4 Stages to Successful Comparison (Consumer) Shopping Engine Marketing

I have received a flurry of emails in regard to comments I made about personally working with over 200 comparison shopping engine/consumer shopping engine/shopping destination sites ("CSEs"), knowing of over 200 shoppping destination site channels, and how online merchants can make money using CSEs.  I even have had people ask to purchase my list of CSEs so that they can test, test, and test again many CSEs to find the right channels that work best for them.

I have always said that only having the option to properly optimize, feed, and analyze marketing performance on only 5, 10, or even 25 CSE channels is limiting, because you never know what channel will convert best for you = lead to sales!

So instead of selling that list, let me give what I hope is helpful advice to building a long-term strategy to successful CSE marketing.  And if you really want to know more about the many possible CSEs that you can work with, please contact us at MerchantAdvantage and maybe we can help. We can’t give away our whole list but we’d be happy to point you in some good directions.

Some of the following advice you may know, some information may be new to you.  Regardless, this strategic approach has helped over 1,200+ storefronts we work with who collectively have had many of the same queries about effective, money-making, CSE marketing.

I first gave the following advice on February 24, 2009 on Ecommerce Merchants Trade Association's("ECMTA") Forum Discussion regarding CSE marketing.  You can find extensive advice and comments from merchants regarding the below information that will be helpful to you too on the ECMTA discussion board.

I hope the advice below is useful and easy to follow.

4 Stages to Successful Comparison Shopping Engine Marketing

Stage 1: "Honest" Evaluation/Analysis of Your Webstore

BEFORE you ever market using CSEs, or any other marketing effort, to drive traffic to your Webstore, ask this one simple question:

Q: Would you buy from you if you came to your WebStore site?

1. have you checked your competition and does your site match up?
2. are you price competitive?
3. do you have reviews?
4. do you use social media to stay connected to your customers?
5. do you change things up now and again by offering specials, holiday specials, free shipping sometimes?
6. do you have a newsletter to remind existing customers how special THEY are and what specials you have to offer them?
7. do you have loyalty programs?
8. are your graphics and pictures engaging or are they generic? Does it matter?
9. is your site navigation good?
10. do you offer several payment methods? People like options and, while you may not like paying the fees associated with Google Check Out or PayPal, your customers might feel more secure to use those methods.

Many of our clients say they get CSE traffic but the traffic doesn't convert and they are frustrated.  Well, there may be two main reasons for this:

1. your site is poorly designed and "scares people away" and does not look and act as professional as your competitors' Webstore "looks" and "acts"; in other words, would you buy from you or would you buy from your competitors' Webstore?
2. the CSE you are using attracts customers that "price compare" more than they shop, which is a bummer, but it happens. This is something that you can only monitor on a daily basis with a proper analytics tool, MerchantAdvantage uses its own built in Chanalytics tool to help its clients.
3. you might be working with the wrong CSE....try others and test, analyze, test, analyze until you find the right CSEs that have a higher conversion ratio for you. 

Stage 2: Forget - FOR NOW - PPC/Commission Based/Pay-Per-Action Models: Start With FREE CSEs

This is a no brainer. Feed to all CSEs that charge you nothing (not even commissions) because:

1. they are Free and any lead that leads to a sale, even if it is 1 sale a month, makes you money
2. posting your product catalog up on these free CSEs is good for organic, general SEO search
3. IT COSTS YOU NOTHING....but a little time...and MerchantAdvantage can solve that issue for you
4. Free CSEs, I know of, include:
   1. Google Product Search
   2. Microsoft Live Search
   3. theFind.com
   4. Oodle.com
   5. ShopWiki.com (they probably have already spidered your site, but they prefer a direct feed to be able to list you better)
   6. LivePriceList.com (new)
   7. ...and 3 other free ones through MerchantAdvantage - I am not being coy by not naming them because we have some special relationships for our clients only.

So that's 9 free CSEs I know of...who am I missing, I am sure there are more.  

Stage 3: Consider Pay-Per-Action and Commission Based CSEs

Again a bit of no brainer from the cost side of things, as an online merchant only pays when a sale is made. However, it is a little more complicated to feed to this type of CSEs, but, once you do, it is worth it and the set up costs to work with most of them is almost nothing. 

Even Amazon is making it cost effective to work with them easily, although they still have to approve you listing with them. For only $39.99 a month an online merchant can list their product catalog with Amazon - but don't forget that you still pay commissions, so monitor your margins carefully. 

Pay-Per-Action CSE: Ever think about MyCoupons.com? Feed for free and only pay $3 per sale regardless of the item? Not bad if your margin is anything over $3.  And other coupon sites act in a similar manner and, yes, MerchantAdvantage will feed to any of them for you. This is just one example and there are other sites that use a Pay-Per-Action model.

Commissions Based CSE: Yes, some commissions are high -- 15-22% with Amazon (and setting up with them can be expensive and timely so maybe Amazon should be in Stage 4) - but others are very reasonable - 10% with Go Daddy Marketplace; 10-15% with Shop.com's marketplace; 10-15% with Underbid.com; and Yahoo! Shopping is introducing a method to work with them on a Pay-Per-Action basis.

Stage 4: The Big Leagues: Pay-Per-Click ("PPC") CSEs

I am unsure wheather I should call this the "Big Leagues", but I do so because this group of CSEs is comprised of well known and larger CSEs.  I have found that when managed properly on a daily basis (yes, there is work involved) and an online merchant has a good idea which of these larger CSEs actually "convert" for them then these CSEs can be real winners.  But....they require monitoring and ongoing updates primarily because so many of your competitors are probably working with them too.

    Part I of Stage 4: Test "Niche PPC CSEs"

Ever heard of Cooking.com? How about HGTV.com (home and Garden Television Network)? HGTV Pro? How about MachineTools.com, GolfPricer.com, GourmetFoodMall.com, Alice.com, FindGift.com, ToolCrib.com, Zipidee.com, NowOnSale.com, RoomsByUs.com, and ShopandPrice.com?

These are all niche CSEs that focus on specific products and are not massive CSEs that purport to sell everything.  One of our clients, CallawayGolf.com, does very, very well listing products on GolfPricer.com. This fact alone should be a hint to you that you should be working with niche CSEs too.

Calloway Golf may get less traffic from GolfPricer.com than from Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com and Shopzilla.com BUT they get HIGHER conversions!!!  That is the goal of any ecommerce merchant.

So, if you have a product catalog that might fit into a niche CSE, test that channel and see if you receive higher conversions.

MerchantAdvantage works with over 200 channels, yes 300! CSE marketing success is not just made up of working with the larger, well known CSEs; niche sites are where I would start first.

    Part II of Stage 4: The PPC CSE "Players"

We know who they are - Yahoo Shopping!, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, NexTag, Pronto, Smarter, Become, etc...see here if you want to see more CSEs - and many of our clients simply have had a hard time converting trafiic from these CSEs to sales, even when they have tried hard over many months.

My simple answer is....BREATHE, relax and reassess. 

These larger CSEs can and do work for many online merchants but they take work BECAUSE EVERYONE OF YOUR COMPETITORS IS PROBABLY USING THEM TOO!!!  Got it? :-)

When using these larger CSEs you must always "fiddle" with your feeds and optimize it every day, or almost every day, to ensure that you are using the many features that these larger CSEs offer to you. 

These features include: SKU level bidding mechanisms, marketing language update fields, seasonal feeds vs. regular feeds, reviews, ratings, and many other "bells and whistles" that your competitors are probably using to both list their products higher on these CSEs and be rated higher in customer satisfaction.

For instance did you know about the many options you have to work with PriceGrabber beyond just a PPC model to increase your return on ad spend "(ROAS")?  I wrote about it here on eTaildTail, check it out, and it still applies today.

I also started an educational series with CSE participation to show how any online merchant can work most efficiently with CSEs to increase their return on ad spend ("ROAS").  That series is called: Insider Edition: The Experts' Guide to Channel Marketing and it is free.

