Traveling for The Next Few Weeks.

Hello eTaildTail community.  It has been a busy month for us all, as we gear up for the holidays.  I hope that some of the posts have been helpful for you all to prepare for the holiday season and grow online sales.

I will be traveling throughout the USA for the next few weeks and then off to Europe for some business there. I will thus be blogging from all over and hopefully will be posting some more helpful entries as I learn more from across the pond.

Please feel free to email me if you have some topics you would like covered at chip@eTaildTail.com and, as I might miss a day or two from the road, please check posts in categories that you are interested in (see left hand side of blog and just click on the category of interest -- hopefully you will find some helpful advice there).

Besos,

-- Chip

Comparison Shopping Engine Analytics: The Final Word…Well Almost!

Never let anyone tell you that analytics are not important. 

The two questions many small to mid-sized online merchants have for the eTaildTail community are:

“What are analytics? and “Why should I care about analytics?"

Simply stated, analytics are the sum of statistics and raw data as they pertain to understanding the performance level of an activity. So what is an activity?  There are thousands of activities which we all engage in everyday.  Here are just some examples of “activities”:

1. gas mileage on your car
2. batting average of a baseball player (Big League all the way down to Little League) :-)
3. sales person’s efforts
4. radio marketing campaign
5. political campaign
6. hurricane activity in the southern part of the USA to gauge appropriate insurance rates
7. SAT scores to get into college
8. stock market average
9. bartender sales at busy Saturday nightclub in New York, and, of course,
10. performance measures of online marketing/advertising campaigns, to name just a few.

or even...."Troup surge success in Iraq." (yes, I did just say that)

And to answer “Why should I care about analytics?”

You should care because analytics give you essential information to establish benchmarks for success in all that you do in life. There are hundreds of times in which “analyzing” performance is essential to living your life, but for the purpose of this blog I will limit my comments to the world of eCommerce and mCommerce and marketing efforts when using shopping destination sites.

Using shopping destination sites, marketplaces (Amazon, Shop.com, Underbid, affiliate sites (Commission Junction, LinkShare, Performics), couparison shopping engines (Mycoupons.com, Couponmountain.com), and comparison shopping engines (lots of them) are all simply places where online merchants hopes to garner sales and/or sales leads. 

These “online malls” portend to act as “THE” place where the consumer comes to find products, services, and other items they want to purchase.  Therefore, these “online malls” have three major responsibilities to be successful = valuable = worthy = worth you doing business with them daily:

1. bring in lots of consumers who want to buy products to their URL (example: www.PriceGrabber.com)
2. provide the best products from the most reliable companies to make purchases, i.e. getting online merchants to list their products on the “online mall” , and
3. ensure that their business model of being an online mall is “value-add” for 1 and 2 above.

The only way to monitor if these “online malls” are doing their job is to analyze who is coming to the online mall, who is actually buying vs. “looking” via the online mall, and how much revenue, quality leads, and branding these online malls bring to you, the online merchant.  In turn, it is essential that managers and owners of businesses understand/analyze how there business decisions are working, or not working, when using these online malls.

The Ongoing Issue and Conundrum with Analytics

Now that I have your attention, and hopefully you see the value of analyzing your market efforts using online malls, there is one very important assumption I have made, up to now. 

That assumption is that whatever analytics you use are actually accurate.  This has become a big problem for online merchants when using analytics to monitor their site performance whether you use Google Analytics, a home made version, or a myriad of professional solutions and thus the same holds true for analytics as they relate to your online marketing efforts to marketing channels/shopping destination sites. 

A quotation from the Las Vegas, Shop.org summit this week sums it up nicely:

“Web analytics can bring more questions than answers,” said Kim Weller, senior manager of web analytics for multi-channel consumer electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc., who appeared on a web analytics panel. Weller was joined on the panel by retailers Dylan Lewis, senior manager of web analytics for the Intuit Turbo Tax unit of financial software retailer Intuit Inc. and Michael Fried, director of strategic analytics for outdoors sports gear retailer Backcountry.com. Indeed, 80% of retailers in a recent study noted that they have doubts about the accuracy of their web analytics data, said Eric Peterson, CEO and founder of consultants Web Analytics Demystified.”

On the other hand when you have accurate data: 

“We put the same focus on web analytics data as on financial data,” said Fried. The retailer breaks down analytics data so that it can compare “apples to apples” in viewing changes in site activity, and it also combines analytics data with the results of direct surveys of customers about their shopping preferences."

So in summary:

“It’s a challenge, however, to make sure that all people within a retail organization charged with using analytics data actually know how to interpret and use it, Fried said. “We teach people how to use it and what the value of it is,” he said. “Then we hold them accountable to actually use it.”

The Solution for Shopping Destination Site Performance Analysis

Here are 5 simple guidelines to ensure that you work with shopping destination sites, or any marketing channel, properly:

1. Understand why analytics are crucial to the success of your business (if you don't understand why they are essential by this point -- email me at chip@etaildtail.com)

2. Ensure that you ask for analytic information from each shopping destination site/marketing channel you are using

3. Use analytics as a guide and not as rule to manage your business

a. how you analyze the data is as important as having the data
b. sometimes analytics will tell you that a product is not selling on a certain shopping destination site -  this result might first lead you to pull that product from the shopping destination site where the solution actually might be to better manage how you market that product on that shopping destination site

4. Use tables, pie charts, and graphs to understand trends to define new, and adjust existing, business strategies

5. Make time each day to use the data you are getting to adjust business strategies to increase ROI (return on investment) = this is not an option = make time!

Every marketing channel worth their salt will provide you with information on how your marketing campaigns are performing.  This data is not always 100% accurate, even though it should be and they try to make it 100% accurate.  By definition there will be anomalies (see above).  Thus, it may behoove any online merchant to have a complimentary analytic solution that also tracks how your marketing channels are performing all in one place.

There are very inexpensive and excellent solutions in the marketplace that will analyze and compare all of the analytics you are getting from all of your marketing channels in one place.

No marketing channel will do this for you, as it is not in their interest to show you how they are performing against their competitors, but it is in your best interest to compare which marketing channel is performing best and which marketing channel is best for certain SKUs, product categories and the like. 

When you have all of the data in one place, presented in a visual way with charts and graphs, it will be much easier to:

1. see if the data your getting from each channel is accurate
2. compare the performance of each channel and marketing campaign against the other
3. provide you with critical data from which to you can adjust your marketing campaigns

I recommend looking into several companies that I wrote about in a prior blog to find an analytics solution that can work for you -- which they combine with the abilty to act on that information to adjust product catalog data feeds.  I am not here to recommend one over the other, so call them all and compare.

