Most people think that AdWords is just another channel that they can use to generate traffic to their website to get new members, leads or sales and they may assume that it will or won’t work for them based on the metrics they currently see from organic search results, however just as a plate full of cupcakes are all cupcakes each one isn’t identical to the previous one and paid search doesn’t always convert identically or run to the same revenue figures organic search so it’s worth testing to see what the metrics would run at as they don’t always run the same between paid and organic traffic.

Google AdWords listings are spread across the top and down the right hand side of the Google search results page, they get shown to any person who types in the right keyword to trigger the adverts yet despite being side by side with organic results vastly different metrics could be in play, we’ve seen countless times that paid search traffic outperforms organic in terms of conversion rate, basket value and even repeat order value, so you really need to establish the real value of paid search traffic and not just assume it’s the same as organic.

The screenshot below is for a merchant in the adult toy industry, look closely at the paid v organic figures at the bottom : (click here to enlarge)

Looking across the bottom two rows the first thing that stands out as a big disparity is the Average Value column, that’s the average order value, you’ll notice it’s £21.27 for organic and £36.50 for paid search, that’s a whopping 75% difference in favour of paid search.

The next figure that stands out is the E-Commerce Conversion Rate, it’s 1.89% for organic and 2.00% for paid search, that’s a tasty 7% increase again in favour of paid search, traffic converts better from AdWords, it’s only a small difference but it’s a high volume site so every conversion means money in the bank.

The Per Visit Value or EPC (Earnings Per Click) is vastly disparate at 40p for organic v 73p for paid, that’s an 83% uplift in earnings per click via google AdWords compared to each visitor from organic search listings.

Obviously the extra EPC due to higher conversion rates and higher basket values is great news but it needs to be remembered that the traffic via AdWords isn’t free, there’s a bill to pay on this although most organic traffic isn’t fee in this day and age either, for most serious companies earning a living online SEO consultants and services need to be purchased, links need to be bought etc. so whilst SEO doesn’t cost per click like AdWords does, there is often a cost that needs to be figured into the EPC’s so whilst SEO may look like free money it’s often not the case and therefore makes AdWords PPC more viable in most cases.

One other factor needs taking into account for a majority of merchants and that’s offline sales, sales generated over the telephone account for a huge chunk of many merchant’s sales and these sales should be attributed to the source that generated them, there are a couple of ways to do this; A good coder will be able to write code to display different telephone numbers to visitors arriving via paid search to those arriving via organic results thus allowing the tracking of sales via the two channels in bulk, one local or 0800 number for each channel and in-house recording of which number sales come in via would work albeit somewhat in bulk as just two figures would be generated.

Another way would be to use an AdWords call tracking solution, we offer our own AdWords call tracking system: AdverTrack, Which displays a different telephone number to every unique visitor to the site, this way the actual keywords that generate sales can be established, even their Earnings per call can be calculated and displayed directly in Google AdWords/Analytics, this then gives full visibility as to the value of any given keyword in AdWords and is a fantastic tool to fully understand the value of your AdWords, as well as organic too!

In some cases it’s resulted in keeping keywords running that don’t drive online sales and would have normally been culled from the AdWords account so it’s definitely worth a test at the very least.

To learn more about AdverTrack drop us a line, it’s free for our PPC Management clients but it’s also a very reasonably priced system for non clients who’d like to use it too.