The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today: Part III

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:

1. What other CSEs market my products the best?
2. What are the costs associated with all of these CSEs? and
3. How easily can I work with numerous CSEs?

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

Comments

[abhishek]

Hi,

Good one, but where Social Shopping comparison engines like kaboodle.com, crowdstorm.com etc fit in this analysis

[Chip Arndt]

...similar to Phase 4 sites....facebook, myspace, etc...I like kaboodle.com and crowdstorm.com too....in essense this post was meant to draw a global picture of what is avaialble. If you would like to know more, please contact us at www.MerchantAdvantage.com

[Dominique]

Excellent post..! A new online shopping report that more than 8 million consumers shows that they spend several days digitally window shopping before they decide to making a purchase.