You Can’t Spell CHANGES without C-S-E

While the comparison shopping industry as a whole still retains the main underlying concepts that have made them so popular over the years (after all, why fix something that’s not broken?), merchants will be glad to know that their hard-earned money is going toward constant tweaking done to keep things fresh.

In particular, over the past few weeks we’ve noticed a handful of tweaks among the engines that add to the buying experience without detracting from it at all.

Below we’ll give you a quick rundown of some recent changes that we’ve noticed, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated on future modifications a well:

Pricegrabber has added a Woot-like element to their site (Woot’s motto is “One Day, One Deal”), and feature a section called the Product of the Day which, like Woot, offers a daily, miscellaneous item at a discounted price. How discounted it actually can vary, depending on the day/product.

They’ve also redesigned their search results pages, giving them a more modern web 2.0-ish update, complete with bigger buttons, bigger text, and a more colorful design.

(The first image is the current, newer design, and the one below represents the older design)

Frequent viewers of any news/sports network, e.g. ESPN/CNN, will be familiar with Shopzilla’s latest design change–a product ticker at the top of the page which keeps track of recent transactions made on their site, which a customer can click through and view on their own.

And finally not to be outdone, Google itself has also quietly made a fairly significant change behind the scenes within their login pages, labeled “Performance”.

From here merchants who are on Google Base can finally track how many clicks their products are getting on base-which as we’ve discussed in the past has been a rather confusing issue.

Up until now they’ve been the only major shopping comparison tool that brings in significant traffic to (automatically) lack this feature.

The reasoning being of course, the other engines (i.e. the ones you have to pay to use) have to keep track of how many clicks you get in order to determine how much to change you-you get what you pay for though right?

Speaking of Google then, our good friend Tom the Developer has also made some nifty visual and practical changes to his amazing tool as well:

If you’re a Google Base user looking to improve your results and rankings, his tool provides a great method which details what your competitors are listing and not listng–and best of all, like Google Base, his tool is free for all to use.