So, the CSE marketplace is more sophisticated and working with larger CSEs requires time and nurturing precisely because they offer so many ways to help you get noticed and earn trust with potential customers.  If you don't take advantage of these features you are destined to just have people click through to your site to check on price, maybe search for a little bit, and then leave.

So at this point....are you confused?  :-)  Don't be. My advice...

Follow stages 1, 2, and 3 above ... which you can do on your own, or call us at MerchantAdvantage to help; we have created a very cost-effective, Web-based, marketing tool to make it all very easy for you to work with and analyze the performance of any CSE marketing campaign.  We also have a vast Resource Knowledge center of how best to work with CSEs and support staff to help you on a daily basis.

MerchantAdvantage even provides biweekly Webinars on how to market using CSEs and private Webinars with the CSEs themselves, who give you valuable inside "tips and tricks" on how increase sales and conversions using their CSE.

REMEMBER: A CSE has no interest seeing you spend money without conversions because then you will stop using them. They are here to help and MerchantAdvantage has a direct line!

Oh yes, and we do have some fun too...knowing over 200 CSEs personally requires a sense of humor. :-)

Finally, and this is just my advice, when you reach Stage 4, outlined above, as many of you have already.  Stop! and..

Go back and make sure you have completed Stages 1, 2, and 3 thoroughly first, because, when you reach Stage 4 you will then be prepared.  It will then be easier, more fun, and you will be much more knowledgeable on how to leverage PPC CSE "Players" to increase Return on Ad Spend ("ROAS") effectively.

And for those of you in the crowd that are A.D.D. , please don't skip from Stage 3 to Stage 4 Part II, instead follow the order I outlined above.  If you do, I know you will increase sales and conversions and soon be CSE marketing gurus, who will be giving me and MerchantAdvantage advice.

Promise!

- Chip Arndt

Top 5 Things to Consider When Evaluating PPC Management Tools

eTaildTail often relies on experts in their field to eduate us all on the best ways to run our online businesses more efficiently and cost effectively, especially in the fields of ecommerce and mobile commerce.

eTaildTail friends at Apogee Search have put together a wonderful, free "white paper" on things to consider when evaluating Pay-Per-Click ("PPC"), Web-based, marketing tools and how to get the most out of managing your PPC marketing campaigns.

The White Paper is free; find it here.

We hope it helps -- I found it very useful.

- Chip Arndt

What Do These Online Retail Statistics For 2008 Show?

SPECIAL COMMENTARY

By Michael Lambet, CEO of MerchantAdvantage

Well, here we are at the end of 2008 and everyone is either holding their breath to see how things went, or shouting expletives about what they already think they know.  As with all matters of such magnitude, the online retail environment had some bumps, and some interesting growth as well.

After a quick review of some serious statistics by comScore– I was pleased to see the online retail segment that we address almost doubling in volume over last year.  In the face of our current economic setting this is no small feat.

In one portion of the statistics e-commerce revenue was divided into “Referral Tactict” categories such as: Search, e-mail, Comparison Shopping, Coupons and Other.  As a preliminary statement they note that over 33% of online sales activity occurred through a referral mechanism as listed within their Referral Tactic categories, and this overall statistic is up a few percentage points from last year.

You can, and should review their detailed stats when you have the time, but I found this particular chart enlightening.  Quickly, the tactics and parameters were – Search which was down a few points (no surprise there), e-mail was up a bit, Comparison Shopping was almost double the previous year, Coupons were up slightly, and the “Other” category was down.

SEARCH – Sales referrals from Search is one category, and I didn’t see a clear distinction between SEM and SEO.  In either case, the measurement as it stands shows a subtle drop.  I believe there are two main factors that lead to this drop:

1. Monthly cost of SEM in click costs has gone up (though not necessarily the cost per click) and SEO fees are up as well (to the firms hired to “enhance and optimize”, and   
2. Merchants have become more savvy about tracking click to purchase conversions, and are diverting efforts to those that they know will convert.

