Checklist for Optimization of Comparison Shopping Engines

Are you doing these steps?

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.

February 28th, 2008