Shopping.com is an eBay company as of August 2005 and is considered to be one of the original pioneers of comparison shopping and online product search. Since launching, Shopping.com has grown beyond expectations and continues to remain among the fastest growing, most visited eCommerce shopping engines available today. Shopping.com offers services for both consumers and merchants including powerful search tools, technology and unbiased reviews for millions of products, thousands of brands and several top online and brick-and-mortar retailers.

Shopping.com has expanded their operations globally and are now able to offer their innovative shopping services and tools in several different languages and countries worldwide including the U.K., Germany, France, Australia, Ireland and more to come.

Shopping.com’s mission is to help consumers anywhere use the power of information to easily find, compare and buy anything online – in less time and for the best price!

Shopping.com’s What’s In Store Blog:

• Official Shopping.com Blog

The Shopping.com What’s In Store Blog is the place for all things Shopping.com. Merchants and consumers will find information and insights related to online shopping, buying and review trends, merchant seller tips, favorite staff product picks or finds and even information from industry professionals, experts and other blog contributors. Be sure to drop by the official Shopping.com blog, there’s sure to be something there for everyone whether you’re a merchant or shopper.

Shopping.com’s WorkShop:

• Shopping.com WorkShop

I thought this was an interesting concept and something I hadn’t really seen offered by a comparison shopping engine. It’s called the Shopping.com WorkShop. Basically, it’s a special section on their website where Shopping.com features some of their innovative projects, new shopping tools or technology and new site features that they wish to test and receive feedback about.

The WorkShop is pretty bare right now so don’t expect much today, but I for one will be keeping the link in a handy place so that I can revisit it on occasion and provide feedback if I have any.

Linda Snow, Marketing Director, Answers 10 Questions About Shopping.com:

Roughly how many merchants are included within Shopping.com?

5,000 active U.S. merchants.

Roughly how many products are included within Shopping.com?

More than 16,000 brands, 340 categories and Shopping.com includes 65% of the Internet’s top 100 retailers.

Roughly how many individuals currently work on Shopping.com support and coding teams?

We do not disclose the number of employees at Shopping.com.

What other places across the Internet, if any, are merchants and products included?

By using Shopping.com’s powerful API program, which allows third-party access to our highly structured and comprehensive product catalog, Shopping.com powers the shopping experience for hundreds of Web sites including Answers.com, DigitalAdvisor, HowStuffWorks.com, Surprise.com and Ziff Davis’ PCMag.com. Other partners include MySimon, ProductWiki, Reseller Ratings and Wize.com.

Our API users can customize and reconfigure the Shopping.com catalog and search tools as needed, tailoring them to their preference and extending the reach of the platform.

What, in your opinion, are the highlight features Shopping.com offers it’s users?

We aim for a site that is designed for ease of use and simple navigation. We’ve constructed our site with special features including the What’s Hot, Shop by Brand and Top 5 sections. Additionally, we launched a gift cards page during the 2007 holiday season; within the category, users can easily sort and shop for cards from a variety of vendors – all in one place. All of these features make it easy for consumers to shop for great deals.

What, in your opinion are the highlight features Shopping.com offers merchants?

In Shopping.com’s recent eCommerce Pulse Index survey, we found that 45 percent of our merchants are adjusting their sales and/or marketing strategy because of the stagnant economy. Our most recent offerings for merchants are designed to help them generate additional revenue on Shopping.com and increase conversion to sale. This includes an innovative Value Based Pricing model, which automatically adjusts the charges per click to merchants based on the publisher’s overall traffic performance. Also, Product Performance Reporting helps merchants quickly and easily identify important sales data to optimize and improve their product feeds and overall campaign. Additionally, a key part of the Shopping.com experience is the Distributed Commerce API that allows merchants to recreate a comparison shopping experience on their own site to monetize more traffic and improve buyer experience.

Are new features being added and updated often? How often would you say?

We constantly solicit feedback from our merchants to determine what changes need to be made in order to maintain the best experience on Shopping.com.

How does Shopping.com plan to stay competitive with sites like Amazon and eBay marketplaces?

Shopping.com is an eBay company under the marketplaces umbrella. The synergies between eBay and Shopping.com provide consumers with unique shopping experiences as well as provide a mechanism by which merchants can reach their target audiences. Regarding search engines, our Distributed Commerce model provides flexibility to how merchants reach their customers.

Where do you see Shopping.com in the next 3-5 years?

Our focus has always been and will continue to be delivering the best shopping experience.

What Online product marketplaces, other than Shopping.com, do you personally use to shop from?

Actually, with the thousands of merchants and brands on Shopping.com I always find what I am looking for.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Linda: This is fantastic Linda. I greatly appreciate the time you took from your busy schedule to take part in our little QandA about Shopping.com. I have always liked your company’s vision and CSE service, so it’s great to finally have caught up with you all. By the looks of things you’ve been busy, I love the concept of the WorkShop beta testing and feedback section, that’s very creative and helps to engage your users/merchants which is always great in my opinion, so bravo to you and your team for that idea. I also like the fact that you conduct surveys regularly so that you are always able to improve your service and meet the expectations and demand of your users, that is really important these days. Thanks again for being available and for offering such quality answers to our CSE questions, I look forward to seeing your continued growth within the industry, keep up the good work.

To our readers: I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading our most recent comparison shopping engine (CSE) QandA with Linda Snow from Shopping.com. As always we have several more interviews out there and in the works for the future, so check back regularly or grab our feed or email updates and we’ll send the good stuff to you directly. You may also wish to read back in our archives at some of the ecommerce interviews that have already been published.

Shopping.com is Featured as one of the comparison shopping engines on our Product Listing Guide!