ComparisonEngines

Anyone going to LeadsCon or SMX and want to meet up? Thanks to (the incredible) Jay Weintraub and (the rock star) Danny Sullivan (two people I got to know because of this blog!), I’m heading to both conferences.

I’m starting to see things a lot clearer. Starting to engage more and dwell in possibilities. Thanks to everyone for your support. I’m lucky to have such great friends and a pretty awesome extended group of acquaintances who are just as passionate about this crazy ecommerce, internet marketing, and techie world as I am. Still amazes me that this all started with a blog.

One of my favorite quotations comes from Bradbury’s Farenheit 451:
“I hate a Roman named Status Quo!” he said to me. “Stuff your eyes with wonder,” he said, “live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,” he said, “shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”

With my mind coming off of vacation (as of about a week ago – thank you, you know who!), a smile on my face, and a hunger to learn and grow, I’m starting to ‘shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass!’ I’m thinking seriously about what’s next and entertaining offers. I want to share some of this process with you.

To the casual reader of this blog, I just want to say that the upcoming content might be completely useless to you. If so, I thank you for reading and wish you well. If you want to just read about the shopping engines (and a bit more), tell Kevin Packler of Mercent, and the author of Channel Dollars to get to work. He’s a good guy, a quality writer, and an incredible fountain of knowlege. Tell him to bring @CoryCalifornia and @RickGalan along for the ride! You won’t be disappointed.

For those of you willing to stick around, it’s going to take me a bit to find my new voice, and I could be all over the place, but take a chance on me like you’ve done before. I’ll try not to disappoint.

Make sure to keep an eye out for Decide. They’ve assembled a great team. Nice to see Oren Etzioni, founder of Netbot, involved in another shopping site.

Thanks to your support (go Dave, David, Julia, Cynthia!), we only need $551 more dollars to help a special education class of 24 3-6yr old kids get the supplies they need. This can really make a difference in their lives.

Here’s the project:
Help My Special Education Class Develop Verbal Language!

My students are a young and energetic group in an early intervention class. Their ages range from 3-6 years. All of them have special needs and are in my program to help them develop language, improve their behavior, and for some, get them ready for a more academic educational experience. All of them use visual prompts and aids to help them express their wants and needs because many do not have the expressive language skills to do so on their own.

Skip your double non-fat soy quad something today and give $5, $10, or $20. Every little bit helps!

Thanks!
-b

About a month ago, I took a step back to look at some big themes I’m seeing in ecommerce.

Here’s what I came up with:
Social – Branding, Conversations, General Marketing, Analytics
Local/Mobile – Rise of Smartphones, Checking-in –> Targeting, Local inventory/pricing
Deals – Coupons, Groupons, Private Sales
Recommendations – Merchant/Consumer, Transactional, Social/Reviews
Display – Big Revival – Better Creative, Targeting, Lower/Dynamic prices
Marketplaces/Comparison Shopping – Big sites are pushing it themselves, small sites are adopting as well
Making this a game (Jesse Schell) – Points/Status
Video – Reviews, Richer Product Data –> More Traffic, Higher Conversion, More Sales, Lower Return Rates, Lower Cart Abandonment

I’ll expand on all of these areas over the next couple weeks.

If you’re a merchant without an account manager at Shopping.com and Shopzilla, make sure to take advantage of their slightly under the radar phone support.

Shopping.com:
Representatives available from 9AM to 5PM PST Monday thru Friday, dial 650-616-6700.

Shopzilla:
Representatives available from 8AM to 6PM PST Monday thru Friday, dial 877-224-2999.

You’re not always going to get through to a live person, but they’re both getting better at picking up the phone. I applaud these shopping engines for testing out phone support.