Some are very experienced, some offer “parts” of the whole package I recommend, some offer analytics as a “side thought” and are not really helpful, some are service based models which can be expensive for the small to mid-sized merchant, some don’t work with the shopping cart platform you have, and others are simply wonderful and are dedicated to this field;  I will let you decide after contacting them.  :-)

Here is a list of companies.  Make sure you ask the following questions to ensure that you make the most of all of your marketing and analytics efforts using shopping destination sites:

1. Do you work with my shopping cart technology?
2. Do you feed to any shopping channel that might work best for me? If not, Why don't you give me the option to feed anywhere? There over 100 shopping destination sites.
3. Can I analyze all of my shopping destination feeds in one place?
4. Can I see how an individual SKU or product category is performing in real time across all shopping destination sites and within each shopping destination site
5. Can I see what IP address a lead came from and then follow what that “buyer” bought or clicked on throughout my site = where did they click once they came into my site
6. Can I identify graphically what page the buyer was looking at when they clicked on my product at the shopping destination site?
7. Can I identify graphically where they went to on my site when they clicked over
8. Do you have support to help me with my online marketing campaigns: i.e. newsletters, weekly help webinars, online help tickets, 24/7 support, interactive blog, and the like, and
9. Can I afford your service = how much do you cost?

Company Suggestions:

www.MerchantAdvantage.com (the pioneer in the industry of tool based solutions)
www.SingleFeed.com
www.FeedPerfect.com
www.GoDataFeed.com
www.ChannelBrain.com
www.SmartFeed.com

Also, there are service based companies such as: www.ChannelIntelligence.com , www.ChannelAdvisor.com, and www.Mercent.com.  They are all very good but can be expensive.  Ask them how they charge, i.e. SKU count, revenue share, transaction costs...other.

ChannelAdvisor and ChannelIntelligence have also introduced tool based offerings, which are similar to the ones above but are more expensive and there "all in costs" should be clearly understood and demarcated before signing up.  Mercent also just introduced a "one stop -- we will do all of your online shopping destination site marketing for you" package. Check them all out to see what works for you.

HELPFUL HINTS FOR THE DAY:

1. Understand why analytics are crucial to the success of your business
2. Ensure that you ask for analytic information from each shopping destination site/marketing channel you are using
3. Use analytics as a guide and not as rule to manage your business
4. How you analyze the data is as important as having the data
5. Use tables, pie charts, and graphs to understand trends to define new, and adjust existing, business strategies
6. Make time each day to use the data you are getting to adjust business strategies to increase ROI (return on investment) = this is not an option = make time!

-- have a great weekend -- Chip Arndt

Online Retail Highlight: MerchantAdvantage on The Move in Helping Small to Mid- Sized Businesses

MerchantAdvantage, an eCommerce and mCommerce data feed solutions provider for small to mid sized online businesses, has been making some interesting moves the past few weeks.  The recent announcements below show that MerchantAdvantage is both the market leader in making it easier for any online merchant to work with hundreds of shopping destination sites and marketplaces, and analyze how those campaigns are working at an affordable price, and now are becoming the solution of choice of leading technology companes to assist in all of their data feed issues for their clients.

MerchantAdvantage is working with Shop.org, National Retail Federation, eBay, ProStores Web Stores, Amazon, Shop.com, dozens of the leading comparison shopping engines, as Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, PriceRunner, Smarter.com, Yahoo! Shopping, and many others, while also now suporting and being a trusted technology for companies as Bean Basket, a leading shopping cart technology company.

According to Bean Basket: "Beanbasket.com, a provider of e-commerce shopping cart technology, has integrated its technology with Merchant Advantage to enable small retailers to accept orders through third-party comparison shopping sites, Beanbasket said today.

Beanbasket, a division of Beantree Inc., Appleton, WI, serves retailers ranging in size from about $250,000 to $20 million a year in sales, and the Merchant Advantage integration is designed for merchants on the lower end of that range, says Jim O’Neil, sales manager for Beanbasket.

Merchant Advantage feeds merchant product data and images to third-party shopping sites like Shopping.com, Gifts.com and Like.com, enabling merchants to view data on sales and conversion rates for each e-marketplace. Orders received through these third-party sites are processed through Beanbasket’s shopping cart. Beanbaske does not charge extra fees for the Merchant Advantage integration, but offers it as a value-added service, O’Neil adds."

And just yesterday, MerchantAdvantage announced their partnership with up and coming comparison shopping site, PriceForSure.  That announcement shows that MerchantAdvantage has the capacity, savvy, and know how to work with and support over 100 different marketing channels for online retailers to help them grow sales in a myriad of different online marketing channels.

If you are looking for a data feed normalization company to make it easier to manage all of your data feed marketing campaigns, I would look at what MerchantAdvantage has to offer during that decision process.

(and for those who think me bias...I am...LOL...but check out MerchantAdvantage anyway and you can decide for yourself!)

iSave.com: Shopping Comparison Hits Mobile Commerce

"The launch of iSave.com (http://www.isave.com), an internet shopping comparison site that lists thousands of merchants grouped into several categories, is now iPhone-friendly. Created to make shopping and navigating easier for iPhone users, iSave.com proudly announces their new iPhone Web application. " -- from their press release!

I have a feeling that we are in the middle of a media, press release frenzy for companies who are leveraging Shop.org's conference held in Vegas this week.  So I am sure it will slow down soon, but for folks like me it is fun to see things happening in the world of eCommerce and mCommerce. 

And as you know, as I am big on mCommerce, I thought it relevant to share with all online merchants iSave's announcement for mobile readiness they announced today.

I wrote about a few other excellent mCommerce companies earlier this week (see prior blogs), namely mPoria and mShopper, and now we have more options and choice.  Isn't America great that way?!?

The part that I like about this announcement from iSave is that iSave is focused first on serving the most user friendly device for mCommerce, the iPhone. This is not to say that other devices, as the sidekick and others, are not good too, but the iPhone is by far the best interface we have seen in the marketplace for mCommerce -- to date.

Blackberry where are you? Wake up and get a device in the marketplace that has the excellent "hard" keyboard you have today (the iPhone's liquid solution is not the best...but it is getting close) with the awesome liquid screen of the iPhone.  I predict we see this by 1st Q 2008 for Blackberry.

So here is the announcment from iSave

-- Chip

"New York, NY (PRWEB) September 18, 2007 -- Watch out, retailers! The concept of mobile commerce is currently becoming a more efficient method of reaching the demand of customers. Also known as “m-commerce,” this new trend is the future of consumerism, greatly benefiting those who rely on their mobile devices while on the move.

As the most innovative mobile device today, the iPhone is the newest technological gadget that has helped boost m-commerce. If you’re one of the many people that already own one of the revolutionary iPhones, or are thinking about being the owner of one someday, you now have another perk for your new toy.

