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eTaildTail and MerchantAdvantage extend our heartfelt warm wishes to all of our friends for a safe, happy, and warm Christmas celebration.
Thank you all for your support and friendship. We look forward to working with you into 2009.
Happy Holiday Season,
Michael Lambert and Chip Arndt
Cofounders of MerchantAdvantage and eTaildTail
Part III of a IV part series on the state of e-commerce and m-commerce shopping destination sites on eTaildTail from December 22-25th.
Part III:
The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today
Where do we go from here?
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part II: How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales.
The CSE Landscape for 2009 and Where to Start.
CSE marketing can be overwhelming or it can be easy. Let us, together, try the easy route.
Going into 2009, there are hundreds of viable CSEs and other marketing channels that act similar to CSEs to market products. Last month and this month, MerchantAdvantage had two free webinars with buySAFE and Smarter.com that outlined this CSE landscape and how to implement a cogent and cost-effective CSE marketing strategy.
Anyone reading this newsletter can download these free educational Webinars here to learn more...FREE BUYSAFE WEBINAR and FREE SMARTER.COM Webinar.
To ready yourself for 2009, it is important to first understand the simple value-add of CSE marketing. Diagram 1 shows that CSE marketing is straightforward process where online merchants can connect to millions of consumers via a wide array of CSEs, which then connect the consumer back to the online merchant’s Web Storefront.
After understanding the value of CSEs, online merchants often are confused about:
a. How many CSEs are available to them to send their product catalog data
b. The costs associated with working with one CSE over another:
1. Some are free
2. Some charge commissions
3. Some charge a flat fee
4. Some charge a Pay-Per-Click
5. Some charge Pay-Per-Action (similar to commissions)
c. The consumer reach of one CSE over the other
d. The “best” CSEs to market and represent their product catalog data
e. Analyzing the effectiveness of CSEs, and
f. The in-house technical skills and resources required to work with CSEs
To begin to answer these questions, Diagram 2 outlines important distinctions between one CSE over the other and the best possible place to begin CSE marketing.
There is no one CSE that is perfect for your marketing strategies. Some CSEs start to lead to sales right away, other CSEs take some time to lead to sales, and others may not lead to sales at all.
The only way to identify the best CSEs that work for YOUR product catalog is to test, test, and test again. The good news is that there are many CSEs that might work for you and the bad news is you might have to test a few CSEs before finding the perfect one. The huge upside, however, is that when you find the right CSEs to work with an online merchant’s sales, leads, and brand benefit.
If you are new to CSE marketing, MerchantAdvantage recommends starting off with listing your product catalog to three free sites that also have a lot of consumer traffic. These include: Google Product Search, theFind.com, and Live Search from MSN. No costs are associated from any lead or sale an online merchant gets from these free CSEs. The risk to work with these CSEs is zero with the upside of some sales and the proliferation of your brand, which is always good for SEO.
After understanding where to start, for nothing, merchants then ask the obvious questions:
Question 1: “What other CSEs market my products the best?” is answered by breaking down the CSE landscape in what we call “marketing buckets” and addressing each “marketing bucket” one phase at a time.
There are 5 phases to consider when using CSEs. We recommend looking at each phase as a marketing strategy unto itself. And, we remind online merchants that they can start with any phase they prefer that answers best to their marketing needs and then move on to a different phase once they are comfortable.
Diagram 3 outlines Phase 1: Well known CSEs and marketplaces and Free CSEs.
Diagram 4 outlines Phase 2: Niche CSEs that market select products to targeted consumers.
Diagram 5 outlines Phase 3: “Affiliate networks” available to market an online merchant’s product catalog.
Diagram 6 outlines Phase 4: “Specialty Marketing Sites” available to market an online merchant’s product catalog.
Diagram 7 outlines the final Phase 5: Mobile commerce ("mcommerce") CSEs available to market an online merchant’s product catalog.
Question 2: “What are the costs associated with all of these CSEs?”
Each CSE has their own way to work with them and offer varying payment models. Some CSEs charge a commission, such as Amazon, some are PPC, as Like, PriceGrabber, Pronto, and Shopzilla, some charge a flat-fee such as myCoupons and SortPrice, some charge Pay-Per-Action, which is a variance to the commissions, and others are FREE! MerchantAdvantage makes it easy to find out the payment models of each CSE through a simple back–office interface or you can email the CSE and ask them directly.
