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Comment by bobsy | Hacker News Reader

Seems like the article is only showing half the story.

Costs are going up which means increased competition. Increased competition will mean your ads are running against more competitors. Reason for fall in click-throughs could be under-optimized ad's losing out to competition's ads.

As for conversions. Looking at the table plan site I feel overwhelmed. If this is where the ad's are taking users I think it is fairly obvious why sales are dropping off.

I don't think Adwords can be blamed for the profitability of a product.

This isn't to say Adwords isn't declining in value for site owners. To make this claim though you would need information from lots of sectors from lots of site owners.

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I agree; the site for the software looks terribly out of date, which in turn doesn't instill confidence in potential customers.

Updating the site would be his best investment.

Although I agree updating the site would be good, that's not really to the point of the post, which is about click-throughs _to_ the site.

The point of the post is about overall profitability of adwords. An ad's CTR is important to drive as much traffic as possible and also to keep a high quality score, but you arent directly paying for people who do not click your links. However, you are paying for all the people that click your links and do not convert, so focusing on improving your conversion rate is one of the best ways to improve the profitability of an adwords campaign

Lower conversion rate ale signifies lower page quality which is another factor that AdWords use to calculate the ad position, and if and to whom to show the ad to. Which, in turn impacts click rates and so on, ad nauseam.

This is incorrect. The conversion rate does not affect your quality score: http://adwordsagency.blogspot.com/2008/12/quality-score-fact...

A "conversion" means different things to different companies. It would be extremely easy to game the system if conversion rate affected quality score.

The site looks out-of-date, but would the average potential customer for table planning software know that? I'm not sure. If anything, it seems likely to me that the complexity of the site is reducing conversions, but not the fact that it is "out-of-date".

Updating site wouldn't make a dent. You seen Cragilist recently? or even Google homepage for the last 10 years??

People go to his website for a certain product. They couldn't care less how the site looks. Does crappy look of Apache software website turns you down from getting the newest download? How about PHP site not updated since 1999. Does their crappy site means they don't know their craft?

After checking couple tabs (that are easily accessible) and being convinced he knows his business, there is nothing more to do than either pull the trigger and buy a product/try it, or leave the site. No fancy graphics or frameworks will change users' mind. And they shouldn't. In fact, if that site would be up to date designed website all nice and clear, I would immediately think its a scam or probably software with built in backdoor, etc.

His site is fine. He is selling table planning software (that looks decent), not a web design lessons.

This is not how the vast majority of people shop. It seems like you are arguing that changes to a site's design will rarely result in a significant increase to their bottom line, but there are countless case studies that prove the opposite.[1]

[1] http://www.abtests.com/

Google homepage has always been good.. You are immediately drawn to a big box in which to enter text.

The problem with guys site is it isn't optimised for getting purchases. Too much is going on. The user isn't guided through the software or pushed to take a trial or purchase. Instead the visitor is hit by everything at once, doesn't know where to look and is somewhat overwhelmed by stuff.

You don't need to be a graphics designer to make a successful site. Good content and a clear call to action is the important thing. Beautiful design on top is just gravy.

Why wouldn't updating the website make a dent again? Landing page optimization is a huge forcus for any online commerce company because updating a website (design, content, flow) does make a dent.

okay I am talking about the outlook, not landing page optimization and the stuff under the hood.

sorry but his website talks to me: "hey I seel software to plan tables and i know how it works, but i am not a designer and wont spend money for a coll website". which is fine with me. again, I didnt came there to appreciate his website apperance but to see if his software is good enough for me (had I been in the business that needs his software)

You're taking your own opinions and applying them to the entire target market. Just because you feel this way doesn't mean that everyone else does, and it certainly doesn't imply that "updating the site wouldn't make a dent".

I am an example of this mindset. I bought this software to use for our wedding last year. Normally a website looking like this would not be something I'd ever purchase from, but I'm familiar with the guy from several years of forums and mailing lists.

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