The launch of iSave.com internet shopping comparison site that lists thousands of merchants grouped into several categories, is now iPhone-friendly. Created to make shopping and navigating easier for iPhone users, iSave.com proudly announces their new iPhone Web application.

“We are striving to go beyond conventional approaches to price comparison shopping by sealing up the cracks and catering to the unmet needs that frustrate users,” says founder and CEO Robert Cohen. By optimizing iSave.com for the iPhone, it is now easily navigational and functional on the phone’s browser. Broken down into viewable categories, iPhone users can shop by section for electronics, clothing, computers, and more.

Online shopping comparison away from your computer is now possible, and iSave.com is the first shopping comparison genre Web site accessible from the iPhone. This feature is one that in-store shoppers will appreciate when they are wondering if they are getting the best bang for their buck. Shopping comparison just got cooler.

The launch of the new site occurred just a month ago, and its success on the iPhone has already been beneficial to millions of users nationwide. “iSave.com is the ultimate online shopping experience” says Cohen. “Its easy to navigate, secure, and most of all it’s fun to use. Our main objective is to have the whole world shopping and saving at iSave.com.”

About iSave.com
iSave.com is an online directory consisting of professionally reviewed Web sites in hundreds of categories. The site assists consumers in locating desired products at the best possible price. By providing a wide range of merchant listings, convenient search options, and useful research information, iSave.com saves consumers time and money by delivering one of the most thorough and comprehensible shopping experiences on the Web.

Contact: Rebecca Perry
http://www.iSave.com
PR Coordinator – www.iSave.com
Phone: (212) 584-9985, extension 164"

Online Retail Sales Exceed Expectations for 2006: Great News!!!

Whew, a very busy and wonderful day in the world of e-commerce. 

Don't say I didn't tell you so, Wall Street Analysts!

See results for 2006 e-commerce retail sales, which exceeded expectations by 5%

Straight from the source at Shop.org = the real experts, CLICK HERE for full story, statistics, and hints on how you can benefit from this growth. 

And, of course, Google sees the growth and benefit as they now support ads on mobile commerce sites -- here we go folks -- now all we need is more iPhone type of functionalities to make this all ubiquitous.

"In another step to extend its dominance of online advertising, Google said Monday that it would begin selling ads on Web pages that are viewed on cellphones....."

Go Google GO!!  Now that the 80000000 pound gorilla is involved do you think mobile commerce might just have some legs? I do.

CLICK HERE for the full article on Google new initiatives to support mobile commerce, as reported in the New York Times technology section today!

The articles are are excellent and a quick and important read.

Happy reading -- Chip

SPECIAL WEBINAR: Pay Per Click vs. Pay Per Performance

Hello everyone.  My friends at MerchantAdvantage are having a FREE open webinar in regards to the benefits and drawbacks of pay per click and pay per performance when using shopping destination sites.  The webinar will be given by MerchantAdvantage's CEO and e-commerce expert, Michael Lambert.

Simply, click the image below or CLICK HERE to sign up and it is all FREE!

I trust you will learn a lot and I hope you are having a great week -- Chip

 

Shopping.com Listens to Past Complaints and Implements Excellent New Ideas to Help Online Merchants

I could have edited the below, but I think it is much more valuable hearing it all directly from the source. The below post is from Shopping.com's news release today, with some non-material language deleted for easier reading -- Chip

Shopping.com® Announces New Innovations to Help Drive More Leads and Sales to Online Merchants

"Shopping.com unveiled several major initiatives designed to help drive more qualified leads to its merchant partners and help them increase conversion to sale. These innovations are designed to help merchants successfully manage their online campaigns to generate additional revenue through Shopping.com.

Shopping.com has developed new features, functionality, and reporting to give merchants more insight into their online business and help them respond quickly in time for the holiday season.

Value Based Pricing

Shopping.com recognizes that not all clicks are the same quality and will shift to a Value Based Pricing system in early Q4. The pricing per click will be automatically calculated based on each publisher’s overall traffic performance and is expected to provide merchants with better value for their budget.

This is what Shopping.com is sharing with its partners and in regard to VBR and implementation in a few weeks: http://developer.shopping.com/page/ValueBased_pricing

Product Performance Reporting

The recent addition of Product Performance Reporting within Shopping.com’s Merchant Account Center helps merchants optimize at the product level to improve their overall campaigns results.

With Product Performance Reporting, merchants can now:

1. Gain insight into specific product performance and conversion to sale, day-by-day or month-by-month for up to the past two years
2. Easily identify high-and-low performing products to optimize campaign performance
3. Analyze performance either by category or by product
4. Better determine competitive pricing

In addition, the Shopping.com merchant account managers proactively analyze key merchants’ Product Performance Reporting data. They provide recommendations as to how merchants can focus on their top performing products to ultimately drive more qualified leads and increase conversion to sale.

SKU Level Bidding

Shopping.com merchants have asked for the ability to better showcase specific products within a category. In response, the company is developing a SKU level bidding program which will beta in Q4 with select merchants.

Merchants will be able to focus bidding on the highest-trafficked products within productized categories. Merchants will also be able to more easily manage bids for SKUs that require special attention, such as those on sale, and analyze the potential return on advertising spend at the product level.

Shopping.com Cart

Shopping.com recently made several enhancements to its Cart program, which currently allows merchants to sell products on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis in addition to the existing Cost Per Click (CPC) model. The Cart, which is now available in more than 90% of product categories, lets shoppers purchase merchants’ products directly on Shopping.com with one single checkout process. Recent Cart enhancements allow merchants to:

1. Opt-in to list products on eBay Express, increasing exposure to buyers
2. Send email marketing to interested buyers who wish to receive it
3. Include multiple shipping rate product feeds
4. Receive more customer service data with each order
5. Distributed Commerce Program

Like our developers, merchants can also leverage Shopping.com’s content to increase sales on their sites. This content includes an extensive product catalog comprised of product images; content attributes; shopping filters; product reviews and listings via the free Distributed Commerce API. Merchants utilizing the Shopping.com API can:

1. Monetize all traffic including null search results, out of stock, and discontinued products
2. Improve the buying experience with more detailed product information, helping drive customers toward a purchase on the merchant’s site
3. Create a comparison shopping experience on their own sites
4. Generate revenue from otherwise un-monetized exit clicks
5. A fully open next-generation API with more flexibility and functionality will release to beta in early 2008.

Shopping.com will also be implementing several user interface enhancements designed to increase merchant sales in the coming weeks.

Merchants can visit the Shopping.com Merchant Account Center at https://merchant.shopping.com or contact their account managers for more information on the innovations listed above.

Retail merchants can visit Booth #125 at Shop.org 2007 Annual Summit September 17 – 19 in Las Vegas, NV, to learn more about new features, functionality, and reporting developments for merchants."

5 more Comparison Shopping Engines: Check Back Entries for Others.