And, regardless of the payment structure a CSE utilizes an online merchant can easily analyze their return on ad spend ("ROAS ") on a CSE with a proper analytic tool that monitors their CSE marketing campaigns across all CSEs. MerchantAdvantage uses a proprietary “Chanalytics” tool for its clients that measures the return on ad spend of CSE marketing campaigns immediately.
Question 3: “How easily can I work with numerous CSEs?
It can be confusing to work with some CSEs and very easy to work with others. Working with one CSE is fairly easy to manage, but working with several CSEs and updating product catalog feeds on a daily basis on your own can be a nightmare.
If you have the time and in-house technology smarts to dedicate to CSE marketing strategies, you can do it yourself. MerchantAdvantage exists to empower merchants to work with 2, 5, 50, or 100+ CSEs easily and analyze how these CSE strategies are working to lead to higher ROAS and sales.
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part II: How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales.
Check back December 25 - yes, my Chistmas present to many of you - for Part IV, the final segment of our four part series. Tomorrow we will cover:
Where do we go from here into 2009?
- Chip Arndt
Part II of a IV part series on the state of e-commerce and m-commerce shopping destination sites on eTaildTail from December 22-25th.
Part II:
The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today
Where do we go from here?
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.
How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales.
Any online merchant should market their product catalog on CSEs for one simple reason, namely, CSE marketing is one of the most efficient ways to reach millions of potential customers quickly and cost effectively.
Don't believe me?
Noted ecommerce and marketing expert, Derek Gehl recently weighed in on CSEs and their importance to successful online selling and increasing Return on Ad Spend ("ROAS") on MSNBC's Web site on December 19, 2008 and confirms eTaildTail and MerchantAdvantage findings from CEO Michael Lambert for 2008 and 2009.
Special Note: Derek Gehl is Entrepreneur.com's e-business columnist and CEO of the Internet Marketing Center. He's an internationally renowned internet marketing expert whose techniques and strategies for building a successful online business have been implemented by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. His comprehensive internet marketing guide,"The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet", has been an online bestseller for 10 years.
Whether an online merchant works with free CSEs, such as Google Product Search, theFind.com, or Live Cash Back from Microsoft, and/or CSEs that only charge a commission on sales, and/or CSEs that work on a PPC business model, and/or CSEs that work on a Pay-Per-Action (which is similar to a commission based model), and/or CSEs with a fixed monthly fee, CSE marketing should be part of the marketing strategy of all online merchants.
The four main reasons most online merchants say they do not work with CSEs are:
MerchantAdvantage was founded to help online merchants leverage marketing channels, such as CSEs, to grow sales, build brand awareness, and increase return on ad spend (“ROAS”). MerchantAdvantage solves these above concerns by providing online merchants a plethora of information about CSEs, a myriad of choices of how to work with CSEs for very little money, and robust analytic tools to gauge the success of CSE marketing. In addition, considering that there are three FREE CSEs that an online merchant can start to work with immediately – yes, that means that these CSEs never charge an online merchant for a lead or sale - we see no reason why an online merchant would not use these CSEs, at a minimum.
Many MerchantAdvantage clients only use free CSEs. These clients realize value in three main ways:
Most of the time, soon after an online merchant learns how to use free CSEs effectively and analyze these marketing efforts intelligently; they then introduce other CSEs into their marketing efforts and realize that CSE marketing is not only important to building sales but is also very cost-effective.
Once an online merchant gets past the “anxiety” of learning a new marketing method and realizes the vast potential to increase sales by using CSEs in a variety of ways, it is important that an online merchant monitor and stay on top of three main issues for effective CSE marketing. These include:
Some online merchants have in-house resources to solve these issues, other online merchants simply out source to a third party to solve these issues. Another alternative is to use intuitive, Web-based tools to solve these issues and ensure that the online merchant remains in control of their data and profits.
MerchantAdvantage is the pioneer in ecommerce and mcommerce tools providing cost-effective, Web-based solutions and does NOT charge revenue share, listing fees, commissions or any other fees that might nip into your margins.
The right solution is up to the online merchant but the key take away is:
All online merchants should implement a CSE marketing strategy, be it limited or robust, to their existing marketing strategy. The proper implementation of a CSE marketing strategy leads to exposure, sales, leads, and branding opportunities at a price, in terms of actual cost and time, which no other marketing strategy can approach. Period!
So now that I have your attention, what follows is an overview of how any online merchant can leverage CSEs in 2009....
