It doesn’t matter what your line of business is–as a small e-commerce business, you always want to keep costs to a minimum. Internet marketing costs are one of the biggest expenses for e-commerce stores, and if you’re anything like me, you’re always on the lookout for ways to slash costs without compromising the effectiveness of your efforts to promote your products.

One thing that I have found to be beneficial was to eliminate my Adwords Ads from mobile phone search results. This is sort of a controversial topic. If you read the marketing information from Google, you’ll see big claims that displaying Adwords Ads on smartphones will increase your profits, but based on my experience and what other e-commerce business owners have told me, this seems to be greatly overstated. I have found that mobile users rarely buy from sites, and when they do, the average sale amount is significantly lower than what customers shopping on computers pay. After eliminating mobile advertising from my Adwords Ad campaigns, I’m now getting a better return on my investment in marketing and haven’t noticed any decline in sales.

Before you read on, I suggest taking a look at Google Analytics to see how many site clicks you’ve actually received from Adwords Ads displaying in mobile results. If this number is low or non-existent, then I would strongly recommend that you do the following to keep your ads off of mobile device screens.  This way, you won’t be paying money for extra views that aren’t bringing you any benefit.

To remove the mobile optin from your Adwords Ads, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and select Campaign Management from the menu at the top of the page.

2. You’ll be taken to a list of all of your current Adwords Ad campaigns. Click on the Campaign that you want to change.

3. Once the campaign that you selected loads, find the tab menu at the top. Then, click the Settings tab.

4. When the new page appears, make sure that you have the “All Settings” tab selected.

5. Scroll down until you find the area on the All Settings page where it says “Devices.” By default, it will say “All” next to the question mark in this area. Click the blue link that says “Change mobile bid adjustment” in this area.

6. A list of types of devices will then appear on your screen. Find the entry that says “Mobile Devices with full browsers.” Click on the area where it says Bid Adjustment beside the phrase.

7. A box will appear with a drop-down menu. Change the menu to read Decrease By. Then type in “100” in the box beside the percentage sign.

8. Click the blue “Save” button to record the changes.

9. To make sure that the change was made properly, look back at the line that says “Mobile Devices with Full Browsers.” It should now say “-100%” under the “Bid adj.” column. If it doesn’t repeat steps 6 to 8.

But what if you don’t want to give up mobile marketing entirely? Not to worry! You can simply set up separate Google Adwords campaigns: one for mobile users and one for desktop and laptop users. When you have two separate campaigns, you can set bids lower for mobile users. You’ll still have the chance to get some business from prospective customers who want to shop on a smartphone, but you won’t be paying as much to attain them as new customers. This will be especially beneficial if your mobile customers are like mine and most others and are spending less per sale than other online shoppers.