My initial reaction was disappointment, because I had grown fond of Cashback’s Shopping program rolling in increasingly higher sales while still maintaining easy to manage ROI, based on Microsoft’s brilliant adjustable rate commission system. The hope was, that the program would continue to improve and grow in size as there should have been a lot of updates in the program’s maturation including more responsive content processing, better results pages, and the eventual move to Microsoft skimming some of the commission off the top. However, that never happened, and like most people I am looking for ways to replace performance after July 30th, when the shopping program will move to generating free natural traffic which will likely pull down sales significantly.

Now looking back after a few weeks to take it all in, there are several big takeaways from this announcement.

1) Making a commission based program work, is very very difficult.

Amazon makes it look easy, but really, how easy is it? Google has yet to get a successful program into production. Sure, Google Product Ad Listings is commission based for some, but Google is now putting together a CPC component, so how long will a commission based system be available before perhaps a move to the CPC structure is finalized? Personally, I think Google is accustomed to CPC programs, Google Ad Words  users were used to it, and that’s the direction this is going. So, all of this would have left Microsoft as the best and easiest option, not requiring an order integration beyond placing a tracking pixel, which most retail sites have in abundance anyway.

Microsoft’s attempts to bank roll the program for 2 years, ultimately was deemed to be a losing system because not enough traffic was being funneled through on a consistent basis (ie, not the mass adoption needed). It would have been nice, to set up a commission cut that would have justified keeping the program running longer to see what could be done. However, this seems to indicate the main commission based selling platform will continue to be Amazon.

2: Microsoft is great at killing things.

Really, that’s not fair. Any big company which acquires other companies and technologies, will naturally see some not integrate or die off. Take Google, which acquired and killed Dodgeball, the precursor of Dennis Crowley’s Foursquare. However, after pushing Cashback and Kin out the door recently, it does seems there is some momentum loss from the big launch of Bing. So, when looking at Microsoft programs that are not time honored institutions (looking at you Office 2010), it may be best to have a Plan B when planning ahead.

3. Q4 2010 is going to be very different from Q4 2009

Working within many tightly controlled retail calendars, I can say that almost everyone agrees the October through December defines the success of the year. There is such a flurry of sales in this period, that half the year should be devoted to planning it. That means when looking forward to Q4, a few expectations should be understood now:

A: Google and Amazon will be dominant.

The resulting hole in the traffic network which Cashback resided in, will likely most benefit Google and Amazon as both will become default destinations for shopping. Consumers will be plugging in a product search on Google.com, and those shoppers will be led through a network of well tuned Google shopping networks, including moving through Google Product Search, Google Product Ad Listings,  Google AdWords (not really Product Extensions, too few people click through), and Google’s natural results. Within those networks, Amazon will siphon some traffic away, even while increasingly larger numbers of people are starting in the first place, Amazon.com

Amazon’s site structure and ability to feed the right products to the right people, with a site layout and order satisfaction emphasis that ensures happy customers, Amazon continues to set the standard for what comparison engines wanted to be.

B. Consumers will look for discounts, still.

The Cashback program did show that discounts are still very compelling for consumers, it’s just those consumers need something simple instead of waiting 60 days to see if they get their discount. In addition to constructing discounts, retailers should explore any alternative selling technique that offers a discount, from participating in group discount sites like LivingSocial or GroupOn, to offering discount loyalty rewards on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. More and more, it’s clear that online sales are about communicating to people, not just placing an obvious checkout button.

So, 2010 does continue to be interesting in the realignment of online shopping, so I would expect some more key changes by the time October comes around.

Here is a quick checklist of things I would suggest doing for each of the below comparison shopping engines.

Amazon : Watch your feedback. The feedback rating of the seller is factored into relevancy and exposure for the merchant. This can even push a merchant out of the buy box. A good rule of thumb is to keep feedback above 90% or risk loosing business.

Google : This is a good tip for Google, but also for all other engines as well. Be sure to fill out all payment and delivery information as part of the company policies. Many engines sort and rank based on these items so ensure all shipping information is filled out, any international shipping options are filled out, and any payment information is properly filled out. Also, think about getting Google Checkout if possible.

MSN Live : When uploading a file, also check back for the FTP status and upload status. Live is still in Beta and Microsoft seems to have this as a lower priority. I’ve noticed many times if using an automated upload, things can periodically go wrong and it’s easy to have a feed not processing if you are not checking regularly.

MSN Shopping : Look for additional ad banners and demographic targeting. The nice thing about MSN Shopping is that as part of the MSN network, they have many opportunities to drive traffic from a specific placement in MSN Shopping, all the way to an integrated advertisement on MSN.com.