EMAIL- Email has grown in percentage points, despite the “DON’T SPAM ME” epidemic. It really just goes to show you that there is a way around virtually every marketing obstacle.  With appropriate email partners such as Blue Hornet and Vertical Response, there’s no reason retailers shouldn’t be re-marketing to their existing consumers.  So, revenues caused by emailed referrals was up from 11% last year to just over 16% all “referral tactic” based marketing for online retailers.

COMPARISON SHOPPING – We prefer the acronym CSE be translated as Consumer Shopping Engine these days. But, this category jumps from 2.5% of referral based revenues to 4.7%.

This number may be a bit deceiving as it shows itself as the percentage of all revenues, but not all online retailers use CSEs. So, the question arises, of those merchants using CSEs, which percentage of their referral based revenues are attributed to CSEs?  Obviously more than 4.7%.  So, it’s great being a part of a company that helps merchants market in a segment that is becoming more and more successful.

COUPONS - Coupons went up, but from 1.1% to 1.8%. I think that coupon sites have gotten a bad rap; the thought being that only cost conscious consumers (sometimes called bottom dwellers) use them.  True or not, these are consumers you likely would not have found as they do not frequent your site, nor do they necessarily frequent Consumer Shopping Engines or any other more traditional marketing venues.

There are a few pricing models, but none of them are expensive, and once you’ve got a cost conscious consumer, you presumably have convinced them that you provide a cost effective product line. So, re-market to these humans…  All in all Coupons are clearly becoming a more popular venue.

OTHER – Hmmmmmm. Well, I am an advocate of using unique methods and exploring your options.  Further, Web 2.0 and other new “inventions” have really come a long way. So, in general I’d say the “Other” category should have gone up.   But “nay nay” says comScore.

I would suggest that random and lesser known parts of the “Other” category brought down some of the more successful components of the other grouping.  Product reviews, blogs, and the like seem to be doing well for those merchants with the time to pursue such efforts.  I am wondering how much of the “Other” category is Print, billboards or even standing out in the street and yelling.  Anyway, this ever so broad category was down from 28.7% to 22.9% - which I think is a significant amount, even if it doesn’t really suggest any particular call to action.

Although the 2008 Holiday shopping season grew ever so modestly (6%) over 2007, I think too much focus is placed on the “Modestly”  and “Holiday” season words, and not enough on 2008  vs.  2007. 

Perhaps online retailers need to look more at the rest of the year (9% growth) as an area of focus.  Online retailers, and retailers in general have simply accepted that November and December are THE MONTHS to make all the years revenues look good.  They were never happy about entrusting two months for their overall annual profitability. And yet that consistently is where they look for the big bucks.  Why slight those other pleasant months by not giving them your attentions?

Even if your individual profits only grew 6% over what you would have made without additional efforts, that can often offset a somewhat disastrous holiday season.  And if that disastrous season don’t happen, papa’s gonna buy you a brand new wagon!  (translated: all the better for you).

So, I guess what I’m trying to extrapolate from this information is that sometimes you have to fight the fights that you can win, and that may not be so seasonal as you thought.

-- Michael Lambert, CEO, MerchantAdvantage

MerchantAdvantage Helps Increase The Return on CSE Spending

It is always nice when the marketplace takes notice of our hard work at MerchantAdvantage to help ecommerce merchants work cost-effectively with over 150 consumer shopping engines and comparison shopping engines ("CSE"), including Amazon, buySAFE, eBay, Cooking.com, Greenzer, HGTV, Like.com, PriceGrabber, Pronto. Shop.com, Shopzilla, Smarter.com, and a myriad of other CSEs.

Today, BizReport reported on the importance of using a robust analytic tool to:

• measure how marketing campaigns are working across CSEs, and
• gauge and calculate return on ad spend ("ROAS") when using these marketing channels. 

In the article, BizReport highlighted MerchantAdvantage, and our "Chanalytics" reporting tool, as an important element to providing essential, easy to understand metrics for an ecommerce merchant.  These metrics are provided in a user friendly report which empowers a merchant to be proactive in adjusting marketing campaigns using CSEs to increase ROAS quickly and easily. 

