Archive for the ‘Comparison Sites’ Category

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HealthPricer.com does all the right things

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

HealthPricer.com - Comparison Shopping for Health ProductsI haven’t bought contacts in over two years, and it was definitely time for a repurchase. I already wrote about HealthPricer.com earlier, and I figured I’d give it a go.

Within a couple of clicks I found a price on my PureVision contacts that saved me $21 per box. Now that’s impressive! However, the website I went to confused me with a prescription request. Frustrated, I returned to HealthPricer.com and looked for where I purchased my contacts previously. I found 1800Contacts.com, and once on their site I noticed the Unbeatable Price Guarantee. They also still had my prescription on file.

So, kudos to HealthPricer.com for getting me the lowest price, and kudos to 1800Contacts.com for making it easy for me to checkout and still get the best price!

HealthPricer continues to be a good example of how a niche comparison shopping engine can provide excellent benefits to consumers. I believe we will continue to see growth in this area of comparison shopping sites.

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One less free comparison shopping engine

Monday, June 8th, 2009

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.

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Optimizing the other areas: have good images!

Friday, September 19th, 2008

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. 

Chef Hat Google Product Search Results

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.

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Sortprice.com and the Merchant Facebook Store

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Sortprice.com Logo 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:

Sortprice Facebook Store

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.

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Comparison shopping: upgrade, jobs, inside look

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

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.

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The annoying sidebar talking people

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

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.

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Greenzer – a green comparison shopping engine

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Greenzer Logo

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.

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Optimizing for Google Product Search

Friday, April 25th, 2008

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!

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Rank higher with a better product name

Monday, April 21st, 2008

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.

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Posted in Comparison Sites, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | 1 Comment »

Compare supermarket prices with MySupermarket.co.uk

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

MySupermarket.co.uk LogoVia 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.

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