I am listing over 50 sites the next few weeks in reverse alphabetical order -- I know of over 150, so if you want more suggestions please feel to contact me. You can always find a pretty complete list over at www.MerchantAdvantage.com and click under "Resources" and then "Channels." -- Chip

Here are my next 5 -- please see prior posts, as we are up to 20!

-- Chip

PriceGrabber -- pay per click (one of the original big 4)
Millions of consumers use PriceGrabber to quickly obtain free and unbiased information about products, services, merchants and sellers before making a purchase decision. PriceGrabber has established itself as the most trusted and effective online destination for savvy shopping. Shoppers can instantly find and compare millions of unique products and services contained in 22 channels, such as Apparel, Autos, Babies & Kids, Books & Magazines, Cell Phones, Plans, & Accessories, Computers, Home & Garden, Photography and Travel. The website also offers shoppers the ability to view and compare over thousands of merchants and sellers and their respective pricing information for products and services, thereby enabling users to ultimately find the right product from the right merchant at the best price.

PriceForSure -- commission based (new and has a nice daily specials update email to customers)
www.PriceForSure.com provides an entertaining, interactive atmosphere. Our goal is to keep costs to merchants minimal and customer service exceptional.

We distinguish ourselves from our competitors by targeting customers with merchant controlled multimedia features: live web-TV, video uploads, auction video capabilities, chat rooms, and video and text blogs.

Web-TV features alert consumers about our merchants' infomercials, special promotions, and services. Merchant-to-consumer chat rooms allow consumers to chat live with merchants. Consumers post questions, suggestions, and comments regarding purchases using the PriceForSure.com video and blogs. Merchants auction their returned, overstocked, and outdated products with auction video capabilities.

PriceFish -- pay per click (niche and works well for some merchants)
Pricefish, Inc is the creator of Pricefish.com, an innovative online comparison-shopping search engine and information delivery tool, which assists online shoppers to easily find, compare and purchase items from a variety of online merchants. Pricefish.com streamlines the process of comparing product features and finding the best overall price, for millions of products in a number of different categories, from a list of customer-rated merchants. Shoppers can find products in many different categories, including: Electronics, Photography, Home and Garden, Apparel, Jewelry, Health and Beauty, and many more. Pricefish.com incorporates unique multi-media features, useful content and a wide range of product categories, all designed to achieve the ultimate shopping experience – for both consumers and merchants. Pricefish, Pricefish.com, and FishClips are all trademarks of Pricefish, Inc. For more information please visit www.pricefish.com

PriceComparison -- pay per click (niche and works well for some merchants)
Price comparison search engine based on both CPC and CPA. Our CPA product listings are based of products from affiliate networks. PriceComparison.com ensure merchant will get better return from their investment by having an option to spend money based on sales results.

NexTag -- pay per click (one of the original big 4 and very diversified)
NexTag.com is the leading comparison shopping site for products, financial services, travel, automobiles, real estate, education and more. At the core of NexTag.com is its proprietary Search And Match (SAM™) technology that enables shoppers to quickly compare prices and find the best deals on millions of products and services. For thousands of merchants, service providers and individuals, NexTag is an extremely efficient sales channel with its highly qualified traffic and performance-based pricing. More than 10 million shoppers per month use NexTag.com to research, compare, and buy products and services online.

Mobile Commerce: Shopping on Your Wireless Device = mCommerce is Here…for others….Wake Up!

I love new ideas, I love identifying new trends, and eTaildTail.com loves helping people implement new ideas that will “intuitively” help other people.  Mobile commerce, herein forever referred to as mCommerce, is one of those ideas.
 
Some folks might have you believe that mCommerce is not “yet” an effective way to market your product catalog to would be buyers to make money....

Some folks say to wait and see how mCommerce technology develops and “maybe” jump in when the time is “right.” 

I am here to say that the time is right for the proper product catalog AND the time is right for all online merchants to explore mCommerce and understand how it works.  Why?

1. look at any person under the age of 30 -- they check their wireless device at least every 5 minutes...all day long
2. look at any next generation, wireless device -- the screens are becoming bigger, and easy to use and navigate
3. use any next generation, wireless device – see how easy it is to find and call a store, restaurant, shop, or whatever online
4. we all love innovation
5. wireless devices are making it fun and easier to shop online, and
6. all wireless carriers are making “shopping platforms” easier to use

If you still are not convinced, let me just say that in the past 5 years we have used the internet for a myriad of reasons. 

We, as a collective whole worldwide, have processed more information, ideas, videos, photos, and data in 5 years online than in the entire history of mankind of all other types of communication combined. 

And the real fun part?  Many experts believe that mankind has only just begun to use the power of communication that the internet provides to us.  Yes folks, we are at the beginning, not the middle and, certainly, not the end of the internet revolution.

And for those who are practical, utilitarian types, I offer the following.

According to US Census Bureau News, online retail commerce purchases (not including travel and rental cars) were approximately:

2001 = $32 billion
2006 = $108 billion
2007 = $175 billion (estimate)

Not a bad trend.

Now how about mCommerce? The numbers across the board are not consistent (and you can find statistics that certainly differ from the below) but, according to Jupiter Research, which is the most conservative, here are some estimated numbers:

2002 $100 million
2003 $200 million
2004 $275 million
2005 $400 million
2006 $450 million
2007 $500-1.0 billion (estimate) ???

mmmm...not a bad trend either.

Yes, I am an optimist but I am also a realist.  mCommerce is not for every online merchant, today.  Probably the best prospects for mCommerce are online merchants whose product catalog lends itself to quick purchases. These might include, gift type of items, flowers, gift baskets, sports equipment, luggage, shoes and other products that most people already know about.  But this is not to say that you should not try it, even if your product catalog does not fit into a perfect little box, and if you have some time to explore the possibilities, do it!

To these points, I refer to a recent article by JESSICA E. VASCELLARO and AMOL SHARMA, who wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal an article about mCommerce.  Here is an excerpt:

Please CLICK HERE for full article:

“Feeling guilty about leaving his wife behind during an extended business trip, Richard Davis sprang for a last-minute gift. Sitting on the runway at Boston's Logan Airport, he pulled out his BlackBerry, launched Digby -- a free shopping application he had downloaded to his device -- and purchased a bouquet of flowers, along with a miniature teddy bear, from retailer FTD.com with just a few clicks.

"My wife was really pleased," says Mr. Davis, 46 years old, who works for investment bank Needham & Co. LLC and lives in Wellesley, Mass. "It's pretty nice to be able to shop online from a hand-held."

