Lessons for Websites

Sites that accept advertising should think twice before accepting ads that 80 to 90% of users strongly dislike. The resulting drop in customer satisfaction will damage your website’s long-term prospects.

Advertisers themselves might be tempted to continue with these nasty design techniques as long as they can find sites that will run them. After all, they typically yield higher clickthrough rates. But clickthrough is not only goal. Users who are deceived into clicking on a misleading ad might drive up your CTR, but they’re unlikely to convert into paying customers. And your brand suffers a distinct negative impact when you antagonize customers and use techniques that are associated with worst scum on net.

Corporate websites can also learn from these studies, even if they don’t run ads. Many elements that users dislike in ad design are also common in mainstream web design, with equally bad affects. A few things to avoid:

• Pop-ups
• Slow load times
• “Teasing” links, misleading categories, and other elements that trick users into clicking
• Content that doesn’t clearly state site’s purpose or what a particular page covers
• Content that moves around page
• Sound that plays automatically

All of these techniques have caused problems in traditional usability studies of non-advertising sites, and they should be avoided like plague. The fact that they’re associated with most hated ads is one more reason that respectable sites should avoid them at all costs.

3. Optimising

Do not go along with google's suggested cost per click. This is always far higher than necessary. Many advertisers do not understand that their click through rate affects their position to same degree as how much they pay per click. For example, if you pay 5 cents per click for phrase "page rank" and your competition pays 10 cents and achieves a click through rate of 0.5%, then in order to surpass this person in position you will only need to double your click through rate, to anything above 1%, whilst still only paying half of what they are Generally speaking, I would always recommend paying half of google suggested figure for your clicks, exception being if your business is in a highly competitive field in terms of adwords marketing use.

Now that you have your keywords and pricing in place, you should set your daily budget relatively low for a short time, allowing you to see how successfully this campaign is running, without risking too much money. Leave your campaign to run for a few days, and take good care to note which keywords are leading to sales or enquiries.

4. Experimenting

You should continually monitor performance of your keywords and Ad groups and try to change tiny details from time to time, perhaps one word here and there occassionally. Changing even one word can have an affect on success of your campaign, either positively or negatively. If you find google disabling your ads because you are failing to obtain enough clicks then go back to brainstorming and generate another set of keywords and phrases which may work better for you.

Even if adwords are working supremely well for you, constant monitoring is important. If other people realise you are generating high profits then it is likely they will start to tap into your market. Continue to experiment with your campaigns to ensure you stay at forefront of your field.