CSE Basics

Just the Basics: Getting Started

So what is a comparison engine? What is a shopping comparison site? What is a marketplace? What is a CSE? Are these all the same thing?

When you are just beginning to list your products on another websites it’s easy to get confused. The nature of ecommerce or online selling is that things are always changing. Sometimes the marketplace is changing so fast, the industry can’t even agree on what is happening.

The original idea was to create a site that could save people the time spent bouncing from one site to another researching product information. What if someone could go to one place and scan all information at once on a product from different stores and decide to make a purchase? Thus comparison shopping was born

CSE

The first thing to understand is terminology. An online search engine that is lists multiple products taken from outside merchants, thus allowing a consumer to compare separate products at one time, and then directing the consumer to the retailers website to actually purchase the item, can be called a comparison shopping engine (CSE).

A comparison shopping engine can also be called: shopping comparison engine, comparison engine, shopping comparison site, comparison shopping site, shopping network.

Popular examples of a CSE would be:

• Google Product Search, Google Shopping, Froogle (sometimes Google Base)[1]
• PriceGrabber
• PriceRunner
• Shopping
• Shopzilla

A CSE earns money primarily by charging companies that list their products on a pay per click (PPC) or cost per click (CPC) basis. Each time a potential customer is redirected to a merchant’s website after click on a product, the merchant is charged a small fee. Of course, over many thousands of clicks, these fees can build quickly.

Now that we have defined what a CSE is, let’s see what it’s not.

Marketplace

A marketplace is different because this style of site is self-contained but still offers goods for sale from different merchants. The site is termed self-contained because all transactions (purchases) occur within the website. No customers are redirected to the merchants own website to actually make the purchase.

Popular examples of a marketplace would be:

• Amazon
• Shop.com
• eBay
• Buy.com

A marketplace primarily earns money on a commission or pay-per-sale (PPS), cost per order (CPO) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) basis. So, the marketplace only gets paid when something is actually sold. For this reason, it is important to keep customers within the marketplace’s website so sales and commissions can be properly tracked.

Marketplace/CSE Hybrids

Currently within the industry, there are calls for more commission based marketing. This demand is creating some cross-overs such as PriceGrabber’s Store system. In these cases, CSE models are being changed to accommodate merchants who only want to pay on a commission basis. In these two cases, traditionally PPC based sites are experimenting with a commission based structure.

Naturally, many merchants want to know, “Which system works best?”

The answer is simple, whichever works best for you, the merchant. There are many factors to consider including the all important profit margins and return on expenditures. This is best addressed as a seperate issue for another posting.

*Finding that iPod: Using information gathered from separate merchants, a customer can easily scan through a CSE search to find relevant information to make their purchase including the all important price. However, studies show price is only one factor in a consumer’s reason to purchase. Other factors at play include ranking, store brand, past experience, perceived quality and certifications.

Different CSEs, Different Worlds

The one thing to remember is all CSEs and marketplaces are created differently. Even though many appear to be the same, they may work very differently.

Much of the confusion about CSEs comes because there are so many out there functioning in so many different ways. With using keyword advertising, you had two choices really: Google AdWords or Yahoo’s Overture. However with a CSE, you need to find out what each one is looking for. Each CSE will want to see your data through a different set of glasses. Let’s begin by see just how many CSEs and marketplaces were found in a recent MerchantAdvantage survey:

CSE Allthebrands.com AmongPrices.com AOL Shopping Become.com Bizrate.com – Shopzilla Bottomdollar.com Chipster.com CNet Dealtime – Shopping.com Edeals.com Everyprice.com Findgift.com Froogle.com Gifts.com GoClick.com GolfPricer.com Instore.com Kelkoo.com MSN Shopping – MSN Live MySimon Nextag.com Nowonsale.com Onlinestorebiz.com PlanetOnline PDQDeals Pricecomparison.com

PriceFish.com Pricegrabber.com Pricehead.com PriceRunner.com Pricescan.com PriceShaker.com Pricewatch.com Pronto ShopAmex ShopandPrice.com Shopcartusa.com Shoplocal.com Shoponlinenmalls.com Shopping.com – Dealtime Shopping.msn.com ShopWiki Shopzilla.com – Bizrate Smarter SmarterDeals.com Smartshopper Sortprice.com Streetprices.com TheFind.com Whereandhowmuch Yahoo Shopping Underbid

Marketplaces

Amazon.com

Buy.com

BuyersEdge

Google Product Search – GoogleBase – Froogle

JellyFish

Overstock.com/Overstock Auctions

PriceGrabber Stores

Shop.com

UBid

Underbid

Getting Your Products There

So now the question is, how to get the information to the CSE or Marketplace?

There are several methods to get the product information that is needed. Many people simply ask, can the information be taken directly from a website? The answer is yes, but the two most often used methods are very different.

