Pronto.com recently made a couple of big announcements regarding their comparison shopping engine and social shopping community. The first is the addition of brand new product buying guides into their social community. The new guides are supposed to compliment features that are already included in the social shopping sections. The other announcement involves a contest Pronto is having called the Holiday Shopping Contest where contestants have a chance to win $2,000 in products from Pronto.com.

Here’s what Michelle Pae, Pronto’s Vice President of Product Development, had to say…

What makes Pronto.com unique to the industry is our focus not only on helping consumers find where they can buy certain products, but also in giving them the information they need to decide what to buy. This is especially useful during the holiday season. With our new Buying Guides and thriving social shopping community, we’ve assembled critical buying information from across the Web into one convenient place to make shopping easy and fun.

Pronto’s New Product Buying Guides:

Just in time for the holidays, Pronto has released their new product buying guides in order to compliment their already feature rick social shopping community. The Buying Guides provide the perfect amount of information for a number of different products including reviews, unbiased advice and helpful, category-specific facts, so Online shoppers can make educated buying decisions without having to become an expert on the items they want to buy.

This is a good move on Pronto’s end as a recent study conducted by Burst Media found that nearly half of consumer shoppers expect to purchase either a portion or all of their holiday gifts Online this year (50.7%), up from 37.6% in 2006. In addition to data about how much consumers buy Online during the holidays, the study also found that more than two-thirds (68.6%) of consumers shop Online and use the Net as a primary resource for product research. These new Buying Guides should pave the way as more to help shoppers dramatically reduce the time they spend Online shopping by providing them with the information they need to pick the perfect gift for any occasion or member of the family.

Currently, there are dozens of Pronto buying guides to shop from, with more being added each day. The guides do a nice job of covering products across many popular categories including baby, home and garden, electronics and entertainment. To access the Pronto Buying Guides, users only need to click on the links below the ‘Need Advice?’ column near the top right of each page once a product or category search has been performed.

Once a buying guide has been selected, customers will find the following information…

• The Pronto Pick –The recommended product in the category based on quality and value
• The Five – Five key points the shopper should keep in mind
• Shop Talk – Product-specific terms and descriptions that consumers should know
• Buzz – What’s hot right now
• Wallet Impact – What consumers can expect within their designated price range
• Experts Say – Additional opinions and advice from the experts

It makes me happy to see all the success Pronto has gained over the past year. They are really making big moves at the right times in the industry and should be used as an example of what to do when launching a new product or service Online. Pronto boasts that they are the Web’s fastest growing comparison shopping engine (CSE) with year-over-year growth of over 3100% and 5.2 million unique monthly U.S. users (according to comScore). Pronto is also the first site to have successfully fused comparison shopping with a full range of social shopping features that allow their users to rate products, interact with other members, write reviews and discover new products, brands or stores from other like-minded shoppers.

Pronto’s Holiday Shopping Contest:

Other big news at Pronto includes a holiday shopping contest they are having called, Pronto.com’s ‘Want It, Win It’ Holiday Shopping Contest, in which one Pronto.com user will have a chance to win $2,000-worth of their favorite products. The holiday sweepstakes will run from November 15th to December 15th, 2007. The sweepstakes winner will be selected by random drawing on December 20th and will win $2,000-worth of products off of their ‘Like’ list. To enter the sweepstakes, simply create a profile and ‘Like’ five of your favorite or most-wanted products, write five reviews, and invite five of your friends to join you on Pronto.com.

Be sure to read the Official Contest Rules, there are also Help Instructions.