ComparisonEngines

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What I cover (in case you don’t want to listen to 12minutes of me rambling…)
-Like.com is for women.
-Like.com offers an incredibly rich and unique shopping experience for soft goods which is completely different than what’s currently being offered (by the shopping comparison engines)
-Like.com is not going to make a ton of money off of being a super-affiliate, but the site should launch a visual adsense program where webmasters could put a clickable box around a product in a photo and earn revenue if Like.com earns a commission or any click fees from that referral.
-Like.com should roll up all the fashion oriented blogs and dominate the market…if anyone searches for any fashion/style oriented product, Riya should be there.
-I think Like.com is a window shopper’s paradise…I have a feeling page views per user is very very high. Like.com should add graphical advertising.
-Sadly, I’ve joined the web 2.0 gravy train and say that Like shouldn’t worry about monetization right now…just worry more about page views (thus the blog roll up).

Related Posts:
- (NYTimes) -Shopping Site Offers a Way to Raid a Celebrity’s Closet -Nov. 13, 2006
- (TechCrunch) -Riya’s Like.com Is First True Visual Image Search -Nov. 8, 2006

Cyber Monday is only 10 days away. If you’re not up on the shopping comparison engines, you’re potentionally losing out on valuable traffic. And since Google Base/Froogle is free, there’s no reason not to submit your feed.

Sign up for SingleFeed’s Google Base/Froogle submission service and we’ll waive the $9.99 fee for the first month we’ll only charge you $0.99 for the first month. I’m only making this announcement here and on LoveYourFeed. It will not be found by going directly to SingleFeed.

Important things to note:
1. This offer is only valid for merchants with ecommerce sites that at a minimum accept credit cards or Google Checkout. If you’re an eBay or Amazon Marketplace only seller, for example, we can’t help you right this moment.
2. You will only receive 1 free month of service. If you don’t cancel your account, you will be charged only $9.99/month starting a month after you set up your account with SingleFeed. [Only $9.99/month to have SingleFeed manage and submit yor feed as well as give you optimization advice...that's a steal!]
3. You will have to fill out our SingleFeed – which has more required fields than what you’re probably currently submitting to Google Base. It will take time to create the feed, but it’s worth it.
4. SingleFeed is a self-service system, but we’re here to help. We also give out free optimization advice as we manually look at every feed that comes in.
5. We recently added tracking functionality so you can see if Google Base/Froogle is driving clicks and conversions. Our tracking defaults to Google Analytics standards, but can be customized for other solutions.

Here’s how to take advantage of this offer:
1. Go to SingleFeed
2. Create an account and select the Submit to Google Base/Froogle service (although we’d be happier if you selected the Deluxe Submission service).
3. Immediately after signing up, send an email to ‘support at singlefeed dot com’ with the subject line ‘Free Month’ or ‘I want my $9.99′ or ‘Show me the money!’ and we’ll refund your $9.99 within 24 hours. You must send this email to us to get your money back.
4. Login to your SingleFeed account, read the FAQs, read the instructional notes, and create your single feed. If you don’t have a Google Base account already set up, you will have to create one (we’re not an agency, so we don’t do it for you), but we have clear instructions on how to do it…just click on the Engines section, then the Google Base/Froogle button, then ‘learn how to sign up’. It’ll take 5 minutes.

That’s it. Test out SingleFeed for free right now $0.99 right now!

Anyone notice a a dramatic decrease or increase in referrals from Google Base?
Anyone notice a a dramatic decrease or increase in referrals from Froogle?

Yes, I separated the 2 on purpose.

Anyone have any insight on when we’ll see Google Base OneBox results as opposed to Froogle OneBox results?

A belated welcome to Scot Wingo as he starts to cover the comparison shopping space through CSE Strategies.

Make sure to check out his blog…think it’s a good complement (and compliment!) to what I’m doing.

While we’ve added a lot of great functionality to SingleFeed over the last couple weeks, what I’m most excited about is version 1 of our data feed tracking solution.

Merchants now have the ability to append unique tracking codes (per engine) to their product links. As seen above, the default tracking is set up for Google Analytics (utm_medium, utm_source, etc.), but merchants can replace this code with any standard tracking parameters to conform with the rules of HBX, CoreMetrics, etc..

