Life Lessons in Web Analytics

I am more or less in charge of email marketing at my company, and one of the toughest parts of putting together a monthly newsletter or promotion is generating ideas that provide value to our email subscribers, as well as value to the company in the form of sales.

So I stay on the lookout for promotional ideas. For example, I need something for the month of May. There is Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day as U.S. holidays. The first two are out since they really don’t fit our client base (mostly business-to-business selling). Memorial Day should work, but that is later in the month.

The key is to stay on top of current events and use the holiday or current event tie-in to get more engagement from customers. Another good example is the federal economic stimulus checks all U.S. taxpayers are currently receiving. Again, since these are all personal checks, it does not really fit my company’s customers. I was still trying to find a way to make it work, though, when I saw the Elmo Studds‘ sign on the way to lunch.

Elmo Studd’s always writes funny messages on their sign, so they can get away with that. Sometimes I wish email promotions were that easy though!

Nicolas Leroy recently mentioned a new comparison shopping engine focused on the “green” market called Greenzer. As Leroy mentions, it looks and feels just like any other comparison shopping engine. What makes Greenzer different is that they give a “greenzer score” that rates the product on its “green rating.”

According to the Greenzer FAQ section:

The Greenzer Score is a number ranging from 1 – 10 that ranks products on their greenness - 1 being least green and 10 being most green. The score aggregates some of the leading data sources that track the environmental performance on products and brands. Even if a product score is low, the product is still green, as it has met one or more of Greenzer’s minimum environmental standards.

Greenzer has a four-pronged criterion when it comes to choosing products to display on their website. Despite all this greenness, they are still a for-profit website. It is still unclear on how merchants are charged for listing their products.

Nonetheless, Earth Day was just a week ago, and with Earth Day promotional emails tripling since last year, I think there is a big enough market for a comparison shopping engine like this to succeed.

Google is known as the big gorilla of the Internet. Only the ignorant or mildly insane do not manage their ecommerce operations with Google in mind. In the comparison shopping realm, there is one place every single ecommerce site should submit their product catalog to: Google Product Search. Why?

1. It’s free.
2. It actually serves up traffic for those in niche industries.
3. With it, you can achieve better than #1 results.

Yes, better than #1 results! When a search is niched enough (see: long-tail) Google will display the top-three product results above the top search engine results. For a top-down left-to-right Internet user, those will not get skipped (until banner blindness sets in, but Google will likely be mixing up their results in the future - discussion for another time).

So you are submitting to Google Product Search and want to get in that coveted top three area. Since Google Product Search is free, you cannot raise your bids to rank higher. Try these tips:

1. Put as much information in your feed as you can. This applies to all comparison shopping engines, not just Google Product Search, but it especially applies to the free comparison engines. More information strengthens your listing and can only help. See all the possible Google Product Search item attributes.
2. Use what you know about search engine optimization. Describe your product using keywords your customers would use. Have smart product titles. Remember to include the manufacturer part number.
3. Submit your data feed regularly. Outdated product information helps no one, and Google Product Search will eventually drop your products anyway. I am unsure of this connection, but Google the search engine likes frequently updated pages, so it might not be a far fetch to state they like frequently updated feeds as well. See this recent Official Google Base blog post.
4. Experiment. This last one is important to know what works against your competition and what doesn’t. Change a few product titles or descriptions and see if your rankings move. I moved my items’ SKU number from last in the product title to second after the brand name and saw a little bump up in rankings. See some relevant Shopping.com optimization tips from LoveYourFeed.com.

Good luck, and if you think of anything else, please share!

Savvy internet marketers know that the most important page element to optimize for ranking higher in search engines is the title tag (or title element). But what about for comparison shopping engines?

Ben Fowler at LoveYourFeed.com wrote recently on the best product name you can give the products in your data feed to ensure that you show up in searches, and show up higher as well. In many ways, what you know about search engine optimization can be applied to data feed optimization. But instead of optimizing on-page factors like links and original content, you are optimizing data feed factors like product description and shipping options.

There is quite a bit one can do to get better results from comparison search engine strategies that doesn’t involve higher bids. Keep reading my blog and the blogs I link to to understand those strategies.

