How to Measure PPC Success by Industry

[seomontreal]

I am doing some PPC work for a client that sells coffee online. I have increased the clients CTR in their campaign, made suggestions to the site which the client has implemented and modified landing pages.

We are just not getting a satisfactory ROI in my opinion. I was hired to do PPC, not SEO or usability analysis, etc. so I don't want to step too far out of my boundaries... but I am at my wit's end as to what can be done.

I have one theory left - and that is that the look of the site may not be conducive to buying coffee - coffee sites are usually brown *grin*

What would make me feel better (or maybe worse) is knowing how other coffee sites do; what kind of sales they are able to generate online, how the coffee industry does online in general etc. For example we know that books and music are good sellers online...but is coffee?

Are there websites - either free or paid - that give industry benchmarks?

Thanks ;-)

[Elisabeth]

tough space. competitive. branding goes a long way in that group, too. plus value added programs - monthly clubs, accessories, etc.

the coffee space has seen huge growth in the last several years, but that's just from my own experience with it. I don't know of any industry resource that gives actual data of online sales growth. (emarketer may have food/bev online data; www.scaa.org maybe)

i'm guessing your ROI is probably low because average CPC is fairly high correct? or conversion rates are just lower than expected?

the coffee site I worked on was far from brown:)

[seomontreal]

i'm guessing your ROI is probably low because average CPC is fairly high correct? or conversion rates are just lower than expected?

Conversion rates are lower than expected. CTR are good...I've eliminated KW which are not true to the site such as raw coffee beans, etc.

Get this...someone looking for Dunkin Donuts Coffee Online actually bought coffee at this online store...which is far from Dunkin Donuts *grin* How does one learn and tweak KW based on this info *grin*

[Elisabeth]

yes, dumping out keywords that would only serve to disappoint users and jack up unnecessary spend is a great idea.

as far as your specific example goes, (though maybe I should bow out of discussing it in further detail, esp. since it's DD land up here;)

yes, it's great that you convinced an otherwise determined customer to try your alternative instead. So that's a positive, there must be something inherent in your product quality or value proposition that you can further capitalize on.

albeit a valid tactic - appearing when other brand names appear to provide an alternative product/service in comparision, there is a fine line, given trademark issues and concerns, b/c you don't want to be bidding specifically on others' brand names. However, because your matching options are allowing you to come up for "coffee online" even when a brand is specified in search, you're on the right track. Your ad copy may have swayed them in your direction.

the next step beyond that would be to directly (fairly) compare other brands to yours in some page of content on the site.

[seomontreal]

the next step beyond that would be to directly (fairly) compare other brands to yours in some page of content on the site.

Hi Elisabeth! I think that I am being misunderstood;-)

It was coincidental that someone searching for DD ended up seeing our ad - we certainly didn't bid on the DD brand name directly - as a matter of fact since the budget is fairly low we run negatives on all of the big brands.

What I am looking for is one of two things:
1. Industry Stats - is our conversion rate lower than that of another online coffee sales company?

2. What can be done to increase the # of conversions? We can work on the dollar value of conversions a little later - upsells, etc. I have ensured solid landing pages, made adjustments to landing pages, examined each and every sale and Click through to see what could be learned from it and used for improvement; the client is doing shopping cart abandonement analysis and tweaking things there - all the tweaks are very much for the better!

Thanks ;-)

Darlene

[AussieWebmaster]

It seems like you are hitting all the major points... though tough without seeing the site to give any deep analysis on quality of landing page... I have found that if you remove the distractions of the page - strip away all possible navigation off the page to just home (for the real abandoners) and then the other 1 or 2 to more info (also free of nav distraction) and the sales buttons should be seen top and bottom.... hell even the pic of the product could be a link to the purchase page.
Have a small amount of info on the buy page... not too stark and not too heavy with info... a couple of sales written high points that push the final click and form fill out.