantial differences to your ads CTR.
• Also always make sure you have more than one ad running at the same time so you can “split test” the ads to see which one performs better. Once you have determined the winner delete to loser and start the process over again. You need to make sure that Google shows the ads more evenly to get a more accurate result.When your in a campaign click on the settings tab and make sure under the Ad delivery: Ad rotation, frequency capping section the Rotate: Show ads more evenly radio button is selected see example below:
  

• One less intuitive aspect to test is the display URL. This is the URL that appears to the bottom of the ad. Try using the full URL, try using the URL without the www’s, try capitalising elements within the URL, etc..

• If you are struggling to increase that CTR then take a look at the average position of your ad. If your ad is languishing around at the bottom of the page then the chances of it being clicked are hugely reduced. The easiest way to solve this is to increase your cost-per-click value, it will eat through your budget faster, but if you are in a competitive market then biting that expensive bullet can lead to more click and therefore more sales.

Do you use AdWords? If you have any click-through-rate question then feel free to leave a comment.

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• Google AdWords Wants Your Products! - December 3, 2010
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