PriceGrabber : Think about adding featured products which stand out on category pages. If not check out the ROI tracking post from a few days ago: Using the ROI Tracker on PriceGrabber

Pronto : Try to encourage feedback from costumers. Pronto has a cool feedback system where users are encouraged to leave feedback on items, sellers, and manufacturers to create an enhanced 2.0 experience. To leave feedback, just sign up for a Pronto account, click on items and leave the feedback. Having customers do this can help the visibility of a merchant’s popular products here.

Smarter : Check the categorization of items. Over the course of many product feeds, sometimes an item can be placed in another category than what was intended based on the engine’s attempts to properly place products. Check back through the account user inteface (UI) and make sure all products are residing the proper categories every few weeks.

Shopping.com : Check out the recent post on title set up, best advice I can offer: Read the Directions: Optmizing on Shopping.com

Shopzilla – Bizrate : When sending bidding in the product feed, the bids which show in Shopzilla’s UI is not what is necessarily being fed in the product data feed. Make sure to not go back and forth between making bidding adjustments between the UI and the feed, stick to one system and ride with it. Lastly, do this realizing that the UI will be a quick update which can be easily seen, and the product feed update will need to be tracked on the merchant’s or service provider’s side.

Yahoo Shopping : If you are a merchant who regularly changes images, keep in mind Yahoo Shopping will never refresh an image file automatically. If you change your picture, change the image name so Yahoo can process the new request. Otherwise, if you do update the image and keep the same image file name, then you will need to call Yahoo directly and ask for a complete refresh on all images. The support is courteous and friendly, and can get this done within 24 hours.

Another note to all these and engines not mentioned would be a standard rule to set engines to auto replenishment. Many times I have seen a merchant’s feed go down because they ran out of funds. Email alerts can be set up if you have a tight budget, but keep in mind these automated alerts are just as likely to be overlooked as to go directly to your Spam folder. If at all possible, set the feed to auto replenishment so your feed is not down for days until the account is refunded.

Microsoft simply stated the investment was worthwhile because of the technologies developed by the Jellyfish team. It should be interesting to see how Microsoft integrates the Jellyfish features with their current stable of MSN Shopping and MSN Live Product Submit.

SortPrice is one of the few, if not the only, shopping comparison engine that offers a flat rate structure. That is, a merchant can pay a flat monthly rate and get unlimited referral clicks during that time. This is great in terms of efficiency because like TheFind, GoogleBase, or MSN Live, a merchant can list all of their products without complicated business rules. Little attention needs to be focused on product specific profit margins. Instead, the more clicks the better!.

At first this seemed just a curiosity, but as more merchants discover, the cummulative ROAS can be quit nice indeed.

1) Froogle, GoogleBase, Google Product Search

The biggest is from the e-comm juggernaut, Google. Google Product Search, which is built on top of GoogleBase, which takes over for the formerly known as Froogle comparison engine was originally rolled out years ago, but Google Product Search (GPS) is not as big as it once was. A significant amount traffic was lost when the Froogle link was removed from the Google home page and replaced with Google Video. However, the site is still bigger than most, and will certainly make a push to rival Amazon.com and eBay by adding shopping cart functionality with Google Checkout. Even though large already, this is the sleeping giant of comparison engines and marketplaces. Once a solid and firm direction develops, exponential growth will follow.

2) MSN Live Product Search Beta

This is another sleeper which seems to be on the heels of GoogleBase as a place to submit products with the possibility of expanding to other areas. MSN Shopping is already a large site, but should not to be confused with the MSN Live version. This version is still in the beta (aka free) stage. The nice thing about MSN Live Beta, is that it’s:

A. Backed by a large corporation, showing good long term stability

B. New, so there is a very little competition from potential rival merchants.

C. Searchable by Google, so the listings appear in MSN Live’s search, and also as results in a regular Google search. This means essentially you can have Google picking up not only on GPS, but also Live submissions on the same page, potentially giving double coverage for free!

3) TheFind.com

TheFind.com is also in beta but features a robust selection, and for the purposes of this article, is most importantly free. TheFind features the ability to have a bot scan your product pages and list the selection on their site, instead of having to configure a product file. Whether the site stays free depends on the company’s internal strategy, but for now it offers another great source of qualified traffic.

MSN will not be charging for this service and it should quickly become one of the top free comparison engines in the market.

Per their site, submissions may be done through email, upload through a web browser, through RSS feed, or through FTP. Acceptable formats include both XML and TXT files. As listed the following are the fields displayed, with a star* next to required fields:

OfferName*
ActionURL*
RegularPrice*
ReferenceImageUrl*
OfferDescription* (1024 character limit)
Brand
CurrentPrice
UPC
ISBN
AMGID

If you want to see fist hand what looks to be an interesting development, and a great place to expand your marketing channels, visit MSN here: http://productupload.live.com/

I will keep you updated as more information comes through.