Life Lessons in Web Analytics

With Bing causing quite a stir in the search engine world, my hope was that we’d get another free massive e-commerce traffic generator like Google Product Search. Things have been mysteriously on hold with Live Product Search, one of the few completely free product search engines internet retailers can submit to.

Alas, my hopes were dashed when Product Search was announced discontinued along with the Bing search engine release. No more MSN Product Search / Windows Live Product Search / Live Product Search / Bing Product Search. Bing is pushing their Cashback comparison shopping engine instead, which used to be Live Cashback, which used to be Jellyfish.

Whew. On second thought, I’m glad it’s been discontinued.

I was going through my RSS reader recently and found this great post by Ben Fowler from LoveYourFeed.com about optimizing factors outside your actual data feed, like your store name. That got me to thinking, what else gets overlooked sometimes?

Depending on the comparison shopping engine, the image you submit in your data feed could have a big effect on whether or not your product receives a click. Nowhere is this more visible than on Google Product Search.

Take a look at this example below. 

The first Kids Chef Hat looks a bit grainy, and the third result, Black Chef Hat, is way too small. Are you sure that’s not just a smudge? The fourth result is a chef hat .. metallic thing. Finally, the dreaded fifth result - “Image not available.” How many clicks do you think that product gets in a year?

On Google Product Search, you get free traffic and free listings. Every click is another potential conversion, and since there isn’t any bidding to worry about, all you have to optimize is what the customer sees. Your images are a big part of that.

We all know that social networking is rather popular on the Interwebs. Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace enjoy copious amounts of traffic as members poke, connect and message each other often. Some comparison shopping engines, including Like.com and Smarter.com, try to take advantage of the popularity of social networking by building social aspects into their website.

Sortprice.com has decided to go right to the source. I received an email today announcing the public beta launch of what they call their Merchant Facebook Store (my company submits to their free listings). Here is an excerpt:

We have created a Wishlist application for [YOUR STORE] on Facebook which is now available for you to use. You now have the ability to sell your products and promote your business on Facebook using the Sortprice.com engine. The feature is currently FREE. We encourage you to take advantage of this new feature to expand your reach to more customers via our latest endeavour in social networking.

Here is what you see in the Merchant Management Console:

I think it is a pretty novel idea and for the right merchants, it might actually be successful. I haven’t seen other comparison shopping engines doing something like this. Unfortunately, since my company utilizes only the basic, free listings on Sortprice.com, we cannot take advantage of this. Sortprice.com enhanced listings start at $149.99/month for unlimited clicks.

GoDataFeed, as far as I know the most affordable data feed management service, has recently released a 2.0 version of their software. We all know 2.0 equals good. Check it out!

SingleFeed, another data feed management service that I highly respect, is hiring. Anyone out there with interest in comparison shopping engines looking for a job?

Lastly, there is a great post in the inner workings of HealthPricer.com, a niche comparison shopping engine I have written on in the past. They call themselves HP now - how technologic of them.

The United States of America turns 232 today. For my American readers, I wish you a relaxing and safe weekend as we celebrate the freedom we have here. Everyone else: why not, have a great weekend too!

Like any ecommerce retailer that sells brand-name merchandise bought directly from the manufacturer, we have to learn to live with Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies. For the uninformed, a MAP policy prevents retailers from advertising a price below that which the policy dictates. Many times, a retailer cannot even advertise under MSRP, or the retail price.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the price the customer is charged is going to be MSRP. You’ve certainly see some websites have “Add to Cart to See Price”, “Click to See Price” or “Login to See Price” listed instead of the actual price. That’s to get around the MAP policies of manufacturers.

There are multiple views on this. Manufacturers don’t want to see their brand marketing just go to naught with deep discounting. So this levels the playing field, somewhat. However, it just irritates retailers to no end when competitors do not play by the rules. In a perfect world, manufacturers would punish those that violate MAP policies by raising the price or not selling to that retailer any more.

However, in my time at my company, I have seen many violations which very little changes. So, the retailer that follows the policies is stuck in a quandary. Lower prices to stay competitive, or continue following the MAP policy and risk losing sales? It happens to retailers everywhere. What is a retailer to do?

I was browsing some comparison shopping engines recently and I came to PriceFish.com. Before I could go any further, my nice quiet speakers were interrupted by a video-like person in the bottom right corner blabbering about PriceFish.com. The first time I went to the site, there was no way to stop the talking … except to leave, which I promptly did. They have now fixed that so you can close it immediately.

My company periodically (okay, daily) receives advertisements around small business ecommerce. One of them is from SitePal.com, which promises more engagement from customers due to their talking characters.

Personally, I believe it is not smart to surprise the customer (even pleasantly sometimes). Customers do not like surprises online, and noise coming to their speakers is always a surprise. The top ecommerce companies do not do it, and live chat or displaying a phone number works just as good (or even better, in my opinion). So at the very least, let’s make those sidebar talking people optional.

I work for an ecommerce company, so anything that relates to ecommerce best practices usually catches my eye. There are a few companies I admire so much that I would easily consider moving if offered a job there. Just to take a weekend to tour their facilities would be very intriguing.

What are the companies? Google (big surprise!), Amazon (the ecommerce giant), and Zappos.

Of the three, Zappos is the closest to what my current company does right now. The thing I admire most about them is that they are so intently focused on service. Free overnight shipping both ways for shoes? I openly wondered how they made money when I was on the phone with one of their friendly service reps. They are like the Newegg of shoes, except they are leaps and bounds better than Newegg’s famed service.

What reminded me of Zappos’ great approach to ecommerce was a recent article I read (via Seth Godin’s blog) on Harvard Business Publishing by Bill Taylor titled “Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit - And You Should Too.” Here is an excerpt:

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

A great read, I highly recommend it. It offers just a glimpse into how Zappos operates.

Are there any great ecommerce companies you admire?

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.