CPC Strategy did a study based on the (1) overall traffic driven, (2) conversion rate, (3) Cost of Sale (COS) or Marketing $, (4) CPC Rate, (5) Responsiveness and (6) Merchant tools; and ranked top 10 major comparison shopping engines (CSEs). The data came from 1Q 2009, and from its client base in non-tech industries.

It is interesting to see TheFind.com not included in the list, but the research was very comprehensive. Since 1Q 2009, a number of changes have been occurred in the CSE market including (1) Yahoo Shopping has been partnered with PriceGrabber, and (2) Bing Cashback has been retired and reborn as the Bing Shopping, a FREE CSE following Google Product Search and TheFind.com.

On the PAID CSEs, Nextag, Shopzilla/BizRate, Pricegrabber and Shopping.com dominated the traffic and revenue considerations followed by three smaller CSEs, Smarter, Pronto and Become.

The detailed study is available at:
The Top 10 Comparison Shopping Engines Compared Q1 2009

Based on our own experience, we have also ranked shopping comparison engines in terms of the value they bring to the merchants. The first three CSEs bring most value to the merchants as they offer the service FREE of charge, followed by CSEs operating in Cost-Per-Click model offering lowest Cost-Of-Sale value.

1. Google Product Search
2. TheFind.com
3. Bing Shopping
4. Nextag
5. Shopping.com
6. Shopzilla/BizRate
7. PriceGrabber
8. Smarter
9. Pronto
10. Become

There are more than a dozen shopping comparison engines that a merchant can use to list products for sale. Listing products on CSEs that operate on Cost-Per-Click model is a bit risky if conversion rate is not monitored, as improperly generated feed files could result in wasting a lot of money on advertising products that do not convert. Traffic and conversion analysis are the key in optimizing data feed file for comparison shopping engines. While researching for data feed optimization, I came across an interesting report from Channel Advisor on “average” conversion rates for each CSE by industry. If your CSE result falls below the average shown below, your feed file needs optimization.

The average conversion rate report by Channel Advisor provides a merchant with a clue on what to expect from various comparison shopping engines. The merchants should use this data to optimize their data feed to achieve higher than average conversion rate obtained by other merchants in the similar category.

It would be interesting to see this conversion rate broken down into a couple of periods. For example, the conversion rate during the Christmas Season may be different than the regular season for many industry retailers. Also, for Home & Garden (i.e. pools, boats and outdoor) products, the conversion rate may be differ during the summer and winter months. This number may be used to analyze if the seasonal rate hike (i.e. 25% increase) by many CSEs is justified and by how much.

Nextag is one of the leading shopping comparison engine (CSE) existed since 1999, which offers true price comparison by providing overall price comparison including shipping and tax based on shopper’s geographic location. According to Channel Advisor, Nextag held 18.2% market share in June 2010 in the shopping comparison market with over 17 million visitors each month. Research also shows as many as 45% of all shoppers use shopping comparison engines to find a best price before committing to purchase a product.

Nextag operates on a cost per click (CPC) model with predetermined minimum bids for each product category. By listing products on Nextag, a merchant can increase traffic and improve visibility within comparison search engines as well as utilize 3rd party ratings and reviews.

To produce best results on Nextag, you’ll need to build a data feed file that aligns with Nextag’s recommendation. The following bullet points are some of the key recommendation offered by Nextag. Comparison Shopping Engine Optimization is constant modification of the feed file for best performance, and Nextag is no different than other CSEs in the market.

1. Category Mapping to Nextag Taxonomy

One of the biggest challenge in creating an optimized data feed is mapping your shopping cart category to CSE’s category. Incorrectly mapped products may appear in a wrong category, and could be charged higher minimum bid amounts in addition to drawing non-targeted traffic. (1) By mapping your shopping cart category to Nextag taxonomy, you’ll ensure that the products included in the data feed are listed correctly in the Nextag shopping engine. (2) By including Product UPC or Manufacturer and MPN (manufacturer’s part number) pair, the included product will be assigned to the appropriate category in many CSEs. (3) Adding keywords that describe your product in the product description will also help visitors find your product easier as CSEs such as Nextag offers product filters in the advanced search form.

