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."