Back in July, I wrote that the shopping engines needed to just go back to basics and play up the fact that they are price comparison engines where consumers can save money. Well, in a sign of the times, some of the shopping engines are finally talking about savings.
In particular, Become has done a great job at highlighting savings.
Throughout many sections of the site, especially in Electronics, you can now see big red circles which point out % savings for consumers. The savings must be 5% or higher to show up. Become calculates this data on their end based off of information supplied by the merchant in the data feed: MSRP & Sale (List) Price.
While showing % Savings is a great step, and Become will be testing and expanding this feature in the future, I’m actually more interested in the price drop feature Become added. At the top of the product pages, you’ll now see a link which says ‘Email me when this price drops’. Yes, PriceGrabber and others have had this feature, but Become’s implementation is smarter (and will get more use) as it doesn’t require the user to set up an account.
The interesting question is how the data Become collects is put to use. Does Become email merchants selling the product informing them that they could sell the product at price X and therefore get the merchant to submit a lower price through the data feed? Could Become act as more typical lead gen company, putting the two parties in touch for a fee? Is this just a better way for Become to form a relationship with consumers (retention tool)?
p.s. yes, i know the images are messed up.
Posted by Brian Smith 