Retailers and wireless companies have been buzzing about enabling consumers to purchase everything from flowers to flat-screen television sets from their mobile phones for years. But mobile versions of popular online Web sites like Amazon.com have been slow to catch on because they have been difficult to find and can be painfully slow to load.
Now new services, many of which are being offered for the first time through wireless carriers, are trying to make mobile commerce more mainstream. While many still require multiple steps and an agility with small screens, they are making mobile shopping easier through better interfaces, wider selections and more secure payment options.”

So what are your options if you are interested in mCommerce? 

In other words, if you want to immediately see if there is value in mCommerce for you, and you can afford to try it, look into it now.  Don’t trust the “pundits,” who pontificate that they know everything and might have you believe that mCommerce is not ready for you. Instead, call the mCommerce experts and go from there. 

As I am always fond of saying, if you have time to explore the landscape of possibilities to make more sales, especially if those possibilities are affordable to test, why not try them?

Here are a few good companies - and I am sure that there are many more that I am missing – to call and ask if an mCommerce solution is worth pursuing today.  By the way, I have spoken to all of them and they are more than happy to help and educate you about mCommerce and how it might work for you:

mShopper, which just launched mCommerce search functionality with Sprint and has access to over 7 million products.

mPoria, which helps online merchants build a simple to interface mCommerce friendly website from their existing product catalog and have access to over 10 million products.

Digby, operated by 30 Second Software Inc., stores retailers' best-selling items within an application users download on their BlackBerry, refreshing the selection every night. The company also provides access to more than one million products over the mobile Web.

OpenMarket Exchange, which provides access to the best of both worlds: the financial transparency and rigor expected with an on-network transaction combined with the broad access and merchandising flexibility of an off-network experience.

...and to make any mCommerce transaction safe, trusted and easy, PayPal and Google Checkout interface with many mCommerce applications today.

And don’t forget that AT&T/Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint all have plans to implement more easy to use “friendly platforms” to leverage mCommerce.

So to those who say that mCommerce is not yet ready, I say ready for whom?

It may not be ready for the analysts and the e-commerce experts who don’t have enough data to really understand how mCommerce can work and make grand prognoses….soooooo….while they are getting their heads wrapped around what it all “might” mean, may I suggest that any online merchant spend 30 minutes looking into mCommerce.

mCommerce is certainly ready for the online merchant, who has a product catalog that lends itself to mobile buying behavior patterns today, and it certainly is smart to ready yourself for mCommerce by understanding how it works, so you can ensure that you stay ahead of your competition when it really starts to take off.

Shopping.com Increases CPC Rates for Some Categories

Important new pricing information for Shopping.com, effective October 1, 2007, from our friend Brian Smith over at www.ComparisonEngines.com  - Ed

"On Friday @ 5:15pm, Shopping.com announced some category minimum decreases and some category minimum increases.

OUCH! A Pre-holiday shopping season increase in some category minimums.

Ok, good news first. Beginning October 1, Shopping.com will decrease the category minimum CPC rates for Books, Music, and Video (BMV) as well as Car Seats, Cribs & Bassinets, Strollers, and Watches.

On Friday @ 5:15pm, Shopping.com announced some category minimum decreases and some category minimum increases.

OUCH! A Pre-holiday shopping season increase in some category minimums.

Ok, good news first. Beginning October 1, Shopping.com will decrease the category minimum CPC rates for Books, Music, and Video (BMV) as well as Car Seats, Cribs & Bassinets, Strollers, and Watches."

CLICK HERE to read all and the pricing information which you must all know for Shopping.com going into the holidays.

Welcome! or Welcome Back... :-)

Hello everyone and, if this is your first time here, welcome to the eTaildTail community.  If you are new to eTaildTail.com, please click on the various "category" links on the left hand side for helpful past entries as they relate to that topic, in addtion to what you scroll through below.

I blog every day, have guest entries, and, best of all, have information that might help you increase sales that you can't find anywhere else.  We do try to keep it interesting!

To this end, I will do my best to also be an aggregator of information that helps you with your online marketing everyday at your storefront and into various marketing channels....so check back daily and it is nice to have you here.

--   :-) :-)  Chip Arndt

Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads: What are they? Why use them? And Keyword Use is “Essential/Mandatory”

I wrote this earlier this year and thought it was worth repeating, as many folks have emailed me about it asked about pay per click ads on shopping comparison sites vs. pay per click leads using comparison shopping engines. -- Ed

Earlier this week on eTaildTail I commented on why “keywords” are critical when using CSEs.  Since then I received a few mails about using “keywords” when creating Internet Ad campaigns, so today let’s cover this area.

The most important thing to know about “Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads” is they can be very effective if you know what you are doing and how they work.

What are Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads?

Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads are what Google (Ad Words (you put out)/Ad Sense (you put on your site) pioneered, or least took to a whole new level!  Yahoo! (Yahoo Advertising), Microsoft (Ad Center) and others also do this very well – yes, there a lot of them out there and consolidators as Local.com, who will syndicate your ad words, exist, but for this blog let’s keep it simple.

Pay-Per-Click, for this entry, are simply small pieces of text (and Google is now beta testing video applications) that allow any company to advertise their company and products on the search engines and on websites, when those website decide to participate in programs that place ads on their sites.  Most look like this:

Designer Clothing Store
50-75% OFF on VERSACE D&G PRADA ARMANI Latest 2007 Collection!

Most Versatile Crew Truck
Get Free Info on Most Versatile Crew Truck. Review, Ratings & Prices.

These “snippets” show up on the search engines when a company participates in “paid” advertising programs on search engines and they ALSO show up on various other sites when these sites decide to act as an “agent”.  In the latter scenario, search engines place these ads on other sites using algorithms.  They take this a step further by trying to place the “right” type of ad on other sites that have something to do with ad. For instance, an ad about “services for landscaping” would appear on sites that have something to do with gardening, home care, and providing equipment for landscaping purposes and probably would not appear on a website selling baby care products.  This “intuitive” ad placement is all handled by the search engine.

The goal is to try and reach customers that are searching for a related product or service on one site to then click on your ad because they are interested.

Do these Ads Work?

We all know that Google, MSN and Yahoo! are all billion dollar companies and lots of their revenue come from these type of ads, so let’s just assume they work. Also, as reported by /Price Water House/Interactive Advertising Bureau online ad revenus for 2006 was $16.9 bn -- something is working -- with 62% of that amount attributed to keyword search and "display" advertising I outline below.

A company can benefit from these ad campaigns primarily because they can be relatively inexpensive and lead to excellent leads.  Let me show why these campaigns can be inexpensive.

Doing a simple cost/benefit analysis:

A. Pay $50 per month using a Pay-Per-Click Google ad campaign
B. You pay $.25 per click
C. 10 leads click on the ad lead and come to your site in one month
D. Those leads cost you $2.50
C. 2 of those leads translate to sales/clients
D. Acquisition cost of the client is $1.25
E. You have $47.50 left in your Pay-Per-Click Ad campaign for future clicks.

This is great if you provide landscaping services for $25 an hour or sell products that are more than $5.00 because:

1. You have made a sale = paid for ad campaign
2. You have a new client = ongoing revenue
3. You can market other products to that new client forever = upsell possibilities
4. Branding.

So why wouldn’t you do this? 

People often site these reasons: Click fraud, to get my company listed higher in Google is too expensive, this is too high a price to pay to acquire a client, my product margins are small and these clicks don’t lead to significant sales, and other methods of advertising work better for my company (newspaper adds, radio ads, yellow page adds, local advertising in other tabloids…etc..).

My reaction to this is simply, try it! I have never been a fan of paying a high price to get listed higher on search engines, especially for a small vendor who is often "out bid" by the bigger companies with bigger pockets. I will leave that decision up to all of you if you want to start figuring out how to get listed higher on search engines.  What excites me is the very inexpensive ads that pop up on other people’s sites, which can cost you from $.10 a click to $1.50 a click, pending on products and how you want your ad listed.

Finally, and probably the most important to small to mid-sized businesses is that the cost to see how Pay-Per-Click advertising can work for you is so inexpensive.

It is inexpensive to set up, inexpensive to create ad language, and inexpensive to track to see if it is working for you compared to other forms of advertising.  Oh yeah, and if it does not work and you get no leads you are not locked in – stop the campaign.  How simple is that?

And if the above did not convince you to at least try it here is a quotation from one organization:

“Bandworks, an Oakland rock msic school, pays an average $.25 per click when its ads pop up during a search for “rock music camp.  The school drew 17 visitors to its Web site during one week for a total all in cost of $9.00 and we had 6 sign up.  The best part is that we are able to track those leads and we were able to change our ad campaigns midstream to reflect special pricing and other fun stuff.”

Do the math…Bandworks paid about $.53 for each lead….can you do that anywhere else and be able to change your marketing language instantly and stop marketing campaigns any time?

As for click fraud…well it does happen and it is trackable. You can see if clicks are coming from the same or similar IP addresses too frequently and then the Google, Yahoo! etc…will help you with this issue.

But if you are not big company, I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless you have a next door neighbor who holds some sort of grudge, knows what you do, has a computer, has the time to “ruin you” by just clicking away on your ads!!!

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1.Only one tip! Use Pay-Per-Click Internet Ad Campaigns because:

• they are inexpensive
• easy to set-up
• easy to see if they are working
• easy to reedit marketing ad campaigns in seconds
• let you reach people you can reach no other way,
• no long term contracts, and
• you can stop and start campaigns any time you want without penalities.

SortPrice and the Beauty of Flat Rate Pricing at a Comparison Shopping Engine

From our friend Kevin...over at www.ChannelDollars.com - Ed

"For a long time now I have heard good reviews, and specifically from merchants, not some random writer (eh-hem) about one engine not as publicized as some others. The reviews are not due to some new video feature or robust search mechanism, but instead something special with the billing structure.

SortPrice is one of the few, if not the only, shopping comparison engine that offers a flat rate structure. That is, a merchant can pay a flat monthly rate and get unlimited referral clicks during that time. This is great in terms of efficiency because like TheFind, GoogleBase, or MSN Live, a merchant can list all of their products without complicated business rules. Little attention needs to be focused on product specific profit margins. Instead, the more clicks the better!.

At first this seemed just a curiosity, but as more merchants discover, the cummulative ROAS can be quit nice indeed."

And more....Suggested Shopping Comparison and Destination Sites to Grow Revenues

I am listing over 50 sites the next few weeks in reverse alphabetical order -- I know of over 150, so if you want more suggestions please feel to contact me. You can always find a pretty complete list over at www.MerchantAdvantage.com and click under "Resources" and then "Channels." -- Ed

Here are my next 5 -- please see prior posts as we are up to 15!

-- Ed

PriceRunner (pay per click and owned by ValueClick, which owns Commission Junction)
PriceRunner is an internationally acclaimed comparison shopping engine that provides consumers with easy access to comprehensive buying information on a wide variety of products. Ranked #1 in the US by PC World Magazine in 2005 as "best overall comparison shopping engine" and recommended by Good Housekeeping Magazine. PriceRunner aggregates product details, user and expert product reviews, retailer ratings, as well as the best available prices in one convenient location. PriceRunner distinguishes itself from other comparison shopping engines by including prices from both online and offline retailers providing consumers with the broadest price comparisons and always lists the lowest price first. PriceRunner's goal is to provide consumers with the ability to make an informed and confident buying decision. PriceRunner is a ValueClick, Inc. company. For more information: www.pricerunner.com.

PriceShaker (pay per click, smaller, excellent for electronics)
One of the newest and most cost-effective advertising tools available today. PriceShaker.com's lowest CPC rates in the industry combined with a vast amount of top rated merchants make it one of a kind. Focusing on consumer electronics and appliances, PriceShaker.com is not only a shopping comparison site, but it is equally a product comparison site as well as a retailer comparison site. In addition to shaking the internet for the best prices, PriceShaker.com provides users with unique ways to compare products side by side right down to their specific details as well as having a combination of customer reviews and an objective rating system- helping users choose the right retailer to purchase from.

Pronto (pay per click, becoming one of the top 5, just started social comoponent, owned by IAC Interactive, which also owns Gifts.com)
Pronto.com is the Web's most comprehensive comparison-shopping engine. Consumers using Pronto.com can now find and compare prices for over 50 million products from over 50,000 merchants in an unbiased and easy to use display. Recently named as "Best Online Price Comparison Site" by Kiplinger's and selected by FireFox as one of their recommended add-ons, Pronto.com has a team of experts in technology, Web search and consumer products working to create a world-class shopping search experience. Pronto.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI), which operates Ask.com, Citysearch, HSN, LendingTree, Match.com, Ticketmaster and more and has a worldwide online audience of 229 million (September 2006, comScore).

ShopAndPrice (pay per click, smaller, excellent for electronics)
ShopAndPrice.com increases website traffic and revenue to targeted buyers while limiting advertising costs. CSEs usually increase your expenses and not buyers! They are interested in increasing click charges, not website traffic. This results in poor “cost per click” to conversion rate ratios.
ShopAndPrice.com focuses on web surfers looking for specific brands and model numbers. Customers who search for general terms like "Flat screen TV" are many steps away from a purchase. However, customers who search for specific brands and model numbers know what they want and are prepared to make a purchase. This adds up to a higher conversion rate.
So stop paying for clicks from consumers only researching what to buy? Want proof? Enter in a TV or video product in a Google or AOL search and you will be convinced that ShopAndPrice.com means what we say! Contact us today to see how we can increase your webs sales now.

Shopping.com (pay per click, one of the big 4, owned by eBay)
Shopping.com, an ebay company, pioneered online comparison shopping and today is one of the fastest growing shopping destinations on the Internet. With millions of products, thousands of merchants, and millions of reviews from the Epinions community, Shopping.com empowers consumers to make informed choices and, as a result, drives much higher conversion to sale and value for merchants.

The Case for Customization of Comparison Engine Feeds

More from our friend Kevin...over at www.ChannelDollars.com -- Ed

"One of the most misunderstood aspects of using shopping comparison engines is the process of optimization. Some resources have been devoted on this site in explaining how to do this. However, it occurred to me that not much has been said about why.

So, let’s answer that question…why???

Lets tackle the first piece of the why, that is why is this necessary? It’s crucial to think of each CSE as a separate search engine to optimize for. Just imagine have 10 Googles out there you needed to tweak structure for. The same way e-commerce veterans needed to learn about header tags and keyword density, the same is true for each engine. A truly good marketer knows how the algorithms work at each of these engines and how a product(s) can be tuned to meet that criteria.

The next portion of why, is why should someone even try to optimize? Why not just shut down the product, or maybe the entire feed?

I speak to many retailers who simply don’t seem to have the resources for this. Let’s talk about why each retailer NEEDS to have the resources. Imagine a simple scenario where a retailer sells a diamond ring. Now, let’s say this item does not sell well on a CSE, because all the customers are searching for a diamond engagement ring. Just a small change to the product name in this case can be the difference to not selling anything, to selling what may amount to thousands of dollars more in items.

The question then becomes, can I really afford to pull a product that should be selling?"

Pronto.com Becomes First Comparison Shopping Service to Offer 'Social Shopping' Features to Help People Make Informed Buying Decisions

Love it when the shopping comparison sites make shopping online more fun and innovative.  If you want to feed your product catalog data to Pronto, check out www.MerchantAdvantage.com , as they support Pronto and over 50 others. -- Ed

Pronto Press Release

Web's Fastest Growing Comparison Shopping Site Launches Community Features That Allow Users to Rate Products, Create Profiles and Share Knowledge

September 11, 2007: 08:00 AM EST

Pronto.com(TM), an Operating Business of IAC/InterActiveCorp , today announced that it is the first comparison shopping site to enter the "social shopping" space with the launch of new community features that allow users to rate products, interact with other users, write reviews and gain insight from trusted peers and other like-minded shoppers.

Already the Web's fastest growing comparison shopping site with over 3.1 million unique monthly U.S. users, according to comScore, Pronto.com is changing the online shopping model by becoming the first to fuse comparison shopping with a full range of social features to help people make smarter buying decisions.

Built on the Web's largest product index and propriety crawl technology, Pronto.com already provides consumers with access to over 70 million products from over 65,000 online retailers directly on its Web site. With the launch of new social tools, Pronto.com has become the only comparison engine that helps shoppers weed through all of these product choices by allowing users to express themselves through the products they like, want and own, therefore helping others make better, more informed shopping decisions.

"Traditional comparison shopping engines provide advice on WHERE to buy products, but do little to help users decide WHAT to buy. At the same time, existing social shopping sites fall short by relying on users to gather products from across the web for them -- which dramatically reduces the number of products available to the community," says Dan Marriott, CEO of Pronto.com. "The new Pronto.com combines the best of social software and product search into an online shopping community that has not existed until today so consumers can visit one destination for the most fully informed shopping experience."

    Pronto.com's new social shopping functionality includes:

    -- User Profiles -- Users can create personal profiles consisting of their
       favorite products, brands and stores as well as personal pictures and
       answers to profile questions.
    -- Brand and Store Level "Likes" -- Users can express their interest in
       particular brands and stores in addition to their favorite products,
       providing other shoppers greater insight into their tastes and style.
    -- Lists of Top Liked Products -- Users can quickly see the most popular
       products in a category based on the number of people who noted that
       they "Like" the product.
    -- Social Networking -- Registered users on Pronto.com can invite their
       friends to join their personal network so that they can share knowledge
       and opinions on products.
    -- Peer-to-Peer Messaging -- Users can communicate with each other via
       private messages to discuss products, brands and stores.
    -- Local Filtering -- Users can track the hottest trends in their city by
       searching the most "Liked" products by region.

About Pronto.com

Pronto.com (http://www.pronto.com) is the Web's most comprehensive social shopping engine. Thanks to patent pending Web search technology, Pronto.com's product index contains over 70 million products from over 65,000 online merchants, which is five times the merchants of most leading comparison-shopping engines. Named as "Best Online Price Comparison Site" by Kiplinger's, Pronto.com has a team of experts in technology, Web search, consumer products, and social media working to create a world-class social shopping experience. Pronto.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp , which operates Ask.com, Citysearch, HSN, LendingTree, Match.com, Ticketmaster and more.

About IAC

IAC operates leading and diversified businesses in sectors being transformed by the internet, online and offline... our mission is to harness the power of interactivity to make daily life easier and more productive for people all over the world. To view a full list of the companies of IAC please visit our website at http://www.iac.com

    Pronto.com Public Relations, Press Only:
    media@pronto.com

    Kendra Thornton
    773-525-6110

    Brandon Warburton
    212-915-3849

Marketing Your Product Catalog Data:Using Your Storefront Data For All Marketing Efforts

Many online merchants do not have an effective data management system to market their most up to date product catalog through the various marketing channels. These channels include affiliate sites, comparison shopping engines, mobile commerce and other shopping destination sites available to them online.

Or, if they do have a "data management system" in place, this system relies on methods that often lead to marketing outdated products that are not consistent with the most up to date product catalog information residing within the shopping cart. The result is "outdated" product catalog data marketed into marketing channels which leads to a myriad of issues.

In either scenario, it is essential that:

1. The online merchant understand how critical it is to market data that is functionally the same as the data that is on their online storefront, and

2. That online merchants are provided a methodology and a process to ensure that the data they market is consistent with what appears on their online site.

In the ramblings that follow I will answer these questions:

1. Why using your storefront data should be the "initial" access point to use when marketing your online storefront, anywhere and anytime?

2. What key elements of the data you use for marketing needs to be consistent with what you have on your online storefront "right now", and which should not be consistent (there are times for this too)? and

3. How often does your marketing information need to be updated to maintain concurrency?

Why Using Storefront Data Should Be The "Initial" Access Point For All Marketing Feeds

Let’s look at two completely different scenarios:

The consumer sees your product(s) on a Comparison Shopping Engine, and likes what he/she sees, so…they click over to your site only to find that the product they saw on the comparison engine is exactly what they see on YOUR site, same price same product…very happy consumer.

The consumer sees your product(s) on a Comparison Shopping Engine, and likes what he/she sees, so…they click over to your site only to find that the product they saw and liked on the Comparison Shopping Engine is more expensive than it was on the previously viewed page…very angry consumer!