Via TechCrunch, MySupermarket.co.uk aims to save consumers money at their favorite grocery store. It is a free independent service that checks the prices of an entire shopping cart and compares the results from major British supermarkets. Most comparison shopping engines just allow you to compare one item’s price.

I think it’s a great idea, in terms of comparing a multiple item purchase across retailers. However, as far as comparing grocery shopping prices, I don’t see enough of a benefit to put my time into it. For me, every grocery shopping list is different, and through experience I just know what stores I want to go to, ranked by more than price. Convenience, location, selection and customer service all should be included into that.

Hopefully something like this can be implemented for online retailers, where prices (for multiple items, even) could be compared across the retail sites of the customer’s choosing, not by who is listed in the comparison shopping engine.

The rising popularity of comparison shopping engines can be seen most evidently in the growth of niche comparison shopping engines. These sites promise to provide higher return on investment through their specialized focuses. While I wrote on HealthPricer.com recently, LensPriceCompare.com takes the health products niche a step further with just listings on contact lenses. Here’s my interview with Patrick O’Donovan, owner of LensPriceCompare.com.

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How did LensPriceCompare.com begin? Why was it started, what was your motivation?

[The] motivation was to provide a service to save money for contact lens wearers, add choice in lens price comparisons, and improve on existing sites. I wanted to create something unique, so I came up with the idea of creating a software package to auto-pick coupons and rebates, leaving users to think only about the quantity of lenses they need. Following the “Don’t Make Me Think” strategy by Steve Krug, price calculation, including shipping and handling, coupons and rebates, is all done for the visitor.

As a niche comparison engine, how is your relationship with the merchants that list on your site?

Some of our merchants are very open in their communications, which encourages excellent relationships, while others prove to be elusive. We have an unpublished proprietary rating process, in which results generally parallel price rankings. We may need to publish the rating results when more merchants are brought onboard. On a scale of one to five, with five being the best, I would say our merchant relationships go from a three to a five.

What does it take for a merchant to list on lenspricecompare.com? What is the fee structure like?

To list on the site, a merchant needs to be a member of an affiliate network like ShareASale, AvantLink, Commission Junction, Linkshare, or some other network, because that’s where pay-for-performance transactions are managed. Each merchant site must provide a data feed to be listed on our site. We prefer a data feed customized to our system. We check the Secretary of State Offices, the Better Business Bureau, and other sources to see if the merchant site would be a proper fit for our visitors. We inspect the site, the navigation, and the checkout process for reasonable operation and professional page design. Above all, we want the merchant to be able to convert highly targeted traffic, which is one of the best indicators of customer buying satisfaction. (We don’t want to overwhelm customers with too many choices either.)

Being a performance-marketing site we don’t receive a fixed fee. We receive a percentage of sales rather than fees. (See how LensPriceCompare.com makes money).

What are your plans for the future with LensPriceCompare.com?

HP’s cofounder - the late David Packard - once responded to the question of how to prevent competitors from finding out what you are doing said, “through your customers, suppliers and the grapevine in general, your competitors are always going to know what you are doing. Just don’t let them find out what you are thinking of doing!”

Where do you see comparison engines heading in the future – more niche engines, like yours, or more consolidation?

I don’t follow the big engines at all, but since coming across your own blog and ComparisonEngines.com, I will be keeping an eye on developments.

I find the niche engine concept much more exciting and fun to analyze and watch, mostly because I think it is an under-served sector with amazing potential. More niche sites will appear on the Web taking the place of existing ones and growing into under-served markets. The beauty of niche sites is that they serve a specific interest group, rather than the diverse audience served by larger engines. Consolidation of niche sites could be a possibility to spread search engine risk, yet unlikely considering the nature and structure of small and medium businesses.

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Thanks to Patrick for taking to time to give us all an insight in the workings of an ultra-niche comparison shopping site! It appears that the growth of these types of shopping sites isn’t going to stop any time soon, highlighted in part by the competitive environment LensPriceCompare.com appears to be in.

Google Product Search has introduced a major change recently with the grouping of SKUs. Instead of listing all products, they now group items with the same part number together and list them on a separate product page. This is a big change and will affect that way people like me and you optimize for Google Product Search.

