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Nextag Adds Ability to Track by Category, Bidding History
Users logging into their Nextag account this new year were greeted by a couple of new features on their screen:
The bidding history feature is a nice touch, but it’s the clicks by categories that merchants will find the most useful, as the performance of their products is broken down by specific categories:
For merchants with a highly diverse array of category listings this can be especially useful to figure out what products they should cut from their campaigns, or at the very least what to keep an eye on.
The other top-tier paid engines, i.e. Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, and Shopping.com already offer this on their sites, so merchants who are on the other engines should find this feature easy to use.
CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
Categories: Nextag Tags:
Listing Promotional Messages on the CSEs
One of the unique aspects of CSE management is figuring out how all the shopping engines’ unique features differentiate themselves from each other.
While columns such as product URLs, product names, descriptions, etc. are generally universal among them all, there are many discrepancies among them that a merchant should know about in order to maximize their listings on the engines.
Below we provide details on practices that will help best promote your products specifically for each engine:
Listing Nextag Sales Price:
- Include MSRP or regular price in feed
Nextag Free Shipping:
- If everything has free shipping, select “Always Free for All Items” in the “Manage Shipping Rules” section
- Otherwise include shipping costs in feed
Nextag Promotional Message:
- For a single message, bid at least $0.05 on the “Message” under “Manage Bids by Category”, then click “Set Marketing Message” and choose from the available templates
- To select different marketing messages by product, include a “Marketing Message” column in the feed and be sure to bid at least $0.05 on the “Message” for all products under “Manage Bids by Category”
Listing Free Shipping:
- Set column “Shipping Rate” to 0 in feed
Shopping.com Promotional Message:
- Include message in “Stock Description” column in feed.
- Free
- 100 character limit
Shopzilla Free Shipping:
- If shipping is free for all products, select “Free shipping for all products” under shipping information.
- If not, set rules through feed, column: “Shipping Cost”
Shopzilla Sales Price:
- Include “Original Price” & “Sale Price” columns in feed
- Be sure to select Contact Us in your Shopzilla login and notify your account manager that you’re adding a column; your listings will temporarily come down while they re-process your feed.
Shopzilla Coupon:
- Go to “Manage Listings”
- “Special Offers”
- Select from the available options
PriceGrabber Free Shipping:
- Set it under the column “shipping costs” within the feed
- In the login under “Your Account” it can be modified in “Shipping and Tax Info” (not available for all accounts)
PriceGrabber Coupon:
- All the info can be included in the feed using their coupon spec sheet.
Google Products Search Tax and Shipping:
-Add a column called “tax” in the format–Country:State:Percent: y/n shipping
So for example if a merchant is based in the United States, California, charges 8% tax, and offers free shipping, that column would read– US:CA:8:y
More info can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160162
Become Promotional Message:
- Include desired text in feed
- Bid on desired categories in “Bids” tab
Become Sales Price:
- Include the following columns: “MSRP” and “Price”
Smarter Promotional Message:
- Have the two columns: “Regular Price” and “Sale Price”
- Go to “Extras” tab
- Select “Submit Coupons” and fill in appropriate fields
Yahoo Shopping Sales Price:
- Have the two columns: “price” and “sale-price”
Yahoo Shopping Free Shipping:
- Fill in the appropriate SKU with “0” in the column “shipping-price”
Pronto Sales Price:
- Include the columns: “Retail Price” and “Price”
CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
Categories: Become, CSE Management, Google, Nextag, Pricegrabber, Pronto, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Smarter.com, Uncategorized, Yahoo Shopping Tags:
Nextag to Increase Rates by 25% Across the Board
Nextag has just announced that they’ll follow in Pricegrabber’s footsteps and increase and raise rates by 25% across all categories:
The holiday season is around the corner and we would like to inform you that NexTag will be increasing your costs per click by 25% for all categories and all bids effective November 4, 2009 through January 6, 2010.
This change will affect all your clicks from NexTag. For example, if you have a bid of $0.60 per click, you will be charged a fee of $0.75 per click during this seasonal period. Your actual costs per click will be accurately reflected on your cost reports, but the bids will be displayed in the bidding tools without the 25% included until January 6, 2010.
This marks the last of the paid top tier shopping engines to announce how they’ll handle CPC rates for Q4, with nothing too surprising being announced.
We don’t anticipate to hear news of any rate increases from Google Product Search.
CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
Categories: Nextag Tags:
Sample Data Feeds and Feed Specifications for Comparison Shopping Engines
Below you’ll find both sample data feeds and links to data feed specifications for the major shopping engines (As of 10/3/2009). It’s highly recommended that you read over the latest specification at the engine resource site before deploying the feeds for your campaigns.
-Nii
Google Base/Google Product Search
- Sample Data Feed for Google Base/Google Product Search
- Google Base/Google Product Search Data Feed Specifications Page
Shopzilla
- Sample Data Feed for Shopzilla
- Shopzilla Data feed Specifications Page
Pricegrabber
- Sample Data Feed for Pricegrabber
- Pricegrabber Data feed Specifications Page
Nextag
- Sample Data Feed for Nextag
- Nextag Data feed Specifications Page
Shopping.com
- Sample Data File for Shopping.com – Varies By Category, see Specification Page
- Shopping.com Data Feed Specifications Page
Bing Cashback
- Sample Data Feed for Bing Cashback
- Bing Cashback Data Feed Spcifications Page
Yahoo Shopping
- Sample Data Feed for Yahoo Shopping
- Yahoo Shopping Data Feed Specification Page (Must be a Yahoo Shopping Merchant to View)
Become
- Sample Data Feed for Become.com
- Become Data feed Specifications Page
Smarter.com
- Sample Data Feed for Smarter
- Smarter Data feed Specifications Page
Pronto
- Sample Data Feed for Pronto
- Pronto Data Feed Specifications Page
Amazon Product Ads
- Sample Data Feed for Amazon Product Ads
- Amazon Product Ads Data Feed Specifications Page (Need to have an Amazon Product Ads account to View)
CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
Categories: Amazon, Become, Bing, CSE Management, Cashback, Google Base/Shopping, Nextag, Pricegrabber, Pronto, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Smarter.com, Yahoo Shopping, bidding Tags: Feed Specifications
Nextag Rolling Out Marketing Message Options
There’s only so much a merchant can do to separate themselves on the CSE’s from the masses in the eyes of potential customers.
The three main things that can catch a customer’s attention is generally a low price, high feedback ratings, and perhaps a logo from a recognizable brand such as Sears or Staples.
Nextag then is introducing a new way to allow merchants to separate themselves from others who list their products along theirs.
Merchants will now have the opportunity to highlight any price (similar to Shopzilla), shipping, or tax discounts, along with rebate information–as well as have the ability to convey any type of message they’d like about their products at a cost of $0.05 additional per click.
For example if a merchant is having a Father’s day sale in which they offer a 20% on items over $50, or if they’re willing to provide free shipping for all items, they can do it through the Nextag bidding system. All that needs to be filled out is the details of the deal, along with the dates that a merchant wants it to run through (see below for an example):
We’re also told that Nextag will also provide a method for merchants to do this through their feeds as well.
How much this will help out merchants on the CSE’s is something we plan on keeping an eye on, but studies have shown that consumers love to save money, and that free shipping is a particular great attention grabber:
In a 2008 survey conducted by PayPal and comScore, 43 percent of shoppers said they abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges. Forrester Research reports that 61 percent of online shoppers prefer to shop with a retailer that offers free shipping than one that doesn’t.
Source: Ecommerce guide
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CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
New Holiday Categories for NexTag
So NexTag didn’t quite follow on Shopping.com’s lead of reducing CPC rates, but instead have done the typical raising of rates, along with adding the following new categories for Q4:
- Electronics / GPS Devices
- Electronics / Accessories
- Gifts / Gift Cards
GPS’s have been the hot products over the past year since prices have dropped considerably on them–it wasn’t too long ago that standalone systems were in the thousands of dollars range–and other than the what’s been going on in the economy lately, there’s little reason to think they won’t continue to be a hot gift choice.
CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
Categories: Nextag, categorization Tags:
Why Your Feedback isn’t Showing Up on NexTag
We’ve previously discussed the importance of feedback on the engines and how it can help your overall bottom line.
However we’ve received questions from some merchants as to why customer feedback wasn’t showing up on their NexTag accounts, and the answer was simple: NexTag has a policy in which a merchant has to be listed for at least 45 days before feedback is reflected under the account.
If you’ve just signed up for NexTag then and are wondering why there’s no feedback on there–give it some time and it shall appear.
CPC Strategy was founded by former employees of the comparison shopping engines and understands first hand what it takes to manage a successful comparison shopping campaign. You can check out our webpage at www.cpcstrategy.com. Don’t hesitate to Contact us to find out how we can make the shopping engines work for you.
Categories: Nextag Tags:
