PowerReviews was founded in 2005 by Andrew Chen and Robert Chea and is now considered to be a leading provider of social commerce solutions. The company has helped hundreds of retailers engage customers and build communities online. Internet Retailer included the company in 2009’s Top 500 Solutions Winner. Sites such as RadioShack, Diapers.com, TicketsNow, and Orbitz and many more are using customer reviews systems provided by PowerReviews.

PowerReviews AnswerBox Overview

42% of online shoppers have left a site without purchasing multiple products because they couldn’t get a question answered about just one of the products in their shopping cart.

AnswerBox connects potential buyers with customers and staff while they’re browsing products. This solution streamlines the shopping experience by giving consumers the answers they need without leaving the retailer’s website.

AnswerBox Benefits

• Credible answers from experienced customers and expert staff
• Creates a sense of community between new and loyal customers
• Increase conversion

AnswerBox Features

• Full Moderation: 100% control of content
• Multi-Pronged Response: a variety of informed answers
• Virtual FAQ: common questions of a specific product displayed directly on product page

PowerReviews Blog

InSite is a blog by PowerReviews where they share experiences and insights from the industry with anyone interested in emerging technologies and social commerce.

• Official PowerReviews InSite Blog

Andy Chen, PowerReviews Co-Founder, Answers 5 Questions About Social Commerce

I think a lot of small businesses are interested in social commerce but unsure how to put it into practice. What advise would you give to these eCommerce retailers?

First of all, get started. Social commerce is rapidly evolving, so it’s important that small businesses learn how to learn from, listen to and empower their customers in a meaningful way. The two social commerce tools that intersect both (a) proven and consistent ROI to the merchant; and (b) demanded and desired by the consumer; are Ratings&Reviews and Q&A (we call this AnswerBox), so this is where we would start. Building a “Community” (ala Yelp/Facebook) is further away and not yet a practical application for most businesses.

Are there any common mistakes or misconceptions businesses make when they first engage their consumers?

The “Build it and they will come” approach is a big mistake. Consumer engagement is difficult to create, and it’s important to put the right mechanisms in place to drive engagement. Therefore, PowerReviews always recommends a series of best practices to create awareness and engagement in starting a social commerce program… most importantly to focus on the merchant’s “recent purchasers“, who have the highest propensity to participate.

Reviews and ratings are one of the most popular methods of social commerce. What makes this method so effective? Why do you think people are drawn to reviews and ratings?

There are several trends driving the need and desire by consumers for ratings and reviews. Firstly, consumers have been trained for almost 15 years to seek out ratings and reviews when shopping online by the major eCommerce sites such as Amazon, Ebay, and Zappos.  Therefore, they EXPECT reviews as part of a complete shopping experience.

Secondly, consumers are smart, and understand that no products are right for all people, and that they cannot solely depend on manufacturer or retailer supplied product information. The voices that they trust to guide them to the RIGHT product are their friends and “people like them” (e.g. people with similar needs and lifestyles). Ratings and reviews fill that need exactly.

How can a reviews and ratings system help a small eCommerce business?

Surprisingly, we see that the impact of ratings and reviews are HIGHER for PowerRevews’ small business clients than they are for the larger, well-known companies. There are several factors, in my opinion, that drive this:

Firstly, small businesses typically have more of a specialty/niche vs. a big box feel. One of our clients, for example is Alpaca Direct, which only sells products made from Alpaca. This means that consumers on those sites are naturally more enthusiastic about the products, and often have very specific needs. Reviews from other enthusiasts help other shoppers become more confident that they are buying the “right product“.

Secondly, since small businesses are not as well known as the larger chains, reviews serve as endorsements for the merchant overall, in addition to the specific product. The message that the merchant can send by posting reviews is that “yes, lots of customers have put down their money, received a product, and were asked about their experience“, which is a tremendous confidence building tool that clearly separates the fly-by-night operations from the legitimate small businesses.

Allowing consumers to share ideas is not only valuable to potential buyers but it can also be valuable feedback for the merchant. How can a business best use and gather this information?

This is a fairly broad area, and perhaps one of the largest opportunities for manufacturers and retailers to get value from their social commerce programs. There is an adage in the usability or consumer research world use — “measure what they do, not what they say“. Therefore, PowerReviews takes the approach that the content within the reviews, or AnswerBox, content is where the most useful insights and ideas live vs. creating a separate solution to solicit ideas from customers.

