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Shopping.com Introduces Product Reviews for its Retailers
Shopping.com has launched a new product review widget that allows customers to write reviews for products they’ve used in the past. These customer based reviews will be displayed both on merchant websites and next to product listings on Shopping.com.
Retailers can choose to install the widget on any or all of their product pages, giving them the power to highlight customer reviews for particular hot product offerings.
As part of the widget launch, Shopping.com is offering merchants the new feature for six months for free to merchants who sign up before March 31st. It should be interesting to see the impact the widget has on both Shopping.com clickthrough rates and conversions for participating retailers.
If you’d like to read more about Shopping.com’s Product Reviews or you want to see a sample website with the product reviews installed, check out Shopping.com guide located at http://merchantsupport.shopping.com/useful_guides.
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: Shopping.com Tags:
Shopping.com Announces Rate Changes, Effective March 12
Not to be outdone by Smarter.com’s rate changes Shopping.com has announced their own rate changes of their own.
After introducing their price dependent CPC rates last year in which their rates are determined by both category as well price, they’ve announced some changes that by March 12 will take effect.
Below are the categories that will be affected:
These changes are not quite as drastic as the ones made by Smarter, and include reduced CPC rates within certain categories as well.
It’ll be interesting to see the effect this will have on our merchants’ campaigns, as well as what the other shopping engines are going to do about their rates.
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: Shopping.com 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:
Shopping.com Announces Rate Increases for Q4
We officially declared the launch of the Q4 shopping season with Yahoo’s announcement that they’re increasing their CPC Rates for Q4.
Shopping.com has followed suit by announcing their own rates increase–however like last year they’re not doing it across the board like other engines traditionally do.
Instead, rates for 85% of their categories will remain the same, and the only increases will come in categories that they consider maximize sale and qualified leads:
With the holiday season approaching, Shopping.com anticipates a significant increase in traffic and holiday sales. Based on the performance of the last few years, we drove an average increase of 35% in qualified leads during the peak shopping season.
We are pleased to announce this year’s holiday pricing solution continues to challenge the industry standard of ‘across the board rate increases’. Our pricing is only changing in categories where conversion to sale and qualified leads are maximized during the holiday season. In fact, 85% of the Shopping.com categories will remain flat (no CPC rate increase).
The holiday pricing promotion is effective November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2009. During this time Shopping.com will automatically adjust your CPC bids during the pricing promotion period therefore you will not need to make changes to your account.
It’s a bold move that we’re certainly in favor of, but like last year we certainly don’t expect the other engines to make similar moves–instead we expect rates to increase for all the engines across all their categories.
For the complete list of categories that this change will affect click here.
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: Q4 Shopping, Shopping.com 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
Shopping.com Gives Merchants 80 More Days to Link to Paypal
A few months ago Shopping.com announced that they’ll start charging merchants via Paypal, and said that the switch-over would be made by September 10th.
After the 10th passed they gave a pre-ultimatum ultimatum that all accounts would *need* to be changed by September 30th (yesterday).
And now for merchants who still haven’t gotten the memo, Shopping.com has this notice of a final ultimatum that in 80 days, or December 21, their listings will be removed from Shopping.com altogether.
Good to see that Shopping.com is procrastinator-friendly.
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: Shopping.com Tags:
All Shopping.com Payments to Processed by Paypal
Merchants logging into their Shopping.com accounts are now greeted with the following message:
It’s a natural partnership since both companies are owned by parent eBay, but we have to wonder–if it’s not broken, why fix it?
For merchants who already have Paypal accounts linked to their business, this isn’t much of an issue for all they have to do is enter their email/password in order to link up the accounts.
But while Paypal is certainly the leader when it comes to online payment processing, not all businesses will necessarily have an account, creating an extra hurdle along the way or they risk having their products removed from Shopping.com.
There exists some merchants who may also have their own issues or qualms about using Paypal’s system from their personal experiences, making them slightly reluctant to link their Shopping.com accounts to Paypal or even in signing up for an account.
The main issue though is perhaps convenience related, and certainly of Shopping.com’s 5000+ merchants there will be more than a handful who may neglect this step.
So while Shopping.com has decided that the security and reliability advantages that Paypal has over their current system is worth the minor inconvenience to their merchants, freeing themselves up from their own resources, it’ll be surprising if certain issues don’t arise during this process.
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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.
Categories: Shopping.com, eBay Tags:
Popular Tech Categories in au.Shopping.com Get a Slash in Price
After releasing a new tiered price structure just a few weeks ago, their down-under counterparts au.Shopping.com have announced a major slash in certain tech categories: Digital Cameras, Flat Panel TVs, and Mobile Phones. Each click costs a mere $0.25 AU now, resulting in saves of up to 58% from previous rates.
The format of their e-mail certainly shows this is not something they want merchants to ignore either:
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: Shopping.com, bidding Tags:
New Tiered Pricing Structure at Shopping.com
Not long after announcing that they would lower CPC rates by as much as 57% for certain categories, Shopping.com has again announced a new pricing structure that should help a good number of merchants lower their costs and increase their return on investment (ROI).
The issue with the current flat CPC rate system that most shopping engines use is that a merchant selling an electronic device that costs say, $5 is paying the same per-click as someone in the same category selling a device for $500.
In order to get the same return on their comparison shopping investment, the former merchant would have to convert at a rate of 100x greater than the merchant selling the $500 product–which is quite unreasonable to expect. As a result there is little incentive to list for any products below a certain price point, even though those may convert at a relatively high rate.
With their new structure however, lower ticket items will have lower CPC rates, while higher priced items will see an increase in CPC rates. The graph below provided by Shopping.com illustrates the effect this will have:
Their main goal is to minimize the discrimination of pricing of items, and attempt to balance out the COS (cost of sale) % among all products offered by a merchant.
For merchants offering a majority of or only high ticket items, they may see an increase in their spend off the bat, but overall the proportions shouldn’t be too drastic since the items they sell are priced so high to begin with.
The new rate card is available on complete here.
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: Shopping.com, bidding Tags:
Comparison Shopping Overhauls for ‘09
While a good majority of Americans resolute to lose some extra weight during the new year, a couple of shopping engines have recently been packing on a little some extra.
A few months ago Shopping.com began allowing merchants to submit new header columns into their feeds, which we thought was a great way to allow customers to narrow down what they’re looking for–and it appears they’re beginning to take advantage of this feature.
Currently the feature appears to only be available for shoe shoppers, as users browsing for shoes can now sort through popular brands by size as well as color. This is similar to Like.com’s interface except Like uses a proprietary system that uses image recognition for sorting, whereas Shopping.com relies on the attributes that merchants send them.
This is a great addition for both consumers as it provides a better overall shopping experience in looking for exactly what they want, as well as for merchants to be more specific about their offerings.
Also revamping their look is Smarter.com. They have a much sleeker design with bigger fonts and a neat widget on their front page that rotates images of some of their more popular items around.
They also appear to be further jumping on the social media wagon by promoting their blog on their front page, which doesn’t only discuss the retail industry, but operates more like a magazine column–which provides plenty of incentive for users to want to come back to their site.
Imagine that, operating a blog to promote your business, what else will they think of 
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: Shopping.com, Smarter.com Tags:
