For the last couple days, I’ve tried to carefully document the sign up process of the top shopping comparison engines. Sadly, I can’t do it.
I’ve gone through 8 engines and run into problems in almost every case. No lions, tigers, and bears here, but ‘Proxy Error’, ‘Merchant Center Down’, and ‘FTP Location Not Accepted’ messages are just as bad.
No need to call out which sites had which errors. I’d just encourage every engine to set up a focus group to look at the sign up process…if I’m having this much trouble, I have a feeling that you’re losing potential customers.
“For the last couple days, I’ve tried to carefully document the sign up process of the top shopping comparison engines. Sadly, I can’t do it.”
This article has/had so much potential. I would love to see a step by step of the signup processes. Heck, even a small list of the pros and cons of each site’s setup process would be great.
For instance, as a negative, I have heard that some sites charge a very high setup charge ($400!!). That’s a good thing to know ahead of time. Who has good customer support?
I think there is a great opportunity for someone to create a powerpoint or screen shot model of the signups on every site. I know a few merchants in the industry that would pay for that…
Douglas, stay tuned. The work I was doing was for my data feed management service. Once the service is up and running (next week?), the associated blog will have information like what you describe above as well as a ton of other content merchants can use to be successful on the shopping comparison engines.