Google Merchant Promotions, Shopping Cart Abandonment & Other PPC Updates

PPC Strategy We’re Recommending: Google Merchant Promotions. Set up Merchant Promotions and append your Shopping ads to highlight a special offer. It’s basically an Ad Extension for your Shopping ads, and the value is obvious. These promotions are managed through a second feed, usually set up through a Google Spreadsheet. To get started you’ll need to go through a simple application process. More information can be found here.

Article We’re Tipping Our Caps To: Quality Score is Not A KPI. We have worked with many clients whose most profitable keywords have a Quality Score of 3 or lower. While Quality Score is something that should always be considered in the long-term foryour AdWords accounts, the QS algorithm is far from perfect, and sometimes there won’t be an explanation for a poor QS. The real KPIs that you should be focusing on are Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Total Conversion Value, Conversions, and Cost-Per-Conversion.

Google Analytics Metric We’re Tracking: Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate. This is the percentage of users that reach your cart page but don’t complete the checkout process. You’re already investing a ton of money and resources to get users that far down the buyer journey, so you should always be aware of how many are falling out of this last step.

You can set up a cart abandonment funnel in Google Analytics and then run a variety of A/B Split Tests in an attempt to improve this metric. A step-by-step guide to creating your funnel can be found here.

Current Event We’re Weighing In On: Is it just us, or does this whole Ryan Lochte scandal sound like an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia? 

It would start with Charlie accidentally breaking a door to a gas station, then him and Mac panicking that they need a story. Charlie suggests they say they were robbed at gunpoint, and Mac texts Dee to help get the story out. Frank runs on screen, takes a huge wad of cash out of his wallet and sets it on fire.

The scene then cuts to Dennis being interrogated by the Rio police, giving up his friends without hesitation.