Spidering or Crawling the website:

This is the easiest method and usually the most costly. Some sites do offer this option, usually for additional fee (usually $250-$500). However, this method causes several issues:

1. Inaccuracy: If the product information is not laid out in a consistent or perfectly arranged manor, the information can be incomplete on an individual or catalog wide basis. Many products may come in incomplete or missing entirely.

2. Control: Product selection is now controlled by the engine or marketplace with the information. This can be problematic in terms of items that are out of stock, items that are not profitable because too many clicks and not enough sales are being generated.

3. Optimizing the Data: On the merchant site, the information may be logical and sensible, but on a new website some information can be completely missing or inaccurate.

- For example, is the necessary product information there like manufacture name and product code?

- Are the products in the right category?

- Are shipping costs indicated or correct?

- Are important marketing messages missing or misplaced?

Sent through the Shopping Cart or Hosting Company:

This is a common occurrence for Froogle – GoogleBase – Google Product Submit because a hosting and shopping cart company is usually served by sending a merchant’s items to a free and popular engine. In this way, traffic and sales are driven to the website. However, for paid engines, many times an option may be available through website control panel to send to a partner engine. Usually this is limited to the 4 or 5 of the largest engines like Shopping, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, or NexTag. However, the same problems exist as the spidering option as listed above.

Pulling a XML feed:

The last of the super simple options is when a company is able to pull an XML version of the product file. Yahoo Stores have this included in their set up, so pulling a product file from a Yahoo Store is simple, standardized, and reasonably easy to do. Other websites have a similar option available, however, the issues of control come back into play.

Sending a Product File:

This offers the best of all worlds assuming the product file can be produced in a regular and easy fashion. By sending a product file, many of the above issues are resolved. Control, Accuracy, and Optimization can all be addressed because at this point, a merchant is creating a customized catalog just for the engine that is using the product file. Formats, terminology, and product selection can all be arranged according to the needs of the merchant and the engine reading the data. Typically, these product files are configured in one of the following formats:

-Comma separated

-Tab separated

- XML Extensible markup language

- XLS – Excel

Each of these file types must then feed the comparison engines with the information they are looking for. For example, the below lay out is an example of how a product file may need to be converted over. Each product file contains pieces of information needed to accurately portray the product. These pieces of information are then divided up into a logical format, typically in this type of way:

Product Name: iPod Nano

Manufacturer: Apple

Description: 4GB, carry your music anywhere. Stores up to 2000 songs.

Price: $199.00

Product page: www.sample-store-abc.com/ipod-nano

Image location: www.sample-store-abc.com/ipod-nano.jpg

Shipping cost: $5.99

Now, this information needs to be translated so Shopzilla will understand. Each column from the header row must be replaced as follows:

Merchant’s Data Shopzilla Requirements (2007)

	->	Category
Manufacturer	->	Manufacturer
Product Name	->	Title
Description	->	Description
ProductPage	->	Link
Image location	->	Image
	->	SKU
	->	Stock
	->	Condition
	->	Shipping Weight
Shipping Cost	->	Shipping Cost
	->	Bid
	->	Promo Designation
Price	->	Price

It is easy to see that Shopzilla may request information this merchant does not immediately have available. In this scenario, it is the best interests of the merchant to find a way to populate this information. The drudgery and pain of many merchants is typing this information in on each product, or struggling to create a template through Microsoft Excel or Access to product the data. The real challenge is trying to not only product the data, but then finding a way to optimize that data in the best and most cost efficient manner.

Optimizing Product Data (Just one example):

Product data can be optimized in a variety of ways. Product names, descriptive keywords or attributes, and pricing are just a few examples. Another is description.

Many engines display only piece of the description of a product which is provided by a merchant. The CSE is typically looking to product only the relevant information for a consumer so the consumer can easily find the best product. This means that the long and robust description which may be great for SEO purposes on a merchant’s website is not a great fit for the CSE. So instead, the CSE may truncate the information at 1000 characters perhaps, and then only display the first 50 characters or so. The rest of the description would be used purely for placement purposes within the CSE.

With this type of limited space, only the most necessary information should be used. Perhaps an attention grabbing line or marketing promotion which will show in this summary display. Then ideally some product information to help in search like baby and kids stroller information including manufacturer information.

Summary:

This covers most of the basics. Of course, there are many more topics but overall this covers the basics. Using CSEs requires a good overall understanding of the following principles:

How Product data is actually organized. This includes learning spreadsheets, how data is organized in terms of rows and columns or common database principles. Then, after the technical aspects are understood, a merchant must then be able to use their operational skills in understanding inventories, product selection, and resources in producing this information and then applying all of this using marketing tactics including the extremely important skills involved in test marketing. However, that is another topic. Until then, hopefully this helps to demystify some of the basics in using a CSE or marketplace.

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[1] While this is in flux, Google Base is anticipated to act as a marketplace using Google Checkout to complete transactions. This goes against the original Froogle format which was simply a free listing service which was anticipated to move to a cost per click model.