Many of our clients are already using their data to drive powerful business value such as:

• Optimizing their inventory by returning low rated products to the vendors
• Driving their merchandising by highlighting top-rated products
• Understanding specific product flaws or gaps in their inventory
• Improving their product content based on feedback from customers

We support these insights in several ways:

• Our tag-based reviews allow our clients to quantitatively understand the customer feedback (e.g. we can easily understand the consensus around the pros, cons, uses, and buyer-types for each product… and compare them across the category). This is something that we had previously done by hand, or by unreliable natural language processing techniques…or not at all.
• We provide a “Product Suggestions” module (for free) as part of our ratings and reviews solution. This allows customers to provide their own ideas to improve the product after they’ve tried it for themselves. This is much more effective than a regular focus group, because these reviewers have recently purchased the product and are in the best position to provide thoughtful feedback.
• We moderate 100% of the content and flag any reviews that might be interesting to a merchant’s customer service, product, and/or merchandising teams.
• We provide detailed reports back to our clients that allow them to route the data to the appropriate category or brand-level business owner.

In a nutshell, we absolutely see how the underlying data from consumers can dramatically improve core retail and manufacturing processes in the near future.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

A big thanks to Andy Chen of PowerReviews for taking to time to give some good advice to our readers.

I also want to thank Lisa Tarter of Tidal Wave PR for helping me put this interview together. Like many of our readers, I’m still learning about social commerce and I hope they found Andrew’s answers as beneficial as I did. A common theme that Chen and many others emphasize is the importance of retailers to listen to their customers. The value of the feedback from customers can often be overlooked. However, using it to evolve your business is one of the most important parts of social commerce. We’ll be posting a few other articles exploring social commerce soon so stay tuned.

Back in September 07′ we covered Lemonade’s launch, and business model in detail so I won’t be going into too much about the company here as with some of our other comparison shopping interviews. I have enjoyed watching the growth of Lemonade’s application, brand and user base. They seem to have found a perfect fit in between the eCommerce and affiliate spaces.

Basically, Lemonade offers merchants or entrepreneurs the ability to create and publish their own personal “lemonade stand” packed with products or items from the Internet’s top online retailers. Merchants can pick and choose from over 2 million products from roughly 200,000 top eCommerce sellers including retails such as Macy’s, Nordstrom, Zappos and TigerDirect.

Users can then place their personal lemonade stand widget in a number of places including Blogger, Vox, Facebook, Yahoo! 360 and more. Once the user has created their stand and has the products they wish to recommend loaded, they have the opportunity to earn revenue each time a shopper clicks through to the retailer’s page to buy an item. Commissions range from 5 to 15 percent of the sale price to anyone who delivers a paying customer. Certain online retailers will pay up to $10 for each new customer, while others may just pay Lemonade merchants each time a visitor clicks on a link to see recommended products.

Add your favorite stuff to a lemonade stand and put it on your personal profile, website, blog, wherever. It’s free and when someone purchases from your stand you get paid.

Lemonade Marketplace:

Lemonade’s merchant marketplace is a collection of individual stands/widgets that have been created using Lemonade’s application. Shoppers are able to browse different stands including best performing, most viewed and top rated or featured stands. Shoppers are also able to view stands by creation date (new stands) and they can even rate or review the stands they like the most.

Tom Zawacki, CEO, Answers 10 Questions About Lemonade Marketplace:

Roughly how many merchants are included within Lemonade?

There are more than 200 retailer partners of Lemonade, including Apple, Sony, Estee Lauder, The Gap, Lands’ End, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Old Navy and Wal-Mart.

Roughly how many products are included within Lemonade?

Right now we have a selection of over 2 million products from some of the best companies in the world. We have access to over ten million products and brands, and we will continue to add to Lemonade based on our users requests.

Roughly how many individuals currently work on Lemonade support and coding teams?

Lemonade currently has 3 full-time employees with a team of up to 15 contract resources.

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

Lemonade enables individuals to make money by setting up a digital lemonade stand, distributing it on their social networking profile, blog or personal website, effectively starting their own e-business. Users currently have set up Lemonade Stands on Facebook, MySpace, AOL People Connect, Yahoo! 360, Blogger, SixApart, and many others.

Lemonade Inc. will also feature every Lemonade Stand in the Lemonade Marketplace section.

