Archive for the ‘Comparison Shopping’ category

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How To Manage Your Price Comparison Data Feeds

November 18th, 2009

What’s The Problem?

Every eCommerce business wants to advertise on as many channels as possible. When it comes to comparison shopping, you will want to syndicate your products to the top shopping engines. The problem is that every comparison shopping engine has a different data feed format and category structure. This creates an extra headache for the business owner. You have no choice if you want your products on their site…

The Many Solutions

Depending on the size of your company and your skill set, you have many different options ranging from hacking scripts and full service management.

D.I.Y. Style

  • Download your products into Excel and copy and paste until you got it right. Any business that means business cannot do it this way. It is too time consuming and you won’t be able to update it often enough.
  • Hack together some scripts to automatically create the files for each CSE. You get bonus points for automatically uploading to each CSE via FTP.
  • Use a third party self service tool to syndicate your feeds self service style. MerchantAdvantage is a great desktop tool for this, it is priced at $695 per month with no limits on websites, products or CSEs.

Third Party Syndication

Use a third party system to automatically create and syndicate many feeds from one file that you upload. This is ideal for smaller eCommerce sites with approximately 5-10k products. Here are some companies that provide this service:

  • GoDataFeed — Plans available for $50/$75 per month, with a 5,000 SKU limit.
  • SingleFeed — Plans starting at $99 per month, with a 100,000 SKU limit.
  • VersaFeed — Plans starting at $195 per month, with a 10,000 SKU limit.

Full Service Syndication & Managment

I would suggest using a small but reputable agency to syndicate your feeds, they are generally prices better than the big guys but give you a lot of personal attention. Here are a couple of such companies:

Another option is to go with a full service management solution from one of the big guys. I’ve had pretty good success with ChannelAdvisor specifically.

Do you have any experience with any of the companies listed above? Do you know of another company that provides such a service? Please let us know in the comments.

Photo Credit: alles-schlumpf

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Boost Your ROI & Get Your Money’s Worth From PriceGrabber

November 12th, 2009

PriceGrabber.com LogoPriceGrabber is one of the top-tier Comparison Shopping Engines, they command 5 million unique monthly visitors (it jumps up to about 8 million during the holiday season). Out of all the different shopping engines, I have seen the best ROI from PriceGrabber. Here are some ideas on how to boost your performance on PriceGrabber.

PriceGrabber Traffic Chart: Compete

Product Categorization

The hardest part about syndicating products to all the Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE), is categorizing products properly according to each individual taxonomy. When you invest the extra time and categorize everything correctly, you will definitely see a boost in your click-through rate and conversions. If you have a large data feed you should consider mapping your categories to the corresponding category on PriceGrabber.

Merchant Logos

When a customer comes to a page comparing product prices from 10 sellers, the merchant logo option will help your listing stick out. Logos are not free though, PriceGrabber charges an additional $0.10 per click logo listings. However, like everything else in life: you get what you pay for. Logo listings have historically show higher conversion rates than products listed without them.

Merchant Reviews

It is imperative to maintain a positive rating on PriceGrabber as well as all CSEs. Not all customers shop by price only, sometimes a customer will pay a few dollars more to purchase from someone with a higher rating than you. The best idea is to push your customers to review their purchase.

PriceGrabber is one of the few CSEs that offer the ability to have your products listed with a Featured Seller status. You will need to talk to your PriceGrabber account representative to get pricing information and sign up for it. In the categories that I have tried Featured Seller product listings I have seen a boost in conversions, although I’m not sure what kind of performance it would have in a heavily saturated category such as digital cameras and iPods.

PriceGrabber-Featured-Seller

Does PriceGrabber work for you? Tell us in the comments.

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List Your Products Free On ShopMania

October 19th, 2009

ShopMania LogoShopMania is a Price Comparison Engine a la PriceGrabber and Shopzilla that let’s you list your products for free if you put a seal on your site that says ‘Listed on ShopMania’. In addition, they also offer premium accounts where you pay a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) like on the other major shopping engines. The premium accounts include more features such as ability to feature a ‘Deal a Day’ or get your products listed higher.

In the past I would not have recommended ShopMania just because their traffic was so low, but it seems that they are picking up steam now and with the holiday season kicking into gear you may as well take advantage of their free accounts.

Shopmania Traffic Report

Visit ShopMania

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New Sponsored Search Section Google Product OneBox

October 8th, 2009

I’m not sure if this is new or not (seems new to me) — Google is now displaying a Google Product Search OneBox on the top right of the Sponsored Search section. This is great for merchants as Google is really pushing Google Product Search in prime real estate.

This is not to be confused the AdWords PlusBox where Google displays products next to a merchant’s ad from their Google Base data feed.

Sponsored Search Google Product OneBox

Search Sponsored Google Product OneBox

We’ve all seen the standard OneBox in the regular search results:

Standard Google Product Search One Box

Standard Google Product Search One Box

Update: Matthew from the Rimm Kaufman Group points us to a post on Google Blogoscoped with more information regarding “Google Product Ads“. There are no screenshots there, but it seems to be referring to the image I have posted above.

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Product Categorization On Comparison Shopping Engines

October 6th, 2009

Data Feed Sample

Categorizing your products properly on each comparison shopping engine is one of the most important parts of your product listings. Sometimes having a product in the wrong category can get you many wasteful clicks and will cost you an arm and a leg at the same time. On the other hand, having your product in the correct categories will get you more relevant clicks with a higher chance of converting into a sale.

