Comparison Shopping Engines Survey Report 2008: CSEs Are Effective Even In Declining Economy

I thought that these recent findings from eTaildTail friends at AffiliateTip.com and e-Consultancy.com on the effectiveness of Consumer/Comparison Shopping Engines ("CSEs") for online merchants was interesting.

CSE marketing channels are still excellent, cost-effective ways to drive traffic to your on-line Web Store front, even in uncertain economic times.

I was surprised how many online merchants actually manage CSE feeds in-house, almost 75%, and also use their own analytic tracking system as opposed to using easy to mange and cost-effective Web-based tools as provided from companies like MerchantAdvantage.

Please read the short article below and then click through to the more comprehensive article on sales that come through CSEs and how to manage your CSEs more effectively.

Here is the article and follow on information:

by Shawn Collins
AffiliateTip.com

November 9, 2008

"The declining economy isn’t pinching everybody. Online retailers are increasingly benefiting from marketing their products on shopping comparison sites as consumers seek bargains, according to research published by E-consultancy and DoubleClick.

Approximately 43% of retailers surveyed say that the proportion of online sales coming through comparison shopping engines (CSEs) has increased in the last 12 months.

Retailers surveyed report 10% of their online sales come through this channel.

Some highlights from the report:

• Retailers rate Google Shopping / Base and Shopping.com as the best comparison shopping engines for volume, with 38% saying that Google is “good” and 35% saying that Shopping.com is “good”. Kelkoo and PriceRunner are both rated as being good for volume by 28% of merchants.
• Google Shopping / Base was also rated by merchants as the best CSE for quality of traffic, and for ease of use.
• Just under a third of companies (29%) surveyed said that they used their own tracking tools to track activity in the CSE channel, compared to around a quarter (24%) who use third-party tools and technology and 11% who use CSE tracking. A third (32%) use a combination of these methods.
• The majority of retailers surveyed manage their CSE feeds in-house, while only 13% use specialist feed optimization companies. The same percentage (13%) use agencies for this purpose.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to read more statictics and relevant information on CSE effectiveness in 2008.

If you are looking for an easy to use and cost-effective tool to manage and analyze data feeds to any CSE or marketing channel, check out MerchantAdvantage; they make data feed management a lot easier and work with 150+ CSEs and marketing channels.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to read more statictics and relevant information on CSE effectiveness in 2008.

- Chip Arndt