A problem (and therefore an opportunity for innovators) with shopping through the shopping comparison engines is that you only get 2 experiences. First, the defining normalization/SKUing up format which is most prevalent for electronics but has creeped into other categories like Home & Garden and Watches. Second, the shopping search format for ’soft’ goods in which the shopping comparison engines are just starting to dedicate more resources to tackle the really difficult problem of determining relevance for a search like ‘red sweater’.

These experiences are good as they act as a common denominator AND a way to get people to click on paid listings ASAP. However, they aren’t necessarily the best way to search, browse, and shop for all products. You don’t think about the same things when buying a baseball (Go Mets!) as you do when buying a diamond ring (Go VVS1, 1.5 Carat, Princess?!?). While the attribute extraction work the shopping comparison engines are doing are helpful for all products, attribute extraction alone doesn’t necessarily provide the optimal experience for all products searches.

At eTail, Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti talked about Amazon’s Create Your Own Ring section as an example of how Amazon is innovating the shopping experience for it’s users. Personally, I love what Amazon has put together here…so much so that I originally entitled this post A Better Way to Shop (For Diamonds) as opposed to A Different Way To Shop (For Diamonds). The reason for the less bold title is that this experience is clearly not for everyone. I sent an email to about 20 recent diamond purchasers or people I know who are in the market and the reactions were all over the place.

Which is probably one of the reasons why the established shopping comparison engines stick with the lowest common denominator look and feel circa 1999. Another reason is that ‘verticalizing’ the experiences isn’t scalable (obviously).

So the reason for this post isn’t to encourage the shopping engines to do something radically different, but rather test different user experiences on some of their smaller, less well known domains. One approach is to think about this from a vertical/category perspective. If something seems to resonate with a particular audience, you can then slowly rollout that experience on your main site.

Related Posts
Sprenzy Launches – August 31, 2006
Mpire in NYTimes – August 14, 2006
Sortprice – Same Shopping Search, Different User Experience – August 9, 2006
Think Different – July 31, 2006
If Banana Republic Can Do It… – July 25, 2006
Stylehive Raises $2.62m – July 25, 2006
ShopWiki – Shop By Color – June 14, 2006