And now the product page. Notice how prominent Google Checkout is.

Note that this is not live for all products, nor it is guaranteed that Google will be running with this from now on. Just because bloggers find a change doesn’t mean it is going to be implemented (as evidenced by my NexTag find at the onset of this blog).

One observation though: does this mean Google’s product pages will now start ranking in Google, much like Shopping.com, Shopzilla and other major CSE product pages rank in the search engines? That could be another major change that ups the ante, because product feed optimization will then coincide with search engine optimization.

I recently got a Blackberry phone. It’s a Curve with a full keyboard fit in about a two inch by one inch space. Those are some small buttons!

Nevertheless, I have been using it more and more for looking up information while I am in a store. My favorite is to look up a movie rating on IMDB.com while I am perusing movie rentals. It really helps in making a wise decision.

With the rising popularity of the iPhone - already second in the U.S. to RIM, maker of my beloved Blackberry - it might pay to list your products on comparison shopping engines specifically created for the mobile user.

There are several mobile comparison shopping sites:

1. mPoria
2. mShopper
3. Frucall
4. Ringfo
5. Slifter

If you sell an item that can be found in stores or at least compared to an in-store item, it would be a good idea to at least check out those above comparison shopping sites. Growth in that area is sure to increase.

If you are listing on comparison shopping engines already, you know that most of your products do not register one sale from the comparison sites in any given month. The question is, do you leave those products or be proactive about cutting your costs?

The marketing website MarketingExperiments.com gave an example about trimming some products from a data feed. In a ten product test, they increased ROI from 38.4% to 286.6% by removing 3 under-performing products. Nice!

Not so fast, says Mark Vandegrift of ChannelAdvisor, one of the big dogs in data feed management services. He writes about managing the long tail and notes that in a given month for a company on one comparison shopping engine, 91% of the products did not register a sale and consumed 70% of the cost.

Yet his argument is about the middle section of products that registered only one sale for the month. That section was only 16% of cost but generated 63% of revenue. And that section is fluid, changing each month as one product sells and another that sold in the previous month does not.

He writes more and I recommend you take a moment to read what he has to say. The MarketingExperiments case study is a good read as well.

When it comes to listing on the comparison shopping engines, it is important to have a strategy, especially as a small merchant. Small companies like mine do not have the marketing budget of Amazon.com or Buy.com, yet we must compete with them anyway. As I see it, there are several strategies to listing products.

Note: Refer to this comprehensive list of comparison shopping engines to find where to list your products.

The Free Strategy

Every merchant that sells products online should be using this method. My company gets a steady flow of sales from Google Product Search and we don’t pay a dime for those leads. If you don’t have the time to properly submit your product feed or optimize for the free feeds, use a data feed management service like SingleFeed or GoDataFeed.

As well, keep your eyes peeled for comparison sites like Ciao.com that offer free clicks for a certain period of time. Free traffic can never be a bad thing, right?

Sites that fit this strategy: Google Product Search, TheFind.com, Live Product Search

The Niche Strategy

A surefire way to see your conversion rate increase is to seek out comparison shopping sites that are specifically tailored to the products you sell. I reviewed HealthPricer.com recently and noted that their navigation for health products is much better than Shopzilla’s, for example. If you sell a product that can be gifted to someone, FindGift.com and Gifts.com are excellent choices. Sell hardware? List on BobVila.com. The number of comparison sites is growing, and many of them are selling to niche markets. Get on those.

Of course, this goes both ways. Don’t list on sites that have nothing to do with your product line. A company that primarily sells to businesses likely wouldn’t do that well on those gift comparison sites.

Sites that fit this strategy: Like.com, FindGift.com, Gifts.com, HealthPricer.com

The Shotgun Strategy

If your products are less niched or if you have a broad product offering, you may opt to list on as many comparison engines as you can and see what sticks. After all, on most engines you only pay when traffic is sent your way. Generally this is not the most effective strategy, but if you are optimizing for the comparison engines and tracking your conversion rate, you should realize a positive return on investment.

Sites that fit this strategy: Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, Pricegrabber.com, Nextag.com