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.
Check back December 24 for Part III of our four part series. Tomorrow we will cover.
The CSE Landscape for 2009 and Where to Start.
- Chip Arndt
Part I of a IV part series on the state of e-commerce and m-commerce shopping destination sites on eTaildTail from December 22-25th.
Part I:
The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today
Where do we go from here?
What Are Shopping Destination Sites?
Two years ago we all referred to online shopping destination sites simply as “Comparison Shopping Engines” (CSEs). A CSE was an online mall on the Internet where consumers could find products, compare prices and ultimately buy these products online – direct from the online merchant. Examples of these CSEs include: Become, CNet, Google Product Search, mySimon, NexTag, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Shopzilla, Smarter, theFind, Yahoo! Shopping…you get the point. CSEs were introduced as different business models from Amazon and eBay! but served the similar purpose of connecting consumers to online merchants.
Last year I started to refer to CSEs as “Shopping Destination Sites” because I did not think that all of these online malls were just places to “compare” prices on products. In fact, there were many niche shopping destination sites, which did not have an overwhelming comparison shopping experience of thousands of vendors’ products and rather marketed the ease of finding quality products and companies that many consumers might never have heard of before. Examples of these alternative “Shopping Destination Sites” include: FindGifts, Gifts, Glimpse, GolfPricer, GourmetFoodMall, HealthPricer , Like, MachineTools, and many others.
Today I return to referring to “Shopping Comparison Sites” as CSEs. But, instead of CSE standing for “Comparison Shopping Engine” I now refer to CSEs as “Consumer Shopping Engines.” I do this, not to subvert your ad word buys on search engines, but rather to be more precise and inclusive of all online Web destinations that allow a consumer to find products, compare prices, and shop easily.
So a CSE, from here on out, is referred to as a “Consumer Shopping Engine” – which is a Web site that allows anyone to shop on the Internet either directly from your computer (ecommerce) or mobile device, (mcommerce).
Okay, now that we have definitions out of the way, what can we expect from CSEs into 2009? The below analysis may surprise you…or maybe not.
The Way It Was…A Little History
1992-1998: Years ago… in a place far, far away…online comparison shopping was born. In the beginning, there were online shopping malls as Amazon, BizRate (now part of Shopzilla), CNET, DealTime (now Shopping.com) eBay!, mySimon, PriceGrabber, Shop.com, and Shopzilla. Each with their own business model of how to connect consumers with online merchants.
This was the dawn of a new way to shop. Some say online shopping was little more than a more sophisticated “Yellow Pages”. However, CSEs afforded the consumer a method to quickly compare prices and products from various vendors without leaving their home or office. During these years, it was difficult to find well known brick and mortar stores listing their products with CSEs, as they were slow to adopt online shopping; the small to mid-sized online merchant flourished.
Most of these CSEs worked on a pay-per-click (“PPC”) advertising model, whereby online merchants did not pay to be listed on CSEs but instead paid for every click on a product, whether it led to a sale or not, which was then redirected back to their home Webstore. Some experts refer to this as “pay-for-lead” advertising.
Many online merchants saw the vaue of CSE but were still confused about the best CSEs, the best methods to work with CSEs and how to ensure that they were getting the highest return on ad spend ("ROAS"). Online merchants were overhwhelmed with the possibilities...
...so CSEs stated to answer their demands.
As technology improved, this new "breed" of shopping Web portals changed both the business model of how consumers shopped and put pressure on CSEs to upgrade the features and functionality offered to online shoppers and online merchants to ensure online shopping was easy, safe, and fun to use. Unlike search engines, CSEs did not merely "aggregate" data-feeds provided from the online retailers, but rather retrieved the data directly from each retailer site. This evolution allowed for a more comprehensive list of online retailers and the ability for the online merchant to update product information data in real-time.
1999-2003: Very quickly, online shopping went from being a novelty, niche Internet business idea to being a robust and profitable business model for CSEs, investors, and online merchants using CSEs and, because of this, many new CSEs emerged.
Improved technology shopping interfaces, more sophisticated Website, search navigation functionalities, safer payment gateways, and faster Internet connections collectively help make the online shopping experience more structured, efficient, unique, and fun.
These innovations empowered consumers to search for products more frequently, as download times to find products and execute subsequent online purchases was relatively easy and quick.
