• Practical e-Commerce, Thursday, March 13, 2008 10:45 AM

Vxb.com is a California-based company that sells ball bearings. The company spends about $9,000 per month on Google, $2,000 on Yahoo and $150 on MSN--with average CPCs in the 42- to 57-cents range, and conversion rates averaging 1.5-1.9%. The Practical e-Commerce team gives Vbx.com an overall grade of "B" on its PPC Report Card, as the site only really struggled with account structure--which got a "C."

Across all three engines, Vbx.com had problems when it came to breaking campaigns into groups, linking keywords to actual products in stock, and overlap of keywords across ad groups. "If you're using the same keywords in multiple ad groups, essentially you end up competing with yourself," Greg Laptevsky says. "On top of that, such setup really interferes with the stats, making it impossible to effectively allocate funds."

In contrast, the site scored an "A-" for its landing pages--as they had all the necessary elements on them, from reliability seals like the PayPal and Google Checkout logos, to search engine-friendly URLs, as well as proper titles, links and item info.

Meanwhile, Vbx.com got "Bs" when it came to keyword choices, relevancy and account settings--not bad, but as Laptevsky says, some optimization could drive substantial improvements in the company's bottom line.

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