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Google Acquires Like.com, Looks to Enhance Google Product Search?
Posted by CPC_Andrew - August 23, 2010 at 8:04 am
Google’s recent acquisition of Like.com has us here wondering what effect the move will have on Google Product Search. Like.com specializes in visual search, which could mean upgrades to how we view images on Google Product Search in the near future. Steve Monfort reports from NASDAQ.
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, Google Product Search, Uncategorized Tags:
Become to Launch Halloween Microsite on September 7, Attempts to Scare Traffic to Your Website
Posted by CPC_Andrew - August 18, 2010 at 9:07 am
This morning Become sent a message to their merchants which details how you can get a piece of the free traffic from their Halloween microsite that launches September 7:
Valued Partner,
As you may know, we are launching a dedicated Halloween Site! Our Halloween microsite is expected to launch September 7th and will help users find great deals on costumes, Halloween décor and more! And best of all, we expect this microsite to deliver even more qualified leads to you during this holiday!
What we are offering:
Clicks from your submitted product offers to the Halloween site are free!
What we need*:
For individual product deals:
- Product titles you are offering deals on, with detailed description of the deal; additionally, if there are time restrictions on this deal, then please let us know so we can include this information Limit 50 deals
- Links for these products
- 120×60 pixel logo
- Store description (100 words max)
Ex:
Product title: $10 off Grim Reaper Costume
Description: This costume comes complete with your personal scythe (adjustable handle length and engraved pattern of your choosing), now available at $10 discount with Promocode SPOOK10 while supplies last. The cloak is made from soft velvet and features…
URL: www.yourstoreURL/grimreaper00111
Store Description: Your Store has been in business since 2005…For category deals:
- The type of deal you are advertising; additionally, if there are time restrictions on this deal, then please let us know so we can include this information Limit 50 deals
- Link to the deal
- 120×60 pixel logo
- Store description (100 words max)
Ex:
Deal Description: 10% off Harry Potter Costumes with Discount Code HP2010
URL: www.yourstoreURL/costumes/harrypotter*Our QA team will be selective regarding the deals we receive in order to keep the site relevant to user interests.
Additionally, we do have limited display advertising available on our Halloween site; contact us at sales@become.com for more information.
If you have not sent us your Halloween offers, then please let us know ASAP of any promotions you are offering for Halloween by emailing us at merchanthelp@become.com.
Best of luck!
The Become.com Team
We anticipate the percentage increase in traffic to be low but how can you complain, it’s free. Comparison shopping engines (CSE’s)are beginning to gear up for the holidays with special offers and new features. Take advantage of the traffic increases on the CSE’s by offering coupons to your customers, and see if you can increase the level of data quality you provide in your datafeeds.
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: Uncategorized Tags:
Q2 Comparison Shopping Engine Rankings Released
Posted by Nii Ahene - July 20, 2010 at 7:57 am
We’ve just released our comparison shopping engine rankings for the second quarter of 2010. Full coverage here-
http://blog.cpcstrategy.com/the-top-ten-comparison-shopping-engines-compared-q2-2010/
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: Uncategorized Tags: Engine Rankings
CPC Strategy Releases Comparison Shopping Engine Campaign Management Success Case Study at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition
Posted by Nii Ahene - June 9, 2010 at 10:11 am
As many of you are aware, to effectively manage a comparison shopping campaign is an on-going process that evolves as business climates, goals, and targets change over time.
Our account management team is always looking forward to opportunities to maximize our clients’ performance on the comparison shopping engines.
While the magnitude of our efforts may vary based on a client’s industry, inventory, pricing, and budget, Living Direct (an Internet Retailer Top 500 merchant) is just one of the many clients that have seen dramatic improvements in their comparison shopping campaigns as a result of working with us.
We sent a couple members of our team to IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition) in Chicago this week, so if you’re around make sure you ping them to chat about how we can help you sell more effectively online!
We can be Twittered @CPCStrategy or reached via e-mail: contact@cpcstrategy.com.
Related Resources:
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: Uncategorized 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:
New Design Launched
Posted by Tien Nguyen - February 12, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Be sure to venture onto our main site and check out our newly launched design!
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: Uncategorized Tags:
A Year to Remember
Posted by Tien Nguyen - January 15, 2009 at 3:33 pm
2008 was an historic year for many, many reasons–none of which we’re about to get into at the moment–except for one monumental occassion, the launch of the CPC Strategy Blog!
Launched in May of the previous year, the blog has gained a great deal of traction from merchants looking to improve their campaigns, from those within the comparison shopping industry themselves, and those with just a general interest in comparison shopping; you know which group you belong in, and we’d like to thank everyone for making this blog a success and in motivating us to write.
Here’s a look back then at the 10 most popular posts from the past year:
1. Why The Fall In Paid Search Advertising Affects The Cses Minimally
2. Pricegrabber Is No Rebel Announces Cpc Rates Raises
3. Google Base Introduces Tax Shipping Columns
4. Shopping.com Setting A New Trend Lowering Cpcs For Q4
5. Google Product Search Ties Up Gloves Adds New Features
6. Amazons 2008 Holiday Season Best Ever
7. Categorization Tips For Your Products
8. Online Retail Slows To Near Halt Still Up From One Year Ago
9. Survey Suggests Over 30 Of Online Shoppers Plan On Spending More
10. Traffic For Top Retail Sites Soar Over Last Years
Again, thank you for your support on the blog and for our company as well–neither would obviously exist without it–though we may be just be tempted to write on here without any readership for the love of the game.
Here’s to a terrific 2009, and while we’re at it, 2010, 2011, etc.
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: Uncategorized Tags:
Categorization Tips for Your Products
Posted by Tien Nguyen - July 2, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Categorizing your products may be one of the most important, as well as difficult and tenuous of getting set up on the comparison shopping engines.
This is especially true if you’re a merchant with a high volume of products, and/or one selling items in a vastly different amount of areas.
Miscategorizations of your products can make it difficult for customers to find your products, or prevent your products from being listed at all.
While your initial data feed may contain your own product categories, each CSE contains their own set of categories which may be much more detailed and comprehensive–or it may be broader and can incorporate multiple categories of yours into just one.
For instance, one client of ours sells bedding products and is listed on NexTag, Shopzilla, and Pricegrabber. The table below shows how each of the engines break down specific bedding categories (category taxonomy files can generally be found at each engine’s websites):
As you can see from the chart, Pricegrabber has 11 categories within bedding, Shopzilla has a whopping 16, while Nextag makes life easy for merchants with just 1 category that encompasses everything related to bedding.
While we at CPC Strategy have our own mechanism for automating the categorization process, merchants have been known to go clinically insane after trying to categorize each and every last product in their feed manually, particularly with engines that break everything down into so many categories.
Here are a few tips we have for such merchants:
- Populate Field Initially – Use the most generic category to populate each product. For example for Shopzilla categorize each item under “miscelaneous bedding”, just to be sure that you don’t leave any category fields blank when you send in the feed.
- Break Down Fields From There – After you find a general category for each product, go through each specific category that each engine has, and apply it to each product where it applies. For instance fill in all your bedding sets with the above, then bedskirts, bedspreads, etc. Excel’s autofilter function comes extremely handy here.
- Search for Product on Engine for Ideas – If you have no idea where a category should be categorized, a search for that product into an engine lead you to a similar product that another merchant may be selling, and from there you can extract what category that particular product is listed under.
Overall process can take anywhere from minutes, to hours depending on the number of products you have, how diverse your listings are, what engine you’re categorizing for, and your level of patience 
If you have any tips of your own on categorizing your products, be sure to post them in the comments below.
Tien
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: Uncategorized Tags:
