Top 6 eCommerce PPC Mistakes: For Advanced Marketers!

Spending money on Google Ads but not getting the results you expected? You’re not alone. Many e-commerce advertisers fall into the same costly traps that drain their budgets and limit their success. 

But here’s the good news—most of these mistakes are easy to fix.

After analyzing countless Google Ads accounts, I am going to share the exact mistakes I see most often, and how to fix them in the rest of this blog.

1. Explore Campaign Types Beyond Standard Search.

Initially, opting for a search network Search campaign is the best choice and smart move that I recommend for beginners, but once you have done that, you start getting conversions. Google starts to learn how conversions look into your ad account. It makes sense to expand to other campaign types and run your ads on various other platforms to ensure the right place for showcasing your Google ads

So depending on your business, you can put ads on –

Google Shopping

That is where your products are put on those cards, right in front of people buying to search. It’s an ideal advertising campaign type option for eCommerce business. Then you can put ads on YouTube, Gmail, and even on different display networks all over the internet. This creates many opportunities for you to put your ads in front of the people who are likely to buy your products.

Earlier, to advertise on those platforms, advertisers had to create and manage distinct campaigns tailored to each platform.

But with Performace Max, things have become a lot more easier!

The Performance Max campaign incorporates all the above-mentioned Google ad locations and more in one place. 

So once you get your search up and proper running of ads followed by a few conversions, you can create a Performance Max Campaign. 

Setting up Performance Max is complicated, but it’s worth the effort. Getting it right as an advertiser can boost their clients’ sales and give them a great return on their advertising. 

To quickly mention, our eCommerce paid ad service can create, manage, and optimize your Google ad campaigns, whether you want a performance max campaign or another campaign type or you just want us to decide for you. We can take this work off and give you much better results.

So if you are interested, contact us and hopefully, we can get a chance to work together!

2. Shift Your Focus From CPC to Conversions.

Another and the most common mistake is an advertiser’s obsession with Cost Per click. A lot of eCommerce PPC Advertisers believe getting the cheapest clicks will lead to the best results, but that’s not often true. 

Google Ads operates on an auction system, lower-cost keywords may be more affordable, but they are often less competitive for a reason – as many advertisers don’t value them highly. If a keyword was valuable, more businesses would compete for it, and the price would go up.

Therefore less expensive keywords usually convert less than others. Even though if they convert, the value of eventual customers will be significantly less.

Often expensive keywords to target are things around legal, insurance, and finance [Source] because the people who click on these ads go through to purchase from those companies.

Potentially going to be worth a lot of money, so that’s why you have varying degrees of cost across keywords but within every niche, there’s going to be some keywords that are expensive while others are less expensive.

And I often see eCommerce marketers running after less expensive keyword ads that’s the reason why their ads probably don’t convert as well. 

So when running ads, we should target the highly relevant or top-performing keywords within a niche. These results for your eCommerce website are going to be much better because these high-value keywords attract the right customers who are more likely to convert.

3. Use Updated Information to Create Compelling Ads

We have already talked about expanding from the search network and using Performance Max as another type but when you do that, you need more than just text. You also need high-quality images and videos to make your ads stand out.

Many advertisers make the mistake of using whatever images or videos they have lying around. Maybe they have a nice video on their website—great! But if they also throw in outdated images from years ago, showing old products or branding, that’s not going to help. 

If you want the best results, you really need to put a lot more time and effort into creating up-to-date, high-quality video and image assets that are professional, eye-catching, and relevant.
For that, you need to hire professionals to create stuff you’re proud of. This will make your brand look good and get people to click on your ads.

But creating high-quality ads isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about continuously testing and improving to maximize performance.

Here’s how I do it:

• Make a bunch of ads: Spend time creating good pictures and videos.
• Run the ads: Let them run for a while.
• Check the results: See what worked and what didn’t.
• Make new ads: Use what you learned to make even better ads.
• Repeat: Keep doing this over and over.

Keep refining to end up with fantastic creative assets that can yield amazing results for your business. 

Yes, this process takes time and patience—but the rewards are worth it!

4. Follow Google’s Bidding Suggestions Over Simple Metrics

When you set up a Google Search campaign, you’ll see Google suggests ‘Conversions’ as the default bidding strategy.

However, if you click on that option, Google also recommends Conversion Value as a more advanced strategy. Along with these, you’ll find other optimization options like Clicks and Impression Share.

Now what a lot of advertisers do is they don’t go with recommendations from Google and choose clicks. And there are a few reasons why they might do that. 

1. They haven’t kept up with best practices

Some advertisers haven’t kept up with the latest best practices. In the past, Google Ads was all about Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Cost Per Click (CPC). If someone learned PPC advertising during that era and hasn’t adapted, they may still focus on clicks, thinking it’s the best approach.