Why is this important? As with any marketing channel, merchants need to track results to optimize marketing spend. While the shopping engines can drive clicks, not all engines can drive sales. Using SingleFeed’s tracking code along with an analytics solution will give merchants insight into which shopping engines are driving quality traffic (without the hassle of setting up 8 different tracking pixels and the giving the shopping comparison engines insight into your business).

Note: This is completely subjective…and your results will differ.

Methodology:
-I searched for ‘TMX Elmo’ (not any other derivation).
-I’m only looking for the English speaking version.
-If I found more than one merchant listing, I only counted it once.
-I count eBay, Amazon Marketplace, and Y! Auction listings once.
-I only looked at the first 2 pages of results because I think that’s all most people look at.
-I did this search yesterday, so results will be different.
-I didn’t refine (set a price range).
-I don’t use auction sites…if I want to bid on an auction, I’ll go to eBay.

If you want a TMX Elmo (English version), go to Shopzilla or Yahoo! Shopping. Shopzilla has 5 unique seller listings for the TMX Elmo, all in stock. Yahoo! Shopping has 8 unique seller listings (including one from Y! Auctions), with 7 out of the 8 in stock. Also, Yahoo! Shopping’s first result gives me what I want – a SKUd up matrix (even though there are 2 duplicates and one out of stock listing).

My next suggestion would be to head to PriceGrabber. PriceGrabber has 35 unique sellers listings (34 StoreFront listings), but it’s not clear on all the Storefront listings if Elmo will speak English or Spanish. And while I submitted a couple questions, in the game of holiday shopping, I’m not sure how many parents are going to have time to ask that question.

Notes:
-Shopzilla does a good job of SKUing up the listings, but they need to separate the English and Spanish versions.
-Shopzilla should NOT send you to this page first. Are they just going for Google AdSense revenue?
-Yahoo! Shopping does an ok job of SKUing up and then goes on to list the same SKUd up listings and others (they should clean this up – although I was told last year that customers wanted it this way)
-Yahoo! Shopping has tons of Y! Auction listings (which I found annoying)
-PriceGrabber says they have 43 sellers on the search results page, but only has 35 sellers on the detail page.
-Almost all the engines had trouble with out of stock listings or expired eBay listings
-Shopwiki has 10+ seller listings, with 8 in stock, but the listings aren’t SKUd up well…and I’m still trying to figure out what this listing is doing in the search results. Also, there were a couple affiliate listings (besttoydiscounts) which were annoying as well at least one bad link (gifttoys.net)
-Froogle had 9 listings with 6 in stock, but only go there if you’re willing to put up with a lot of auctions and Barbie Loves Elmo listings.
-TheFind has tons of listings (10+), but the first 4 are for Barbie Loves Elmo, only 5 of the first 12 Elmo listings I checked were in stock, and in the end, that Barbie Loves Elmo product got really annoying.
-Windows Product Search Live made a strong showing in terms of total number of results, but the products weren’t well organized and once again I ran into a ton of auctions.

I’ve gotten about 30 questions about when I’m doing a side by side comparison for holiday shopping. If you have suggestions of things you want me to look at, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll probably just do more mini-comparisons like this.

The most popular guy around…

Perfect example of the power of video reviews. Kudos to ShopWiki!

Make sure to check out ShopWiki’s new design (they also have a number of new features, but the official press release doesn’t come out until Thursday).

Just in time for the holidays, MSN Shopping has upgraded it’s coupon offerings with the assistance of Bargain Betty.

Coupons can be powerful drivers of sales (wow, bold statement, huh?!?), and I think consumers have become more savvy about discovering coupons/deals. It’s great that MSN Shopping has pulled all these deals together in one place.

MSN Shopping allows consumers to find coupons by category (Baby & Nursery, Flowers, Tools & Hardware, etc.) or by store (Blinds.com, FOSSIL, The Paragon, etc.)

The shopaholics at Bargain Betty update the coupons daily to make sure only valid coupons are syndicated to MSN Shopping.

