I don’t have time to edit, so excuse the grammatical errors and the typos…
Merchant Strategy…
I basically went off on feeds. I tried to drive home the point that feeds are the most important aspect of this marketing channel. Feeds are not as easy to create as YSM ads or Adwords ads. They take time and effort. Each shopping comparison engine has different requirements for the feed. Each shopping comparison engine has lots of optional data – you’ll be tempted to just do the basics, but the more information you provide, the better.
I guarantee you that your feed will not be correct the first time. Common mistakes include using a carriage return in the feed, using HTML in the feed, incorrect image URLs, and the list goes on and on and on. Especially with Froogle, you will be extremely frustrated. Just don’t forget that the feed is critical. It is your opportunity to tell the world about your products…tell the world that your company is the best. It’s worth spending time on to get correct. This is also why working with someone to create the feed can make a lot of sense.
Some tips:
-Re-submit often
-Use every field offered – imagine that all fields are marked required…the more information you provide, the more complete a roadmap of your products you’re giving the comparison engines, which in turn allows more consumers to find your products and click on your listings.
-Submit promotions through the comparison engines. Just remember to take the promotions down in a timely manner. Consumers don’t like to be told one price and then be told another higher price a minute later.
-Submit coupons (to the engines which allow this)
-Use the extra services – add a logo, add your phone number, make sure to put up the review surveys
-Always include a quality image in your feed (unless you sell lingerie…seriously, you will get way to many ‘curiosity’ clicks)
Track:
As with any marketing channel, tracking is essential. Most of the shopping comparison engines have tracking capability built into their systems – a little piece of invisible code (containing a pixel) that you can put on your checkout/confirmation page, but at some point (after you’re working with 5 engines) this gets a little out of hand. Also, using these pixels affords the comparison engines insight into how well you’re doing which in turn could push them to raise click prices. An alternative is to use your log analyzer program (Omniture, WebTrends, etc.) to track statistics.
Test/Optimize/Refine:
Test the bidding on the comparison engines that allow SKU level bidding and see what works. Leverage the knowledge in your feeds on the other engines. Take out products that aren’t converting…test different bidding strategies. Continually optimize! Just as SEO took off over the last couple years, you’re going to see comparison engine optimization (COE) take off over the next couple years. While the top 3-5 results on the comparison engines are sometimes paid, the rest of the results aren’t. Some of these comparison engines work just like general search engines. There’s an opportunity to ‘game’ the engines…and because most people don’t do it, it’s actually not that hard. Test different titles, descriptions, pricing, add in different promotions, etc. As with SEO, you’ll slowly learn what works and what doesn’t.
What’s Next? Things to Think About…
eBay/Shopping.com: While I don’t think we’ll see changes to SDC anytime soon, here are 2 things to think about. First, you’re not going to see lots of eBay listings suddently show up on the same page of your SDC listings. There will be some sort of tabbed browsing experience (similar to a strategy Y! had). However, there WILL be eBay listings close by which means reviews are going to be crucial for SDC merchants. After almost every sale on eBay, the buyer leaves feedback and gives the merchant a rating. This is in contrast to the comparison engines where only 1 in every 10,000 buyers leave feedback (ok, it’s not that bad, but it’s close). Because the eBay sellers will come in with lots of ratings, SDC merchants should start thinking about getting more ratings TODAY. Seriously…the great thing is that SDC doesn’t care where the ratings come from (they don’t have to come from people who found your site through SDC), so send an email to 1000 of your customers asking them to fill out the ratings survey – and include a coupon code as an incentive. Second, while we’re all into the PPC model, is that necessarily the best solution for merchants? eBay sellers are charged a listing fee plus a % of sales. Why isn’t this model acceptable for the shopping comparison engines? Isn’t this actually a better option? Just something to think about.
Future consolidation/IPOs: NexTag and PriceGrabber are the two big independents left. Know that these engines are probably every bit as profitable as SDC and Shopzilla and they are both growing quickly.
I’ve heard rumors that NexTag will soon file an S-1 (although those rumors have been around for a while and becuase they’ve recently lost some key employees, maybe this plan is on hold). These companies also probably make attractive acquisition candidates. I really do think that FIM needs a commerce component…NexTag or Pricegrabber could make sense…but the little guys – FatLens, Smarter.com, Become.com – could be targets.
Verticals: Check out HealthPricer.com. I think vertical shopping comparison engines where a lot of quality content/information makes a huge difference might start popping up.
Local/Mobile: We’re not there yet, but there will be amazingly useful location based shopping services beyond the current generation of SMS offerings (which I don’t think anyone is using). Pure play comparison engines can’t ignore this opportunity.
Improved Merchandising: Just to reiterate, MSN Shopping offers a completely different shopping comparison engine experience that I think brings the offline world online. This isn’t the way everyone will want to shop online, but I think it could add fuel to the ecommerce fire.