If that isn’t enough to grab your attention, the Comparison Shopping Engines, in an effort to please their consumers, intend to provide the most accurate information possible. If merchants stand in the way of those efforts, most Comparison Shopping Engines will cancel the offending merchants’ entire product feed, even if there is just one offending product.

The storefront software or service you choose, for the purposes of online territories, is the central point where everything happens = the nucleus that drives your ecommerce engine. All other applications, services, or products you might choose to use for online endeavors must be able to (and should) "communicate" with your chosen storefront software or service. The two main reasons for this are related to efficiency and accuracy.

Efficiency – If your storefront data drives your marketing data, it saves valuable time, and eliminates unnecessary steps in the marketing process.

Accuracy – The typical point of sale for online endeavors is at the storefront, and if marketing data is not similar to storefront data, the merchant loses the consumer immediately, and probably for future purchases too.
When it comes to adopting the function of marketing your product catalog data outside of your storefront to numerous marketing channels many online merchants do not know what to do.

They are often forced to create separate files and/or spreadsheets, based on their storefront data, that they then place in a separate folder to send to the various marketing channels. Often this file is created for the marketing department or other folks to use for marketing purposes.

The problem with this manual procedure is that often when changes are made to your online storefront catalog data these changes are not reflected in the file that was "replicated" for marketing purposes. In other words, the nucleus that drives your ecommerce engine is no longer what drives your online marketing efforts. Problems ensue, technical issues occur, frustration with marketing channels lead to cost overruns, and all of this results in counter productive online marketing.

The simple solution to all of this is not to "replicate/duplicate" files that are based on data that is always being updated on your storefront and rather go right to the "product catalog source data" that resides in your shopping cart. By using your "source data" as your starting (being introduced to consumers) and end point (point of sale) the online merchant can ensure that the data sent to any destination outside of your storefront is accurate with reference to the "product catalog source data" that appears on your shopping cart.

How To Ensure That The Data You Market Is Consistent With Your Storefront Data

This can be easy or it can be hard. You choose.

The hard way is to constantly compare your "marketing data files" or "spreadsheets" with your storefront source data, product for product, and make adjustments daily.

The easy way is to create, or use an application, which pulls the data you use for marketing purposes from your "source product catalog data." AND then make sure that this application automatically updates your marketing data every time "someone" on your team updates information in your "source product catalog data", or at least as often as you feed to marketing entities.

MerchantAdvantage has developed such a tool – Channel Management – that can be auto scheduled to do this for any online merchant and provide a product date file from their storefront platform. Online merchants can now continue to keep the two sets of files consistent with each other – namely your shopping cart data and the files that you create from that shopping cart data for marketing purposes.

There are service based companies that also can do this for you, and they are excellent, but these solutions can be expensive for the small to mid-sized online merchant. If you are like many online merchants, who like managing, marketing and controlling their own data feeds then use a tool based solution so you can save time, headaches and money while ensuring that you consistently market only the most update to date storefront product catalog data to all of your marketing channels. These tools allow small to mid-sized retailers to compete in the online retail marketplaces.

How To Ensure That Updates To Product Catalog Data Are Carried Through In Real Time To All Of Your Marketing Channels = The Process

So now that you are on board as to why using your "product catalog data" that resides within your shopping cart software is critical. Now what?

If you are determined to continue to create a separate file/spreadsheet based upon your product catalog data and then update that manually to ensure accuracy, may we suggest that you don’t! We only foresee problems with this method. If you still insist, then you need to ensure that:

1. The product URL pages, image URLs, prices and other categories are exactly the same as your storefront data,
That you update this file/spreadsheet whenever you make changes to your storefront data BEFORE sending a feed to any marketing channel,

2. That you adjust the perhaps somewhat cryptic content which serves its purpose on the storefront to be more marketing friendly, and

3. That you rethink using this method!

My recommendation to those using a feed management tool system, such as Channel Management by MerchantAdvantage, is to:

1. Schedule an import of your product catalog into your marketing feed system daily
2. Create business rules to adjust your product content in a way which will maximize consumer interest while maintaining content consistency in fields such as price, product URL etc…
3. Feed the adjusted content to selected channels
4. Assess the performance of those feeds using analytics
5. Adjust content, selected SKUs or Channels as necessary for better performance
6. REPEAT 1-5, as necessary

Helpful Hints and Wrap Up:

No storefront software or service can do all that an online merchant requires, especially when managing data feeds to dozens of marketing channels and shopping destination sites.

Given the many new methods to market online today, many shopping cart software packages or services do try to keep up. However, often times it is more cost effective and intelligent to compliment your existing software package or service with a vendor’s product or service that is more robust.

When you do choose to use software that enhances your ecommerce engine, it is mandatory that the new vendor’s product "speaks to" and "works seamlessly with" your existing shopping cart technology AND also that the storefront technology you decided to use allows for other products to work with them.

Once you are confident that these last two points are true, it is important to use an application/tool to effectively market your product catalog data on an ongoing basis. Once you are certain that the data you want to market is consistent with your shopping cart data, you can then begin to manipulate the marketing of that data into certain channels, as you desire, by appending unique marketing language to a marketing channel feed.

Only then can you be confident that:

1. The data you are marketing is consistent with what a consumer will see on your storefront when they come to make a purchase, and
2. That the online marketing channel you are using never cancels your product catalog feed for product inaccuracies between what you market and what you have on your storefront.

Product Catalog Data Feed Strategy: Why an Online Merchant Should Feed to Several Shopping Comparison Sites

I have received many mails about where online merchants should feed their product catalog data to get the most sales and drive traffic back to their online storefront. 

My answer is simple.  I don’t know...AND FRANKLY...no one has the exact answer....even the so called "experts."

The reason I say this is because there are many, many shopping destination sites that can help you get sales and drive traffic back to your online storefront/your website. I believe that the best way to find out which sites work best for you is to experiment and use a tool based solution that lets you experiment.

It is true that the big four, namely, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla, Yahoo! Shopping, and Shopping.com drive almost 70% of all “pay per click” traffic to storefronts.  Add in Amazon and that probably goes up to 75%.  Add in an eBay store, that you can set up and feed your product catalog into, and a feed through an affiliate, as Linkshare, Performics, Commission Junction, and that number might go up to 80%.  And then add in three FREE listing sites as Google Product Base, TheFind.com, and MSN Live Search (not their marketplace) and you certainly reach 80%.

But does just listing your product catalog to these marketing channels lead to more sales?  Or does it lead to more exposure and clicks with little sales?  The only way to find out is to:

1. experiment
2. analyze and then,
3. choose!

Outside of the better known sites, there are over 150 other shopping destination sites that, while small and less well known, are none the less destinations that have potent