The original or 1st generation of comparison shopping engines included existing heavy weights like Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, Shopping, NexTag, Google, and PriceGrabber. Now the second round of CSE entrants are gaining momentum. New structures, new marketing tactics, and new approaches has lent some popularity to these companies. Social shopping, research oriented structure, and just some hard core marketing have helped these comparison shopping engines gain in popularity and added ROAS points for merchants.

Hoped a quick look may highlight how these channels are performing over the year in estimated visits -

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.

Second, I am splitting up my writing resources currently, so I wanted to point out this post. It sheds some interesting light on holiday shopping trends and how to take advantage of these trends for both large and small scale retailers:

http://blog.mercent.com/posts/2008/01/holiday-shoppin.html

Happy 2008!

At the end of every good cycle, or in this case year, it’s important to look back and point out the highlights as a road map for the future. So without further delay, let’s start handing out some awards!

2007 Vision Award: Social Shopping

Yes, it’s been promised for quite some time, but the 2.0 bug is starting to make it’s way into everyday shopping experiences. The following engines have embraced this movement and are moving toward a new way of selling:

Winners: Pronto.com – Become.com – Facebook

2007: Flip Flop Award

For keeping us all on our toes with constant changes in format, title, url, and mysterious ranking system, there is only one company who can clearly claim to be leader of the pack in 2007

Winner(s): Google..Froogle…Google Base…Product Search…Google Shopping?

2007: Coolest Logo Award

This was the toughest pick of the bunch. Lots of great marketing happens when you are pulling in millions of dollars in revenue, but I have always been a fan of the flaming shopping cart. It’s simple and to the point. Running a close second, the overzealous shopper sitting at his computer screen (remember when it was an old CRT style monitor?), joyously celebrating his purchase. You know, I would have chosen the robot #1, if only Smarter used him more often!

Winner: Shopzilla (Runner Up: PriceGrabber and Smarter)

2007: Ugliest Logo Award

Listen, I usually won’t ever say anything negative, but because I respect these two companies, some gentle proding is allowed. I understand the winner is under a major renovation and far from complete, but I know a good graphic artist from MerchantAdvantage, perhaps I can pass along the number…

Winner: Become (Runner Up: SortPrice)

2007: Most Innovative Billing and Pricing Model

CPA aka Smackdown model

Winner: JellyFish

(Runner Up: SortPrice flat rate billing model)

2007: Keeping Up With the Jones’s Award

Supporting Product Level Bidding, one of many options becoming more standardized.
Winners: Shopzilla, Smarter, NexTag, Pronto (Runner Up: Shopping…because it is still being officially rolled out)

2007: What Ever Happened To Them? (aka Vanilla Ice One Hit Wonder) Award

Once upon a time they were an industry leader, and now I can’t remember the last time I heard someone ask about them..

Winner: MySimon.com

2007: 400lb Gorilla Award

Awarded to the company that through aggressive advertising, has almost as many products displayed on comparison engines as their own site. As a good friend once said, ‘If I wanted to shop there, wouldn’t I have gone to their website in the first place?’

Winner: Amazon.com

2007: Best Value, Integration and Management of Shopping Comparison Engines

Yeah, I’m biased, but I am only reporting what I hear-

Winners: Mercent, Channel Intelligence, MerchantAdvantage

So please raise a champagne glass…or coffee cup depending on what time of day you read this…to the winners! May 2008 be blessed with less broken links and more ROAS! Cheers!

Engines listed below support this type of highly customizable bidding:

Shopzilla – Bizrate

Smarter.com

NexTag

Pronto

Expect to see this as a standard option within the next 2 years at most comparison engines, and very possibly integrated with cost per acquisition (CPA) models.

This sets up an interesting dynamic as ValueClick, one of the largest internet focused advertising companies with sales of over $545M in 2006, will now officially be staking out more ground in the comparison engine arena. ValueClick already owns and operates the industry leader in Europe, PriceRunner as well as sites such as Commission Junction. However this acquisitions brings many more resources to the table for ValueClick including Smarter.com and CouponMountain.

It will be interesting to see how this effects the two sites of Smarter and PriceRunner. This sites could be merged, or ultimately just pushed to greater individual success. Let’s see how this unfolds-