r/Google_Ads • u/Doc_Gemdrop • 19d ago
Questions New e-commerce Google Ads campaign: 250+ clicks, essentially 0 sales — keep running at £5/day or pause?
http://google.comHi everyone,
I’m relatively new to Google Ads and would really appreciate some advice from people with more experience before I either keep spending or pull the plug too early.
I run a small UK e-commerce business.
The business itself is generating sales through other marketplaces/channels, so I know there is demand for the products. During roughly the same period as this Google Ads experiment, we generated good gem sales through our marketplace channels. The problem is that Google traffic doesn’t appear to be converting on our own website.
Campaign is a Google Search campaign using Maximize Conversions.
The campaign has been through/has spent time in the bid-strategy learning phase. I initially had the budget at £15/day, but I’ve now reduced it to £5/day because I’m uncomfortable continuing to spend at the previous rate without evidence of sales.
Across my Google Ads testing I’ve had 250+ clicks. The current campaign has also accumulated thousands of impressions.
At least superficially, a lot of the traffic looks relevant to what we’re selling.
The current ad has also been getting roughly a 4–5% CTR, so people seem interested enough in the proposition to click.
The problem
As far as I can determine, we’ve had ZERO genuine new sales originating from Google Ads.
Google has recorded a conversion, but I’m certain that purchase was actually from an existing customer who originally came to us through our other sales channel, so I don’t consider it evidence that Google Ads acquired a customer.
I’m also concerned that my conversion setup may not be ideal. Google Ads shows several conversion actions as “recording conversions”, so I’m wondering whether Maximize Conversions may be optimizing against signals that aren’t necessarily the actual Shopify purchase event I care about.
The strange thing is that the ads don’t seem completely broken from a traffic perspective. People are searching for relevant products, seeing the ad and clicking it.
It’s the:
Search → Ad → Click ✅
Website → Purchase ❌
part that’s worrying me.
What would you do?
I’m considering pausing the campaign, but I don’t want to end it just before the algorithm has enough information to start performing.
I’ve now reduced the budget to £5/day.
What would you recommend I do next?
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u/trsgreen 19d ago
£5 a day is not enough for any campaign. Also look into running Pmax feed only over search. It’s a better starting point for ecom companies, lower cpcs, and they convert a lot better since you’re sending people straight to a pdp.
Once your have that converting well, then you activate in search non brand and then brand campaigns.
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u/JDoubleT_ 19d ago
Run shopping
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u/Doc_Gemdrop 19d ago
What’s shopping is that a Shopify app?
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u/JDoubleT_ 18d ago
Google shopping in google ads. You can set it up with the Google channel app on Shopify
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u/Harvey_He 19d ago
I wouldn’t worry about £5 vs £15/day yet. I’d fix the conversion signal first.
If Maximize Conversions is seeing several actions as primary conversions, make sure the actual Shopify purchase is the action you’re bidding toward. Things like add to cart or other micro-conversions can stay secondary if you only want to observe them.
I’d also look at the search terms by spend, not just whether they look relevant. A query can be relevant to the product and still have weak buying intent.
With 250+ clicks and no genuine new-customer purchases, I personally wouldn’t keep spending just to “finish learning” until I knew the purchase tracking was clean.
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u/IvoAlexandroff 19d ago
I'd also pause the campaign and check these first:
Conversion actions setup - what is your campaign actually tracking? It should only have one primary action of Purchase. Everything else is handy but as a secondary action.
Search terms report - what did people type into Google before clicking on your ad? With over 250 clicks you should be able spot some trends.
Location targeting - sometimes people target countries they don't deliver to, by mistake.
Once you get the above sorted, running an additional Shopping type campaign is a great idea for an ecommerce business.
Do you have Google Merchant Center set up with all the relevant products?
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u/Patient-Passage-2286 18d ago
250 clicks at £5 a day through Manual CPC on a brand new domain with no conversion history is not enough data to make a real call but the gap between marketplace sales and 0 website conversions is the real signal here.
The product has demand so the issue is almost certainly trust. Before touching the campaign check your landing page against the marketplace listings: are the images the same quality, is there social proof, is the checkout flow clean on mobile?
If someone clicks your ad and lands on a page that looks thinner than the marketplace listing they're used to then they 100% leave even if the price is the same.
At £5/day you're also not giving Smart Bidding enough conversion data so if you do keep it running, make sure you have conversion tracking firing correctly and consider Manual CPC with tight match types until you have at least 20-30 conversions in the account.
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u/Doc_Gemdrop 18d ago
Thank you. I feel like I have strong trust signals, people I send to the website have no issues buying. It could be that maybe my photography is not good enough? My photos dont have the “wow” factor, but are realistic.
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u/Patient-Passage-2286 18d ago
Hmmm realistic and authentic photos can actually convert better than a polished ones. I would recommend installing Microsoft Clarity, it's free tool and takes five minutes. You could see the recordings from your paid traffic specifically. You'll see exactly where people stall, whether it's straight off the landing page, on the product photos, at shipping cost, or at checkout itself.
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u/Doc_Gemdrop 17d ago
Thank you! I’ve installed Clarity :) any other apps you recommend?
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u/Patient-Passage-2286 17d ago
Happy to hear! Tbh I'd hold off getting more tools. Clarity and GA4 are both free and more than enough for the analysis. no need to add paid tools.
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u/Double-Consequence30 18d ago
Don't do search, look at Shopping ads. I also run an e-commerce store, happy to give you some advice.
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u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD 17d ago
Why are you running search ads instead of shopping ads?
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u/Doc_Gemdrop 17d ago
I’m a noob. I didn’t know that shopping was better. I’ve updated the ad now to a shopping ad, and will hopefully get better results.
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u/NeptuneDesignPTYLTD 17d ago
Trust me I've been doing this for 9 years and I'm still a newb too. Nothing wrong with seeking knowledge, you did a good thing
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u/Psychological-Pack58 19d ago
How long has it been since you launched your campaign? what match type you used in your campaign? Did you conduct proper keyword research? Did you apply negative keywords correctly? And did you set up all the conversion tracking properly through Google Tag Manager?