We’ve been using google adwords from the beginning. About 6 months. I have to say that since we started tracking sales conversions in analytics, none of our adwords traffic has been tracked as a sale. All sales have been through direct traffic, meaning they typed the url in their address bar or saved it to their favorites. Now that doesn’t mean that anyone who found us through an adwords ad hasn’t purchased anything, it just means that they didn’t purchase anything on that visit.

I would recommend going with adwords. A few months back during christmas, we received or 900 hits from adwords which ran us about $50.00 bucks. That’s cheap traffic.

The one thing that I have to say about adwords, is there is a learning curve. You don’t just pick 75-100 keywords through them in ad group, write a couple ads and run it. You’ll end up blowing your money.

You need to plan your advertising carefully. Research keywords that are relevant to your store and perform well. Don’t forget about the tail end keywords either. Create small ad groups and write ads that are specific to those keywords.

I would suggest maybe purchasing The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords. Its a little outdated and some of the tools mentioned have changed or are no longer available, but the basic principle of creating a great Google advertising plan is the same. You can also purchase a bunch of mp3’s with the book which have some really great information. I actually just bought the ebook last week and still going over the information and learning new things. Besides, if you not satisfied, you have 30 days to get your money back.

As far as the coupons go, I am not sure. I have not heard anything recently about any new discounts from Google.

Good Luck with your store.

— Last edited 03:46AM, Mar 28, 2007

thanks for your advice… will do more research on adwords.

Hi Dan…you mentioned in March that:

”...have to say that since we started tracking sales conversions in analytics, none of our Adwords traffic has been tracked as a sale….”

Is this still the case or have you had Adwords purchases tracked as a sale?

Thanks,
Rachel.

Not yet. I just emailed Tobi about it this morning. We can track Adwords traffic, and shopping cart information, but can’t seem to get analytics to tie them together.

He said that he put it on his todo list.

— Last edited 07:21PM, Jul 18, 2007

Hi danW…have you heard any noises about this happening in the near future? Could be the difference between making/losing several $1000 a year.

Rachel.

Not that I am aware of. Its on the list though. This is something that we could really use as well.