What is considered a good % of sales vs. visits?

[nashville]

I sell Discovery Flight Gift Certificates, the first page people click on got 2,618 visits and I sold 72.

Is that really bad, ok, or very good

Here is the page: Learn to Fly, Flying Lessons, Flight School - Give the gift of flight

What could I do better?

[bobitza]

Originally Posted by nashville

I sell Discovery Flight Gift Certificates, the first page people click on got 2,618 visits and I sold 72.

Is that really bad, ok, or very good

Here is the page: Learn to Fly, Flying Lessons, Flight School - Give the gift of flight

What could I do better?

I think it all comes down to simple math. I see your selling the gifts for almost $100.

Revenue: 72 x 100 = $7,200

Situation 1
------------
You paid $.5 on average per click and you have a 50% mark-up on gift certificates

Sales: 7200
COGS: (3600)
Ads: (1309)

Gross margin: $2291
Profit margin: 63%

Situation 2
------------
Fill in with your own data

[incrediblehelp]

Well almost a 3% conversion rate seems pretty good, but it really depends on you. Are you making the right profit margins on these sales. you need to figure your actual cost per conversion.

[MoreThanGoogle]

In my view all these companies are getting web site owners too little! Why because electronic algorthims are creating the campaign as opposed to how we work where we get involved at a human level and strike a sponsorship deal that is worth much more to the owner of the site. Typically 10 times more. It just takes a bit of time to think creatively and laterally and then cut the deal, check us out at MoreThanGoogle (TM) - Less Clutter More Cash!

[janeth]

A lot of it also depends on where the traffic is coming from.

[dannyb]

I agree. A lot of it depends on the traffic source, it is really easy to exponentially increase traffic.

But once the traffic is relevant then it makes more sense and the percentage conversion goes up. For example, earlier we were looking at popups etc. but now we are organically improved in Google, so we can get qualified people and hence higher sales %.

Cheers

D
Los Angeles Locksmith
Locksmith Los Angeles Locksmith Los Angeles Woodland Hills Van Nuys Encino Sherman Oaks - OrenLock

[max5]

You can always get a ton of traffic, but it might not be the targeted audience that you want for your site. Hits are awesome, but when they go to your site on accident and have no real reason to be there other than a mistake, it wastes precious time. I learned this the hard way, trying with one of those "we can get you the traffic you want" type places. Between that and some other PPC's I have switched to Dojo Hut. Started today and going to see how it runs for the next week. If I can get some SE ads, I will try that rather than fight with the other stuff that hasnt helped me yet.

[nashville]

Max5...Dojo Hut looks interesting but do the visitors need an add-on of any type to make it work?

Also they are asking $3000 for one keyword per year...that is too much to test an idea for me. I usually test ideas at $300 at a time.

[nashville]

96% of my traffic comes from search engines as we are #1 for most keywords, #2 for another and #7 for another. The other 4% comes from links from other sites.

My biggest problem I think is that people searching for "flying lessons" or "flight lessons" always find me. I estimate last year that about 150,000 took an introductory flight lesson at a local flight school. With 149,000 of them buying it direct from the school and 1,000 buying from me. Mine is the same price and comes with many bonus items the local school does not have.

My gross profit is only $29 as I pay the school $70.

Pay per click advertising usually converts at $47 per order so that's easy to see that it is not good.

I am trying to reach people that might not have thought of this...97% of my customers are women.

I think I so as well as I can in the search engines really...depending on if I have the right keywords of course. The problem with my keywords is that they are the same ones that large flight schools bid on, so they cost $2.50 per click up to $4.56 per click. Those large flight schools stand to make $10,000 while I am at $29 so it's hard for me to use those keywords.

The only time I make money with PPC is when the click is .20 or less.

I tested audio ads with Google and that did not get 1 sale from 96 commercials.

[cw1865]

You're seeing the same math that I am seeing. Advertising on a pay per click basis is simply not profitable for me. My cost to acquire a customer is simply too high.

Its difficult to say what an appropriate conversion rate would be. My conversion rate across my websites runs between 1-2% depending on the focus of the site. The higher the price, the lower the conversion rate, the applicability of 'sizing' the lower the conversion rate.

You're in a relatively unique industry and from what you posted in your first ad, it seems that you're converting 2.75%. I think that you have to balance two factors here. The first is that people who are going to your website are specifically interested in the service your website is selling (which would lead you to believe that your conversion rate should likely be higher); however, your niche is a 'dream' niche that people, quite literally, fantasize about without any intention of following through, so you're going to have many visitors who are really just curious (which leads me to believe that your conversion rate is on target).

It seems to me that you need to do two things: get more traffic and/or increase your conversion rate.

It would seem to me that the most obvious method of increasing your traffic is to focus on geographic searches, ie. flight school, houston, tx, etc. You can work on this organically and you may have some luck with respect to a PPC campaign if you can pay less than $.20 per click for certain geographically small areas, ie. flight school, Franklin, TN (or something like that). You may even find a niche doing searches based on county which many people overlook.

To increase your conversion rate you would somehow have to figure out what the decision making process is behind those individuals who are borderline and decide against - is it cost? Not sure, but intuitively you have to try to figure this out and try to put something on your website that will get those borderline individuals into the sale column. For example, if you KNOW (and I'm not sure if this is true), that .5% decide 'no' because they fear the overall cost, you might want to put something up which basically says that its 'not as expensive as you think' - or something like that.

From the numbers that you have been throwing out there it seems to me that you have ample room to double, triple, qudruple sales volume (without anybody even really noticing you either!) and should you do that, well, suffice it to say that the dollars will follow!

[max5]

cw1865, I had gotten to the point that the PPC ads were just sucking me dry, the small money that was even put in was not worth the hassle trying to make it work. its almost like you need to know exactly how it was made to start with in order to make it profitable for you.

nashville, I had sat there for two years fighting with things like ad sense, ppc, etc and I was just at my wits end. It started to drop 3k on something that is a little expensive, but so far it has pulled off nice. I did save up and budget to plan for this as I was in talks with other business partners and we decided it was the best way to go. There is an addon needed, but its not a bigge or anything. If I can work it I'm sure others can too. I am still learning a ton right now, but the invest for this was worth it. I try to test out smaller too like you were saying but honestly. I was at the point of giving up before I found this place.

[Nashville SEO]

My experience has been that PPC is rarely cost-effective, but organic SEO is typically very effective (given a high enough profit margin for the product being sold). I think the main reason for the difference is the psychological advantage provided by high natural rankings. PPC can never offer that advantage.

I have a client who was sold on PPC. He still does some, but he has yet to get a lead from it and in the first month of being with us he landed a major client, one that will justify our charges for the entire year. You just can't beat natural SEO.

[MattE]

Have you looked at two important issues
1. split test aspects of your site (easy to do with Google webmaster tools) - try different front pages, different pages just before checkout etc.
2. Look to capture visitor details - can you give away a couple of free flying lessons? (take mney from PPC cash pool - or see if one of the flying schools will sell at cost to you) Then you can use this info to keep marketing to your visitors.

So, think of two conversion channels - one is the sales conversion, the other is the email/details gathering conversion.

By following up with a series of follow-up emails (using an autoresponder) you could significantly increase your sales conversions.