There are a couple of ways to ensure that your products are displayed in the correct categories.

Manually Tag Items

Most shopping cart systems allows for many product attributes. You can use this to create a hidden attributes for each product, and then set the value of each comparison shopping engine category name or ID number. You want to do this inside of your shopping cart system so that the data is saved and exported with your newly generated feeds.

This solution is ideal for small product catalogs where entering the information manually is easily done.

Map Categories

If you have many products and entering the category information one by one is not an option, try mapping your categories for theirs. You will basically create a list of all your categories and the corresponding CSE category. Every time you generate your feed files, have it look up the category name based on your mapping.

If All Else Fails

Alternatively you can just submit your category names and let the CSE do the mapping. Just keep in mind that this may have poor results.

If you utilize your own category names in your feeds, you will want to bid 0.00 on any items that somehow wind up in completely irrelevant categories. This will save you from unnecessary spend.

Bottom Line

Do it once and do it right.

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All New Google Merchant Center Dashboard

September 30th, 2009

Google-Merchant-Center-Dashboard

Yesterday Google rolled out a major new interface for Google Base and has re-branded it Google Merchant Center. All the important info such as Active Products, Search Clicks, Data Feed info is displayed right when you log in. In the old interface you had to click through a few pages to see all the data.

More Info: Search Engine Round Table

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Datafeeds & Google Base: How To Make It Work

September 25th, 2009
Everything You Need For A Great Night !?

Everything You Need For A Great Night !?

Unlike most other Comparison Shopping Engines, Google Base (Product Search) is free. Free for all merchants and free for consumers. Free as in beer.

With that being the case, it is very important to make sure your feed is uploading properly. It is very easy to format a small feed properly. When you have a large feed, it becomes much harder. Here are some tips & restrictions I found to be very helpful:

  • there’s a limit of 100,000 items per feed-file
  • there’s a limit of 15MB for a scheduled upload
  • there’s a limit of 20MB for a web-based upload
  • there’s a limit of 1GB for an ftp-based upload
  • there’s a limit of one upload per hour
  • there’s a limit of 10 registered data-feed-files

If you upload your feed via the web form in the Google Base portal, make sure your feed is smaller than 20MB. If you use the scheduled upload option, your file cannot be larger than 15MB. For really large feeds with tens or hundreds of thousands of SKUs, the best option is to generates multiple feed files and make sure they are smaller than 1GB and contain less than 100,000 items.

If you have more than a million SKUs, you will probably need to talk to Google to see if you can get around the 10 registered datafeeds restriction. Another option would be to use a Multiple Client account and break your feed into 10 feeds in each account.

Bonus Google Base Tip: “Google Base Feeds Can Now Include YouTube Video Demos for Product Search”

Image Credit: - 404 Not Found -

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How To Lower Costs On CSEs With An Inclusion Only Feed

August 24th, 2009

Comparison shopping

When you have a large feed, there is usually a very long tail of products that send traffic to your site. Sometimes you can get one or two clicks on a thousand different products. You may not notice the cost of each click on it’s own, but it starts to add up. With a standard Kill Report it’s hard to get rid of the long tail because you don’t have enough metrics.

When & Where

In extreme cases where you cannot stomach the excessive costs of a specific shopping engine (CSE) and you are unable to lower the spend through other methods, it is recommended to send a feed with only the brands that have performed well historically. Keep in mind that by running an inclusion only feed, you are also getting rid of products that may perform well. So keep testing the feed by adding new products and monitor it for changes.

Bottom Line

You might stop a lot of quality traffic by sending an inclusion only feed. You might also save your business a ton of money. Keep your eyes open and watch the performance.

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How To Use Comparison Shopping Engines To Build Positive Brand Reputation

August 21st, 2009

Five Star Rating

Problem

Most customers that are satisfied with their purchase from your ecommerce store will not go out of their way to review their shopping experience. It’s usually the customer who’s order got messed up who will go and leave you a review on PriceGrabber, ResellerRatings and the like.

Solution

It’s only normal, but what should you do? You need to push your customers aggressively to rate their experience. You can do this by displaying a banner on the order thank you page urging them to leave a review. Most comparison shopping engines provide the code for this.

Tips

If you deal with many shopping engines and don’t want to many banners popping up, you can utilize a script like this to randomly rotate a few of the scripts:

<script type="text/javascript">
	var r_text = new Array ();
	r_text[0] = "PriceGrabberCode";
	r_text[1] = "Shopzilla Code";
	r_text[2] = "Shopping.com Code";
	r_text[3] = "Smarter Code";
	r_text[4] = "NexTag Code";
	r_text[5] = "Yahoo Shopping Code";
	r_text[6] = "Or Any Other Site Code";
	var i = Math.floor(7*Math.random())
	document.write(r_text[i]);
</script>

Code source and explanation: WebDevelopersNotes.com

Aside from a pop-up banner after checkout, it is also a good idea to email all customers once you think they have received their order (3-5 business days from when you ship, or enough time that they will have received the shipment). You can offer them a coupon code or promo for the review, this will help you get more reviews. Just keep in mind that when you offer something in return you cannot offer a promotion for a ‘positive’ review. You can only ask them to rate their experience.

Bottom Line

Your customers love you, but not enough to go through the trouble of finding and reviewing you. Help them, help you.

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