Heard at the ChannelAdvisor Summit…
General
-Trent hinted that there will be features introduced through the Merchant Account Center (MAC) that will “change the game.”
-SDC has the highest conversion and rate on return: Merchants earn nearly $18 on every dollar spent with SDC vs. $4 with Google (Netplus)
-90% of the top 300 merchants in the US are on SDC
-Generated 300m paid leads to over 6,000 merchants in 2004
-Delivering the industry’s best conversion to sale; buyers, not browsers
-We process feeds 2-3 times today, that frequency will go up [as merchants demand it]
-SmartBuy gets 3x the traffic and 3x the conversion to sale

Data Feed Problems
-No post-processing platform
-Minimum filtering capabilities
-Not “Smart” (there’s no connection btw sales data and data feed)
-No taxonomic enhancements (you’re not improving the categories – there’s no standard)
-No data improvements (engines need clean product descriptions and product names)

Data Feed Tactics
-”Invest” today. Don’t wait.

Start Simple
-Feed delivery time (know when the sites process feeds)
-Essentials (stock, pricing, tax, shipping)
-Filtering by price

Then Graduate
-Right product, right place, right time
-Marketing message by product
-Taxonomic improvements
-Data integrity
-The data feed platform is one of the single most important investments in a performance based marketing environment.

Test, Analyze
-Merchants that are constantly testing and analyzing are the retailers that are the most successful
-Repeat
-The merchants that work closely with SDC have better success (stay in touch with SDC)

Questions…
SKU Level Bidding – “It’s on the list”
Data Feeds – “We frequently find that merchants can get some of the products up, but not all. We then crawl those sites to help them out.”
Pricing pressure b/c of Shopping Comparison Engines – “Some of these merchants just can’t survive with their tactic to lower their prices below costs.”
Why the #1 player in the space? – “Consumer experience. Organic traffic is #1 driver”