Investigating your PPC Conversions

I’m sure everyone of us sees differences and fluctuations in their conversions. One day it can be 200 sales per day, and the other day it can be 170. This is only a difference of 15% but it’s still a substantial number of sales. Now part of the conversion difference might be on the merchant side, but there are factors on your PPC side as well that influence the conversion rate and the conversion amount as well. Let’s see how we can find them shall we..

• Go to the reporting tab in Google Adwords.
• Click “Create a New Report”
• Click “Campaign Performance”
• Set the View to “Daily” and select the last two weeks, to get a good idea of what is happening on specific week days. You can also choose a different period of time, but two weeks gives you just enough data to get a clear view on the current trend.
• Click “Advanced Settings” and select from the “Conversion Columns” the following items: conversion cost, cost/conversion, conversions and conversion rate.
• Click “Filter your Results” and set Ad Distribution to Search Only
• Name your report, and where you feel the need, set it to run weekly
• Click “Create Report”
• Open your report from the Reporting Tab
• In the upper right corner right below the range date you can choose what you want to see the graph for. Choose Conversions
• When you take a look at the graph below for a very small campaign you’ll notice that on week days the conversion is much lower then in the weekend, where it is high.
• With this data in mind, go and take a look at the following items: average position, number of clicks per ad group or even keyword, click through rate.

You’re probably going to find out some differences that are worth taking into account when your optimizing. Imagine what a small change can do on a yearly basis. If you can’t find anything, e-mail your account manager with your findings and have them do an investigation.

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Our Premium members can find this tutorial and some more advanced examples in the Education section. A video tutorial is also available from the Video Tutorials tab.