Adword Tips

Over the last few days, I’ve been testing the Google Checkout badges on a series of keywords. Here’s the experiment - and results.

Question: How does an AdWords ad with a Google Checkout Badge perform against an ad that does not have the badge? Theory: Since Google Checkout badges are new, I would assume that I would get a higher click-through rate on the badge with the ad as curious people click, but a lower conversion rate (hence higher cost per conversion).

Summary: I was wrong. The ad with the Google Checkout badge performed better across the board than the ad without.

Google Checkout was the hands-down winner.

Experiment: I created two identical opt-in pages, hosted on two seperate domains - one with the badges, one without. I then created two identical adds: the difference was in their Display and Link URL’s - google then added the [badge] to the one with the appropriate URL. I also made sure that the campaign had optimization turned off, so taht each ad would be served equally. Both ads were served approximately 50% of the the time, so had approximately the same number of impressions (within 1%). No ads were displayed on the content network, which don’t display the badges anyway.

The add with the checkout badge had a 40% higher click through than the ad without. The conversion rate was 17.5% higher with the badge in place.

This translates into more leads for less money, period.

Some notes: in addition to the badge, the domain names themselves were different, so that could have factored into the conversion. One was the product domain, the second (with the badge) was my personal domain, nicktemple.com - I would actually expect nicktemple.com to do worse than the product domain, however that probably needs to be tested seperately.

Also, the product had to do directly with Google Checkout, so these respondants may have been biased in favor of a checkout badge to begin with. Finally, the test is new, and as more more clicks are processed, the confidense level of the test will increase.

All that said so far, the checkout badge is a clear winner, though more testing will be needed over the next few weeks in other markets to verify.

Nick Temple, the Virtual CTO, is the premier ecommerce consultant and technology specialist. His new training system, Google Checkout Secrets, reveals exactly how to implement the Google Checkout system on your website for maximum profits. Visit http://www.GoogleCheckoutSecrets.com

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Very possibly the coolest new feature of Google Checkout are the magical badges that appear on the AdWords ads on Google.com. These are icons that, when you’ve set everything up correctly and the starts line up, tell the world that you are a Google Checkout merchant.

You can see what the Google Checkout badges look like by watching the demo, Why Google Checkout? on Google’s site: http://checkout.google.com/seller/demo.html

Why is this important? Google’s reasoning seems to be that by leveraging its brand, consumers will begin to trust Google more than the actual merchant. And by controlling the user experience on merchant websites, combined with an extremely easy checkout process (not quite one click, but darn close) consumers will begin to “feel good” about buying through Google which will, in turn, directly drive more sales through participating websites.

Consumers will begin to look for - and trust - that little Google Checkout icon. And that means, for you: more qualified clicks, a higher conversion (customers know that there is something to buy on your website) and, ultimately, more sales.

I believe that, in the long run, this strategy will work. Merchants that advertise with AdWords (as a majority of the marketing strategies suggest, i.e. Google Cash ) that don’t use Google Checkout will end up paying more per sale: higher CPC’s, lower conversions, and higher processing fees will combine to drive those companies to Google Checkout or out of AdWords entirely.

Will this strategy succeed? Only time will tell. However today I’m betting that, to be a viable adwords competitor, Google Checkout will be mandatory. Are you ready for the challenge?

Nick Temple, the Virtual CTO, is the premier ecommerce consultant and technology specialist. His new training system, Google Checkout Secrets, reveals exactly how to implement the Google Checkout system on your website for maximum profits. Visit:

http://www.GoogleCheckoutSecrets.com

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