2. Product and Category Level Bidding

As outlined in CSE Optimization, overbidding products or categories may not always produce best results but it’s worthwhile giving it a try to determine if bidding higher in certain product or category will improve the overall result. Nextag allows product and category level price bidding. Product level bidding can be achieved by adding a column in a data feed, or through the merchant UI offered by Nextag. Category level bidding is only available through Merchant UI. Nextag offers max CPC and fixed price CPC bidding. If product level bids are above the category minimum they take precedence over category level bids

3. Use Promotional Text

Nextag allows “Marketing Message” to be included in the data feed, which enables the merchant to add short promotional text along with their product listing. The Marketing Message program allows the merchant to display a text message up to 40 characters in length with a product listing. This may be done on the product or category level. You may use “Marketing Message” program to offer Free Shipping, Rebate or Coupon offers. You bid on the placement of the text. Bids start at five cents on top of any Rank CPC bid or category minimum.

4. Add Merchant Logo

Another option offered by Nextag is the ability to display Merchant Logo next to the product listing. The extra CPC cost for logo inclusion ranges from five to ten cents depending on the category.

5. Become a Trusted Seller

Nextag grants Trusted Seller Status to merchants meeting all criteria preset by Nextag. Make sure you qualify for this program, and ask Nextag to approve you as a trusted seller by emailing them at trustedseller@nextag.com.

Need Help building a Nextag Feed File?

If you need help with generating an optimized Nextag Data Feed, please contact us by submitting a contact form.

With Christmas shopping season just around corner, we’ve examined become.com performance. become.com is a new shopping portal we’ve just added to our marketing campaign so we are required to look at its performance. In September 2010, we received 1018 clicks from Become and had only 2 sales, resulting about 0.2% conversion rate which is an extremely low conversion rate. We’ve contacted the become.com, and received a free consultation from them on how we can improve our conversion. Here is the summary of the conference call.

1. Include “MSRP” column in the feed file. By adding MSRP in the feed file, become.com displays strike-through MSRP with our sale price. This will make our ad stand-out from the others.

2. In the “Stock Status” column, we can add the value “Hot” to indicate that the item is hot. Become allows up to 100 items to be marked as “Hot” status. This will boost become.com ranking.

3. Add logo to the listing by raising the bid by $0.05 in the category you desire. Become discourages raising bid for product and recommends doing it by category. Become has had issues with product level bid hike.

4. Play with “Promotional Message”. Promotional message does not have any impact on the become.com ranking. Perhaps, this attribute shouldn’t be used… per become.com consultant, but feel free to play with it.

5. Become.com is introducing “Deal Center” for additional $0.10 per click. By having Deal Center feature will provide additional “hover” text on hovering mouse over the advertisement.

1. Advertise FREE!. There are TWO very popular comparison shopping engines everyone should use: Google Product Search and TheFind.com. If you’re not using these two, do it immediately by following the specifications. There is no better ways to bring traffic to your site than doing it FREE.

2. Use CPA before CPC. The next best thing to free traffic is traffic that you pay only when conversion occurs, or Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA). Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is the most common model employed by CSEs, and they charge you for the traffic they drive to your website regardless of whether the traffic converts or not. One of the well known CPA shopping engine is Bing Cashback.

3. Keep your listings active all times. Most Shopping Comparison Engines (CSEs) have some measure of a listing’s popularity, and display the search results in popularity order. If your listing is removed from shopping engines, your popularity score will be reset and visibility of your listing will be impacted when you re-launch your campaign. To maintain your popularity score, keep your listings active all times by funding your campaign “continuously”.