The next step is for MSN Shopping to integrate these coupons right into the product results pages (as Yahoo! Shopping does)…right now there’s a nice ‘coupons by store’ graphic, but consumers have to click on it, figure out the deal, then make their way back to the product listings page.

Related Posts:
Integration of Shopping Coupons – October 14, 2005

I’m not a Kaboodler. I don’t have friends who are Kaboodlers. And as I’ve said, I have trouble understanding the long term potential for the company. I love the idea that Kaboodle allows me to grab things from around the web and put them all on one page, but even after a year of the site being live (congrats Manish, Brian, and the rest of the team!), I still don’t think Kaboodle takes off on its own.

Which is why partnerships become so important to the company. Back in June the company announced a deal with eBay to power eBay’s MyCollectibles site and last week Kaboodle announced a deal with Conde Nast’s Conceirge.com. Concierge.com has added a little suitcase icon next to all of its trip destinations. Members (you have to sign up to use the Suitcase) just click on the ‘Add to My Suitcase’ button, create a suitcase/select a suitcase, tag the item (optional), and add notes to the article.

Finding your Suitcase once it has been created proved to be a bit difficult, but a user can just go to Suitcase.concierege.com. Overall, a smooth integration and very useful feature for trip planners.

After Yahoo! showed me their new site for the holiday season, I was pretty much underwhelmed. How could Yahoo! Shopping not introduce something incredibly bold for the holidays? And unfortunately I couldn’t even properly articulate my disappointment. I know Chris and Matt (and Haley) wanted to strangle me that afternoon…

What I want to do in this post is shed more light on what I like and don’t like about Yahoo! Shopping.

-The greatest potential for Yahoo! Shopping is the ability to leverage Yahoo! Search. And right now, the company is not taking advantage of this incredible opportunity as much as it could. I’m sure Yahoo! Product Search Shortcuts are being triggered on a hell of a lot of searches, but there are sooooo many more keywords to target. I’d highly recommend that Yahoo! Shopping just look at every top to ‘Wow Gift’ listed on its site and make sure that Shortcuts are being triggered (hint: look at the clothing section…it’s as if you skipped right to video games). Also, make sure that you’re targeting both singluar and plural forms of the words. A search for cashmere scarf triggered a Shortcut, but cashmere scarfs did not. Gold cuff bracelet triggers a shortcut, but Gold cuff bracelets does not.

I love the idea of the ‘cheap’ Shortcut (Cheap Shoes, cheap dresses, cheap jeans, cheap computers, cheap bags, etc.), but these search terms don’t get that much traffic (at least according to inventory.overture.com). Make sure to target holiday terms…’Christmas Gift’, ‘Hannukah Present’, or ‘gift for girlfriend’ (which goes to an old Gift Finder page) and tons of brand name products (assuming it’s allowed).

-I like that Yahoo! Shopping is bringing in the blog (contextually!), Yahoo! Answers (what an amazing success story!), coupons/deals, reviews, guides, etc., but I don’t like how the site has integrated these resources. You’re either integrating them way too much or not enough. These were just clumped together:

And this Top 10 Wow Gifts for Sports & Outdoors module just has a compare prices button next to a picture and description.

If you click through, you see coupons, ratings, reviews, and Answers. These incredible resources could be integrated better into the top level page (at least have reviews). Yahoo! Tech (awesome sight powered by Yahoo! Web Services) brought in ‘read reviews’ and ‘see more MP3 players’. I understand that you don’t want to bombard the user with too many options, but if you say content and community are 2 of your main focus areas, then make use of your assets.

This main Home & Garden page has popular products, refinement options, graphical ads, a pick list from Target (not sure if it’s sponsored), more graphical advertising (from Target), a tiny bit of editorial from MightyGoods about Denyse Schmidt Quilts (that should totally link to more great editorial content, not just to a product list), a holiday gift module, popular coupons & deals module, a Yahoo Answers module, and YSM sponsored links. WHOA! I love a lot of the modules and content, but it’s overwhelming.

One integration that I really liked was the Buzz: Top actor searches into your movies category, but again, the user has to scroll and scroll some more to see the coupons module or Answers module.

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