Should you display the price in your ad?

[Seamaster]

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I've recently started doing some Adwords PPC for single product price comparison pages.

Would you recommend putting the price in the advert so users know what price is going to be listed on your page before clicking?

It might lower CTR as people might be put off by the price but it might make them more likely to convert as they know what the price is before clicking through and won't be put off when they see it.

I'm trying it with some ads and the click through rate looks similar to ads without a price in but I can't tell if the users who click on an ad with the price in are more likely to be the ones who then go on and make the purchase.

What do you do?

[Tawnyfrog]

Ahoy there!

Up late eh? In a previous life (yet again) working in search I would say yes, as it pre-qualifies your ad to convert to the searcher by presenting exactly the offering you have. The consumer will click on the ad knowing that they have already been presented with a specific cost offering so are more likey to purchase as they are in a "buying mindset" = they are actively ready to purchase, searching. I'll PM you my dull article I wrote concerning paid search and pre-qualifyng a "buyer".

[paulb567]

I've found having the price in my ads improves my ROI.

If you are showing the cheapest price compared to the other visible ads then your CTR will soar and you'll stand a good chance of making sales as the user has found the cheapest price they can see (possibly, unless they go investigating further).

If you're not showing the cheapest price it will slump but this can also be a good thing as you won't be paying for clicks for visitors who will find the cheapest price and buy from another ad/site.

A couple of negagives though. Changing the price in your ad text means a new ad so all the CTR histroy your previous ad gained is lost. Also keeping them up to date can be a problem, manually updating a handful of ads is easy enough but not really practical when you've got 100s or 1000s of products you are promoting via adwors.

You can use the Adwords API to write something that will make these changes automatically based upon your price comparison updates.

[Seamaster]

Thanks people, that was kind of what I was thinking.

Hadnt thought about losing the CTR though. Hmm, will have a think.

PS - not up late, am now in a +8 time zone, should change my location on here I suppose.

Its quite good as I can start work at 8am here (midnight uk) and I have the whole day to work on my sites and analyse my campaigns from the previous day and then tweak them so they are ready to run again for 9am UK time.

[madog]

Hey Seamaster,

Another thing to watch is negative keywords, assuming you are bidding on product Sku's, make sure no other manufacturer uses the same sku, a toshiba XYZ is different to a Matabo XYZ, same goes for the usual negatives, like lenses if your bidding on a SLR camera sku, especially as the price in the ad could then be missleading / cost you the click / not qualifying the visitor but having the oposite effect.

As paulb567 states, okay manual for a few products but much more challenging on a grand scale, I use in house technology for 10,000's of products every day and I'm kept busy,

Final point is choosing the right merchants to promote, keeping up with stock changes, feeds that are out of date, the usual challenges affiliates face every day.

Best of luck though, if you've located a good product, low competiton especially at this time of year, and it's a desirable product, the numbers work for you, then make hay while you can.

Simon

[jonsp]

I'm trying it with some ads and the click through rate looks similar to ads without a price in but I can't tell if the users who click on an ad with the price in are more likely to be the ones who then go on and make the purchase.

What do you do?

First of all answer this question. Track the user from keyword/ad through to purchase. I'd guess the ads with the price convert better but you'd need to know how much better

Next is your price actually good? For 1 example I had a PPC campaign for a mobile recycling site and put the price in the ad. Guy searches for recycle Nokia N95 -> my ad says your N95 is worth say £50 which was the best price available. Clickthrough was lame - presumably the guy thought he'd get more so didn't bother to click. Then recycle N95 -> compare prices. Click through much better and conversion high, still the same phone same intent and the same price. Moral - only advertise your price if it's very very good. Otherwise offer to compare prices then when the guy lands on your page do a credible comparison - guy thinks OK this is the best deal.

If all else fails optimise for CTR rather than conversion. The goal is to pay the least amount for a click which is a factor of your click through rate. In general you're better getting more visitors at a low CPC than a very few at a high CPC.

[alviguru]

i think you can do put prices but it demends how much you are saying and what your comparison site is all about