Reviewing Traffic for Shopping Comparison Engines

I have been exposed to a number of new tools recently, and whenever I find a free tool, I am even happier.

Recently I have been playing with Compete.com, which allows pretty accurate traffic measurements of sites to be taken from their systems. Playing around, I came across some interesting numbers to think about.

First, let’s take a look the power of pulling traffic in tandem. Shopping.com is one of the big sites online, as well is Shopzilla. One thing to remember is, when advertising through Shopzilla, a merchant is automatically placed on Bizrate as well. This is a powerful tandem, as Bizrate serves a large audience as well. Looking at the 2 sites here next to competitor Shopping.com, it is easy to see how signing up with Bizrate-Shopzilla, can actually provide a much greater reach than Shopping alone.

Now of course, this not exactly the Holy Grail, as this says nothing about conversion percentages or actual ad revenue. PriceGrabber for instance has a reputation for efficiency in the industry, especially with consumer electronics. This graph, will not tell us anything about that.

However, this information can help answer some questions. For instance, if a merchant is looking to pull in a large number of sales quickly, but is not concerned primarily with efficiency, then what engines to use? Now we can start gathering some good information. Let’s take one of these engines, Bizrate, and compare against a couple of up-and-coming engines, Pronto and Become.

Now there is more of a pronounced difference. It is impossible to say which may be a better over all investment, but it is useful in terms of where the numbers will skew. If a merchant is looking to move product, or looking for greater efficiency, this information may help determine the best strategy in moving forward. In fact, this same merchant may be best served by different engines at different times of the year.

Anyone looking to unload any 2007 inventory after the holidays?

December 20th, 2007