Comments on: Dont Dress Up Calls-To-Action Like Google Adsense!

By: 17 Ways To Minimize Friction in the Sales Process « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:10:10 +0000

[...] My pet-peeve on ecommerce sites is when important calls to action look like Google AdSense. [...]

By: Miva Modules

Miva Modules — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:39:50 +0000

Aha. I didn’t catch that. I wonder if the companies are related, in fact. Thanks for pointing that out.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:05:05 +0000

@Miva

Looks like this is a banner exchange or a sister-site relationship. My Twinn does the same with a banner to eToys. I don’t mind banners etc. if you keep the visitor “in the family.”

By: Miva Modules

Miva Modules — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:13:04 +0000

Linda, I knew I’d recently seen a big-name ecommerce site showing ads. I found it again – it was eToys. They sell lots of ads, but one in particular that caught my attention was a link out to the My Twinn website – a site that sells dolls. It’s a great example for your argument to not put ads on ecommerce sites. (In fact, there’s a lot of good examples of things not to do on this website!) Just thought I would share – I’d love to get your take on it.

By: chris @MarieLu Lingerie

chris @MarieLu Lingerie — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:02:26 +0000

We are a lingerie retailer based in Italy and have had success using adsense as an extra revenue driver especially for the ‘just looking’ traffic. @eCommerce Consulting I have to agree, I was really surprised to see Amazon the gods of e-commerce running ads, maybe they have the same problem of alot of organic traffic that are not buyers or are just at the early phase of the sales cycle.

By: eCommerce Consulting

eCommerce Consulting — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:59:57 +0000

I think the debate of retailers using AdWords on an eCommerce site vs. not is worth discussing. I can see scenarios, and we have a client that falls into this category as well, where it can make sense (retailing is only one aspect of their revenue model). Although I can say that this would be a very rare case. I was always surprised to see Buy.com and Amazon.com use Adwords so much on their sites when they basically sell everything under the sun anyways.

But regardless, if they are used, it should be very clear what’s an ad and what is not.

By: John Joubert

John Joubert — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 09:57:33 +0000

Great post. I really liked those “thermal images”. Thanks for the awesome info!

By: Pourquoi il faut éviter d’avoir des contenus qui ressemblent à de la pub sur un site | I Love web

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:26:57 +0000

[...] là en france mais il semble que le problème soit déjà évident aux US ( voir l’article de Get Elastic [...]

By: World's craziest email

World's craziest email — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:40:28 +0000

Good information. Those heat maps tell a story in itself.

By: Miva Modules

Miva Modules — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:02:31 +0000

@Linda – I don’t think it’s useful on most ecommerce sites. However, we have one client in particular that I’m thinking of. She has a VERY niche product, and her site draws a lot of organic related traffic that has nothing to do with shopping. We believe that the majority of these people aren’t looking for products. She has carefully weeded out the few competitors that she has, so the ads don’t show any other products, just related services. We tracked the sales revenue and the ad revenue and were able to optimize both, and increase the overall value of her site as a result.

This is a very specialized case, however. Most of the other times we have people use it temporarily and then choose to remove it.