The "Chanalytics" product is available to any ecommerce merchant, as a stand alone product, to measure and compare all marketing campaigns in one user-friendly interface.

"Chanalytics" is also incorporated into other MerchantAdvantage tool-based products that help ecommerce merchants feed their product catalog data to over 150 CSEs or marketing channels seamlessly.

In addition to the free white paper report on "Chanalytics", identified by BizReport, MerchantAdvantage also offers several other helpful resources free. <<<CLICK HERE>>> to access that library of information.

I hope these additional reports and resources prove helpful to all ecommerce merchants to grow sales going into the holiday shopping months.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to access that library of information.

- Chip Arndt

BizReport
by Kristina Knight
October 3, 2008

How to Increase the Return on CSE Spending

"Consumer shopping engines (CSE) are becoming much more integral to ecommerce but many etailers are still unsure how to ensure the best return on their spending. While nothing beats the tried and true "try it and adjust" philosophy, here are two ways to increase the ROI of CSE spending from the start.

First, don't go it alone. Marketers can spend all day tracking down the metrics of a campaign. Instead of doing this yourself, consider using an analytics program, like Chanalytics from MerchantAdvantage, to offer technical support. Chanalytics regularly feeds the data merchants need as they need it; it can also process any technical issues that face the marketer before those issues become huge, time consuming matters. Managing the CSE channel from the beginning can free up time so that etailers can focus on selling more products.

Second, don't stop reviewing the information sent from feeds and the responses received directly from consumers. Consumers feelings can change in an instant. Most want a simple shopping experience, fast shipping and a good product;..."

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to read full article by Kristina Knight and BizReport.

PriceGrabber Market Reporter "Grabs" Online Merchants Attention and Boosts Sales Conversions

I am happy to share with the eTaildTail community PriceGrabber's latest updates to their Market Reporter application for clients.

Many PriceGrabber clients are very happy with PriceGrabber and have had wonderful success in selling products through their shopping comparison site. Many of our clients at MerchantAdvantage have had wonderful success feeding their product catalog data to PriceGrabber resulting in sales. I encourage all online merchants to look into PriceGrabber as a viable marketing channel to sell your products.

You can either feed to them directly or you can try a data-feed management tool with robust analytics to analyze all of your data feeds across all your channel. MerchantAdvantage's Channel Management with Chanalytics application is a good place to start. MerchantAdvantage feeds to 150+ marketing channels and is configured to work with PriceGrabber in minutes.

PriceGrabber's Market Reporter has some wonderful new features which really can help their clients understand the marketplace and how their products perform on PriceGrabber.

Most important, PriceGrabber provides excellent research and other analysis that can help any online merchant sell better using comparison shopping engines and other shopping destination sites.

If you sell on PriceGrabber, I hope you use their Market Reporter application; it is excellent. And if you don't sell on PriceGrabber yet, try it!

Here is an overview from PriceGrabber's Market Reporter site for more information:

Market Reporter provides near real-time market research, customized to your individual needs.

Market Reporter gives you access to e-commerce shopping data from millions of consumers. Simply select the product, category, or manufacturer you want to analyze. Then, with a single click, you can see: demand curve, top manufacturers, market share data, price history, price elasticity, numbers of retailers, referrals by state, referred dollars, and much more.

While helping you track market share, Market Reporter makes it easy to follow traffic patterns with pricing trends and aggregate buying habits. PriceGrabber's database tracks thousands of the most actively purchased products.

PriceGrabber's Consumer Behavior Reports are sourced by surveying online shoppers and Market Reporter. These market research reports are used to inform industry analysts, media, and retailers on the latest research trends in the online shopping space.

If up to the minute numbers, a massive database, and detailed analytical capabilities are crucial to your success, make Market Reporter a permanent part of your research budget.