2. Advertisers not Trusting Google to get results

Some advertisers are hesitant to let Google’s AI optimize their campaigns. They worry that automated bidding will increase their cost per click and prefer to manually control their spending.

I strongly believe that this outdated mindset limits performance and efficiency.

And you should trust Google’s systems to optimize your ads for the best results. Letting Google handle the optimization for conversions or conversion value, will almost always yield better results than just optimizing for clicks.

However, when you optimize for clicks, google’s going to try and get as many clicks as possible to try and give you the cheapest clicks possible which means a lot of clicks aren’t going to be of the highest value. 

Instead, you should optimize ads by bidding for Conversions or, even better, Conversion Value.

In an ideal world, even with these two, you should go with conversion values, because it understands that some customers are worth more than others.

Let’s say you have an eCommerce business. Where some people come to your store to buy a $15 product while others may spend $150.

Conversion Value bidding considers these differences, allowing Google to prioritize higher-value customers who are more profitable for your business.

Whilst you may see fewer conversions with conversion value than conversions bidding strategy, your ad spend will be more efficient because you’ll attract higher-value customers.

However, you have differing conversion values for everyone who buys from you, if you have just one product at the same price for everyone, then go ahead and go with conversions because it doesn’t make any difference.

But if you are not in that scenario, which most eCommerce businesses are not, going with conversion value is the right choice.

Leveraging Google’s really smart recommendation system to get you the best return on ad spend is a smart move because, at the end of the day, that’s what truly matters. 

It’s the profitability of your campaigns and not how many people simply visited your landing page.

5. Use AI to Enhance, Not to Dominate

Take advantage of Google’s AI tools, but do not rely on them. During Google Ads campaign creation, Google’s AI will generate suggestions for keywords and ad copy based on your input. While this can be a helpful starting point, these suggestions are often generic and ineffective if used without critical evaluation.

Complete the required input fields and review the AI-generated suggestions. However, avoid simply accepting them without thoughtful consideration. However, I have seen trends where advertisers got lazy and simply accepted AI-generated suggestions without reviewing them critically.

Google’s AI will generate a large volume of ads, keywords, and other assets. Your role is to act as a filter by carefully analyzing each suggestion to determine its relevance and effectiveness for your business.

I’ve seen AI-generated campaigns where the ads didn’t even match the business’s actual offerings!

The latest example of this is,

Google’s Super Bowl AI ad, edited by Gemini, highlights the importance of carefully reviewing AI-generated content.

Source: https://x.com/natejhake/status/1885137074673549460

That’s why you must review and refine everything before launching.

So don’t think that these AI tools can remove you as an advertiser.

6. Fix Your Landing Page Gaps 

Most of the advertisers are obsessed over their ads on the platform and that makes sense. But they forget to put time, effort, and resources into what people do after they click on your ads. 

Because these steps are the most important step in convincing someone to either convert or not.

To help you get the most out of your ad spend, I have listed down eleven core elements that you need to get your website or landing page to receive exceptional results from Google ads.

1. Ensure relevancy between ads and landing pages.
2. Segment landing pages for different products and services.
3. Create easy-to-understand landing pages.
4. Instead of just SEO, adopt a ‘Search Everywhere Optimization’ approach.[Source]
5. Use Crazy Egg to analyze where they are clicking and where they are getting confused.
6. Try emotional as well as logical pitches on your eCommerce websites to boost your sales.
7. Add a clear and compelling Call-To-Action (CTA) button.
8. Strategically place contact details.
9.  Include Visual Assets on your websites.

   10.  Provide a logical and user-friendly navigation structure.

   11.  Build trust and credibility by linking Google Reviews.     

Common yet important elements that can make an enormous difference!

BONUS: It’s About Strategy, Not Just Budget

Running Google Ads successfully isn’t just about spending money but also about making smart, data-driven decisions. 

Beyond these core fixes, there are other critical mistakes that advertisers often make, including:

• Ignoring Negative Keywords – Not filtering out irrelevant search terms can waste your budget on unqualified traffic.
• Overcomplicating Campaign Structures – Creating overly complex account structures can make it difficult to track performance and optimize effectively.
• Not Tracking the Right Metrics – Many advertisers focus on vanity metrics like impressions and clicks rather than profitability-driven KPIs such as ROAS and lifetime customer value.

Last, but not least, you cannot set and forget your eCommerce PPC Campaign.

It’s more about strategic planning, meticulous execution, and continuous optimization. If you remember your campaign, you cannot forget about achieving those conversions and revenue you aim to achieve.

Scared?

Well, no need to, as our eCommerce experts are here to help you. We offer e-commerce PPC management as a part of our marketing service. With a proven track record of helping businesses like yours thrive online.

Don’t just survive in the digital marketplace, instead dominate it.  Reach out to us today, and let’s build your success story together.