4. Update your feed regularly. One of the worst thing that can happen to CSE advertisement is when a consumer clicks on your listing and finds the price that is different (higher) than advertised price. Chances are that this traffic will NOT convert, and you lose advertising money while demaging your brand. The best way to keep your pricing current is by updating your feed whenever you change price.

5. Do not overbid to improve visibility. CSEs use popularity score in addition to bid to determine placement of your listing. Bidding higher will move your listing higher, but there are other things that you can do to improve your popularity score. Becoming a “Trusted Store”, positive feedback ratings, and adding eye-catching message may also draw consumers attention to your listing. Be aware that bidding is not the only way to improve your CSE search results.

6. Include relevant data in your product feed. (1) One of the decision criteria is overall price of the item. Including “Shipping Cost” in your product feed will increase your conversion as the consumers will be able to see your total price before clicking on your link. (2) Including MPN and/or UPC code will help CSEs to categorize your item correctly to their taxonomy. (3) Including Sales Price, Promotional Offers and Coupon Codes could also help improve your conversion if used properly.

7. Improve your conversion. Making a profit from CSE advertisement is a challenge. As you’re paying for each click, you could potentially lose money if derived traffic do not convert well. Forrester Research suggests that comparison shopping can influence as much as 55% of overall online purchases. Analyze your conversion data, and exclude the items that do not convert well or lower the prices of items that draws large traffic but do not convert. As an advertiser, you should always analyze your traffic and conversion statistics and adjust your product feeds based on the ROI.

8. Improve your merchant rating. Consumers are savvy. They look at your merchant rating before they buy products from you. You should make every effort to obtain positive feedback from consumers, and continue to maintain good merchant rating. By having a great merchant rating, you could potentially sell items at a slightly higher price as consumers do not wish to take risk with merchants with negative reviews.

One of the best way to bring traffic to your ecommerce website is to adding your website to the shopping comparison engines (CSE). CSEs index your product data, and present them to the Internet shoppers for price comparison. Online users browsing CSEs are generally in the market to purchase a merchandise, traffic brought to you by CSEs are targeted traffic you may convert to “real” customers. There are more than a dozen CSEs, some FREE and most PAID engines, will help you increase your sales volume.

FREE Shopping Comparison Engines
There are TWO major CSEs that are bringing you FREE traffic: Google Product Search and TheFind.com. As these two CSEs are offering FREE traffic to merchants, it’s important that you signup with them before considering any PAID CSEs.

Google Product Search (FREE): Allows merchants to list products across several relevant Google services including products, maps and places for product specific search queries. Product Feed expires every 30 days, and it can be uploaded manual or bulk via FTP and HTTP. Formally known as Google Base.

Google Product Search Taxonomy

theFind.com (FREE): Comparison shopping search engine that lists products by brand, stores and styles. Asks users to submit the url of their store homepage and allow bot access to the product pages that you wish to be crawled and indexed. Free to list, free to sign up and use. Crawler keeps items active and updated so merchants don’t have to worry about re-submitting.

TheFind Product Specification

Bing (FREE): Comparison shopping engine that replaces MSN Shopping and Bing Cashback programs. Allows users to list items within Bing Shopping and other relevant Microsoft search services. To get started, visit Bing Merchant page.

PAID Comparison Shopping Engines

Nextag is a major player in the Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) market, with second greatest market share after Google Product Search. Nextag operates on a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) model, with base minimum “bids” preset by product category as shown in the link below.

Nextag Minimum CPC Rates by Category
Nextag Category Taxonomy

Shopzilla is a comparison shopping engine which allows shoppers to find and compare prices on products from multiple online merchants.

Shopzilla Category List (Requires Login)

Shopping.com is a comparison shopping engine…

Shopping.com Category Taxonomy (PDF)

We are new to ecommerce, and to Google Merchant Center. We have recently signed up with Google Merchant Center, uploaded a data feed but the feed has been disapproved for unknown reason. Help link sends us to Google Program Policy, but I don’t see anything we’re violating. Any help is greatly appreciated!