For more information, please take an online tour or contact pgmarket AT pricegrabber.com

Here are some screen grabs of a few of their features to give you a taste of what you can expect to see:

Google Analytics Webinars and Education: A Must for Online Retailers Looking to Increase Sales

eTaildTail friends over at MoreVisibility are offering training on Google Analytics, which I think you all must explore to see how your website is performing. I am a big fan of analytics. It is the only way to really see how potential customers are interacting with your site and marketing campaigns.

I actually helped introduce "Chanalytics", at my company MerchantAdvantage, to assist online retailers analyze how their product data feed marketing campaigns -- using comparison shopping sites and marketplaces -- perform in conjunction with other marketing efforts.  Chanalytics compliments Google, Yahoo! or proprietary analytic packages and acts as an important "check" to other statistics you are receving on a daily basis.

I also think that these webinars (see below) are important to helping online merchants understand how people are interacting with your website in order to improve sales and then act on those findings.

You can also check out Yahoo! Analytics, as they are also free, after attending this webinar by MoreVisibility.

There is a cost for the webinars, but I think these costs may be worth it, especially if you are using Google Analytics or are considering using it.

 

The two webinars are offered at these times:

May 13 & 15 @ 1:00 pm: Launching Google Analytics & Integrating with AdWords

May 20 & 22 @ 1:00 pm: Using Google Analytics Beyond Google

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to find out more and register, if you want. I highly suggest checking it out.

-- Chip Arndt

Bid Goodbye to High Pay Per Click (PPC)

Using comparison shopping engines ("CSEs"), that work on a pay per click ("PPC") business model, can get expensive, if an online merchant does not manage and monitor these marketing campaigns daily. 

I have many clients who get upset when their PPC costs are almost equal to the amount of sales revenues generated from leads from CSEs, or worse, the PPC costs are actually higher each month than sales revenues generated by those PPC leads.

Most of the CSEs, that use a PPC business model, realize that to keep an online merchant as a client they need to make them money by providing a high enough return on investment ("ROI"), often known as return on add send ("ROAS"), or else the online merchant will simply stop working with that CSE.

Shopzilla, Smarter, Nextag, Pronto, PriceGrabber and others, provide online merchants an excellent solution to work with them more effectively by allowing the online merchant to use an "active bidding feature" to manage their PPC bids and get their product catalog listed/ranked higher on their respective CSE. 

I highly encourage all online merchants to take advantage of these features as these CSEs work hard to ensure that all online merchants have a high enough ROI/ROAS to justify working with them. If you are unsure if a particular CSE supports the "active bidding" feature just ask -- many do.

Now, the next step to managing your bids across each CSE, that uses a PPC model, is to ensure that you have a tool which helps you manage these active bids from a simple dashboard solution.  One of my technicians at MerchantAdvantage explains below how and why you should do this. And if you are working with a company that does not support this essential "active bidding" feature ask them why, as it really helps to increase the effectiveness and ROI/ROAS when using a CSE.

I hope his advice helps and if you need a Channel Management, product catalog feed tool with robust analytics, that also supports "active bidding" options on CSEs, please feel to contact Brett, or another MerchantAdvantage technical representative, at 800.550.9466.

I hope this helps!

-- Chip Arndt

by Brett, Technical Liaison at MerchantAdvantage

"As more and more shopping destination sites support PPC bids, merchants are utilizing active bidding to lower PPC. When bidding at Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs), there are two options to define bids.

Bid for Pay Per Click (PPC) on the data-feed, and Bid for PPC in the CSE Dashboard (back office). When editing in the CSE dashboard, you must login, find the screen that edits PPC, and edit each specific category or product each time you want to change your bids. An easier approach to modifying your bids is utilizing a data feed tool like Channel Management, from MerchantAdvantage.

PPC Bidding can be utilized to optimize your product appearance on the CSEs. If there is a high margin product or a product that needs to be moved, the bid can be adjusted to be high for higher ranking on the CSEs.

If a product has a low margin, instead of pulling the product from the feed, the bid can be lowered and it will still appear on the CSE at a lower level in the search result. But what if there aren’t many products like yours in that category? If you bid low your product will appear on the top."

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to see full commentary...scroll to the bottom after the jump