To complement these improvements, CSEs developed technologies to aggregate and list retailers’ product catalog data more efficiently. This process ensured that online merchants’ products, listed on a CSE, mirrored exactly what was marketed on their own Website in virtual real time. Consumers could then be satisfied that the products and prices they found on a CSE accurately represented what they find on the actual merchant’s Website.
Globally, similar CSEs launched, leading to over 50 CSEs marketing products to consumers by 2002 in the USA and Europe. This period continued to see consistent growth in new CSEs and improvements to existing CSEs, most of which still only offered a PPC business model to the online merchant. Examples of CSEs that emerged were:
USA based: Froogle (now Google Product Search), MSN Shopping, NextTag, Smarter, and Yahoo! Shopping.
Europe based: Dooyou Group, Froogle Europe (now Google Product Search), Kelkoo, MSN Europe, LeGuide, PriceGrabber Europe , Shopzilla Europe, and Yahoo! Shopping Europe.
2004-2008: Boom…During these years the marketplace witnessed an explosion in new CSEs across the globe, the emergence of new payment and advertising models using CSEs, the growth of mobile commerce (“mcommerce”) and the proliferation of merger, acquisition, and/or buyout activity within ecommerce and mcommerce.
Online and mobile shopping expanded exponentially during this five year period. Traditional business models of the PPC and the commission based sales model, perfected by Amazon, now compete with new ways for online merchants to reach consumers and new payment methods for online merchants to work with CSEs. As of 4th Q 2008, there are over 300 CSEs, large and small, that use traditional and new payment methods to connect consumers including: pay-per-click, commissions, pay-for-action, referral fees, product data feed licensing, gift cards, and coupons, to name just a few. A list of several new CSEs can be found here.
The most notable change to online shopping during this period was the advent of product reviews, blogs, social networking sites, and targeted niche CSEs as viable places for consumers to find, compare, and buy products. While traditional large CSEs are still viable and successful businesses, the landscape of online shopping has changed forever. No longer are there just a few trusted online CSEs to shop for products online but rather hundreds and hundreds of large, medium, and small CSEs, and other online destinations, to shop both from your computer and hand-held wireless device.
A whole other newsletter could be devoted to just this period and the explosion of online and mobile shopping CSEs, applications, and business models. In the absence of that newsletter, here are the main points to remember:
Check back December 23 for Part II of our four part series. Tomorrow we will cover:
How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales?
- Chip Arndt
eTaildTail and MerchantAdvantage extend our heartfelt warm wishes to all of our friends for a safe, happy, and warm Chanukah.
Thank you all for your support and friendship. We look forward to working with you into 2009.
Happy Holiday Season,
Michael Lambert and Chip Arndt
Cofounders of MerchantAdvantage and eTaildTail
For the end of 2008 and going to 2009, I thought it would be helpful to comment on the state of shopping online, ecommerce, and mobile commerce ("mcommerce"), as it relates to shopping destination sites and other shopping marketing channels.
I will post a new topic each day that complements the prior day's post, so please check back each day to capture the entire summary.
This is what will be covered from December 22nd- 25th.
December 22: Part I
What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.
December 23: Part II
How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales?
December 24: Part III
The CSE Landscape for 2009 and Where to Start.
December 25: Part IV
Where do we go from here into 2009?
Happy Holidays to one and all and thank you for your support of eTaildTail and MerchantAdvantage.
-- Chip Arndt
The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today: Part IV
Part IV of a IV part series on the state of e-commerce and m-commerce shopping destination sites on eTaildTail from December 22-25th.
Part IV:
The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today
Where do we go from here?
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.
<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part II: How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales.
<<<CLICK HERE>>>...if you missed Part III: The CSE Landscape for 2009 and Where to Start.
Where do we go from here into 2009?
There is no question that CSE marketing is valuable, growing, and here to stay. A new tech savvy generation is turning to online shopping, via their computers and mobile devices, to find, compare and buy products every day around the world. It is now up to the online merchant to leverage these CSE marketing channels and implement cost-effective strategies to reach these consumers.
So for 2009:
There are very few marketing strategies that cost so little to implement with such a huge upside.
What are you waiting for?
Just do it!
HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY SEASON
AND
A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!
- Chip Arndt
Posted by Chip Arndt on December 25, 2008 at 01:17 PM in Comparison Shopping Engines, Data Feed Management, ECommerce/MCommerce Soft Tools, General Commentary, Industry Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: comparison shopping engines, consumer shopping engines, online shopping, state of shopping destination sites
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