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Travis Details Shopzilla’s New Reporting Tool
Posted by David - September 2, 2010 at 8:36 am
This week Shopzilla unveiled a new reporting tool that sports a user-friendly interface and faster response time for merchants trying to assess the health of their CSE campaigns. You can check out Travis, account manager at Shopzilla, detailing the specs of the new tool 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: Shopzilla Tags:
CPC_Andrew Discusses Best Data Feed Practices with Shopzilla
Posted by Tien - August 25, 2010 at 9:14 am
Yesterday the recently launced Shopzilla Merchant Services Blog (which we must note contains some great information) released an interview with our very own account manager/blogger Andrew.
In it our resident CSE aficionado describes the best practices of data feed submission, including the importance of having proper titles, descriptions, and categories which applies not only to Shopzilla, but to the overall comparison shopping space as well:
I don’t recommend stuffing your titles and descriptions with keywords, as this can decrease the relevancy of the words that you want to be promoting first and foremost. You want to provide shoppers with a brief, clear synopsis about what the product is in order to make an informed purchasing decision.
It’s short and concise, but contains plenty of great information on CSE habits that all merchants should be practicing.
And as they say, practice makes perfect.
Check out the full interview here: http://merchantblog.shopzilla.com/?p=230
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: Shopzilla Tags:
Shopzilla Increases CPC Rate for Costumes & Accessories
Posted by David - August 24, 2010 at 12:55 pm
In anticipation of the Halloween shopping season Shopzilla announced that it will be increasing the minimum bid in the Costumes & Accessories category to $0.25. Effective September 7th through October 28th, this 10 cent rate increase is Shopzilla’s response to the expected increase in traffic and consumer activity during the 2010 Halloween season.
Merchants who are currently bidding below $0.25 in the Costumes & Accessories category will see their bids automatically raised to the new minimum rate on September 7th. Bids at or above $0.25 will remain unchanged, but product search rankings could potentially be affected by the more competitive default bids. On October 29th, minimum bids will return to $0.15 and all bids that were automatically raised will return to their previous levels.
Optimizing your bidding strategy during Q4 can be tricky, but with seasonal rate increases such as this one it’s important to be aware of them and manage your bids accordingly. No merchant wants to miss out on traffic in Q4 just because their bids were defaulted to the minimums by the CSEs… So merchants remain watchful of your CSE campaigns during this bustling holiday season!
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: Shopzilla Tags:
Shopzilla Redesigns Itself
Posted by Tien - June 17, 2010 at 10:35 am
A few days ago Shopzilla came out with a slightly modified look, with the familiar orange background along with a new blue search bar and logo. See for yourself:
Old homepage:
New homepage:
Their search results pages follow a similar trend, with plenty of orange around, but with blue highlighting everything else:
We’re fans of the slight makeover; the homepage retains its clean, simple look with its big search bar in the middle, but the blue that really freshens up the main page as well as the search results.
And we’re not just biased because it’s similar to our color scheme 
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: Shopzilla Tags:
Listing Promotional Messages on the CSEs
Posted by Tien Nguyen - November 4, 2009 at 3:58 pm
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:
Pricegrabber, Shopzilla Announce CPC Hikes, Become.com Remains Flat
Posted by Tien Nguyen - October 21, 2009 at 9:55 am
Not long after Shopping.com’s announcement of new CPC Rates, Pricegrabber and Shopzilla have this week announced their own increases, though both are taking different approaches.
From November 1 until January 15, 2010 Pricegrabber will increase rates across all categories by 25%, which is identical to what they did last year.
Shopzilla on the other hand is taking an approach more similar to that of Shopping.com’s and only increasing rates in certain categories.
The chart below shows how many of their categories are affected:
Just under half of their 443 total subcategories will not be affected at all, while just under a fourth will be subjected to a 25% rate increase.
Click here for a complete list of categories affected.
And finally to jump from one extreme to the last, Become.com has just announced that they are not going to raise rates at all during the holiday season.
Become.com is proud to announce that we are not raising our rates for the 2009 holiday season!
We recognize the need for retailers to make the most of this busy shopping season, and are happy to offer our partners our tools and features in order to help you optimize your holiday campaign
It’s a great move to encourage potential merchants to sign up on their lesser known engine, considering that most of the other big players in the market are going the opposite approach.
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, Pricegrabber, Shopzilla Tags:
Sample Data Feeds and Feed Specifications for Comparison Shopping Engines
Posted by Nii Ahene - October 7, 2009 at 10:21 am
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 Shopping
- 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
Posted by Tien Nguyen - June 25, 2009 at 12:29 pm
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
.
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.
Shopzilla Adds New Columns to Data Feeds
Posted by Tien Nguyen - May 12, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Joining the fray of shopping engines that have tweaked themselves this year, Shopzilla has announced a few changes that merchants can make to their data feeds in an effort to increase conversion rates.
The first modification that a merchant can make involves including an “original price” column and a “current price” for their products so that their product listing ends up looking like this:
Other engines, such as Become already have a similar feature (on another note you can save big on certain baby items at the sites listed below):
Another notable feature is the availability of promotional texts that a merchant can use alongside their listings–other sites allow merchants to type in a customized text such as “Free Shipping” or “20% off Orders of $100″–Shopzilla is now allowing merchants to enter a specific promotional code to display messages such as “Authorized Dealer”, “Guaranteed Next Day Delivery”, among others.
All in all, more information listed on a search results page is always good, as a merchant always wants a consumer to have as much information as possible before clicking over for fear that that click would go wasted.
It’s certainly a step in the right direction for any engine to allow their merchants to add columns to their data feeds which in turn get passed onto the consumers.
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: Shopzilla Tags:
You Can’t Spell CHANGES without C-S-E
Posted by Tien Nguyen - August 30, 2008 at 3:19 pm
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.
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: Google Base/Shopping, Pricegrabber, Shopzilla Tags:
