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?"

Comments

[Dan Shields]

True, it is great to optimize your feed, but many times the CSE's will group products by their Manufacture Part Number, SKU or some other Identifier. This happens for all products on Shopzilla. You could have a different product name than your competitor but still be placed under the same product name. They just place the products under the most common searched for title.

While its great to optimize your feed, what else can be done besides submitting the correct attributes, tweaking the product name, and description to have good key words.

We do this optimization with all of our products but we don't see really a big change in conversion. We could be ranked high and get tons of clicks, but yet when we were ranked lower in the results we get better conversions. Sometimes I think its all hit or miss.