What, in your opinion, are the highlight features Lemonade offers it’s users?

• In under 5 minutes, a user can set up a personalize e-business, their Lemonade Stand
• Users add personal reviews and recommendations of the brands/products they promote in their stand
• Forrester reports that word of mouth recommendations are the #1 driver of online purchases
• The ability to earn extra money by referring products & services to shoppers, and via online advertising on their stand
• The ability to learn about starting and running a business
• The ability to add the Lemonade stand to social networking profiles, blogs or individual websites
• The opportunity to shop from the Lemonade Community – to connect with people like them who are finding great deals or the best brands/products for a particular need

What, in your opinion are the highlight features Lemonade offers merchants?

There are currently approximately 150 million individuals who have set up a social networking profile, blog or personal website. According to Internet research company comScore, these social networking websites and blogs receive an estimated 170 million unique visitors per month. Partnership with Lemonade.com enables companies to extend their brand presence, e-commerce footprint and loyalty programs onto the personal pages of these individual authors.

Lemonade’s Enterprise Solution allows merchants to private label the platform to offer the Lemonade experience within their own branded context. The Lemonade Enterprise Solution enables merchants to activate their most loyal brand advocates as an extension of their sales staff (e.g., the Avon Lady, Tupperware Parties, etc.)

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

We launched in October 2007. An upgrade of the entire experience, Lemonade 2.0, will be live in September 2008. We have given our users a full-page e-commerce experience for when they set up a stand, enhanced our search engine and shopping experience, and upgraded the functionality of our widget. We continue to add new retailers and products every month. We expect to release new features every 4 months.

How does Lemonade plan to stay competitive with sites like Amazon and eBay marketplaces?

Amazon and eBay are not competitors, in fact they are partners. We have a completed contract with Amazon to offer their products in Lemonade Stands, and we hope to work with eBay in 2009 in the same way. In addition, we are enabling individuals to start-up their own e-business by recommending products/brands/services from leading merchants vs. eBay which enables individuals to sell their own things in an auction environment. We think we will have a very strong relationship with both Amazon and eBay.

Where do you see Lemonade in the next 3-5 years?

In 2007, eCommerce in the U.S. is a $150 billion marketplace. U.S. Online advertising is a $20 billion marketplace – That is $170 billion today – Forrester projects these numbers to grow to almost $350 billion in 5 years. Today, 0% of eCommerce and Online Advertising in the U.S. is driven from the Social Economy. We believe that in 5 years at least 10% of U.S. eCommerce and Online Advertising will be driven by the Social Economy, which is a $35 billion marketplace. Lemonade Inc. is in position to be a leader in the Social Economy, and if we can capture just 1% of this new marketplace we will be a $350 million company.

In addition, Lemonade Inc. will expand internationally over the next 2 years. We will look at very large online populations with high growth rates such as China, the greater Asia Pacific Region, India and South America.

What Online product marketplaces, other than Lemonade, do you personally use to shop from?

iTunes, Amazon, Sephora (for my wife), eLuxury.com (for my wife), EastBay Sports (for my baseball team), Netflix

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Tom: I really appreciate the detailed thought and attention that you were able to provide in the QandA answers, it sounds like some exciting things are happening on the Lemonade front. It’s great to see you guys nearly through your first year! I love being able to cover a launch and come back to see where the company is after a bit of time in the space, it’s been interesting and fun watching your brand and application grow. I hope you are able to find as much success in the international arena as you’ve seen here in the U.S. I can’t wait to see Lemonade 2.0 in September!! Please consider sending me an update when you’re ready to launch, I’d be happy to cover it on the blog. Thanks again Tom (and all Lemonade.com staff) for providing such a cool concept application and for the support you’ve shown the online selling industry.

To our readers: I certainly hope you’ve all enjoyed this latest comparison shopping engine (CSE) QandA with Tom Zawacki from Lemonade.com as much as I have. As always we have several more interviews out there and in the works for the future, so check back regularly. If you’re lazy and want us to deliver the content to you, simply grab our feed or subscribe to 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.

Lemonade Marketplace is Featured as one of the shopping marketplaces on our Product Listing Guide!

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!

GoDataFeed specializes in the automated delivery of product data feeds to over 40 major comparison shopping engines for merchants interested in saving time and effectively sending, optimizing and analyzing their feed content. GoDataFeed works together with merchant sellers, search engine marketing and optimization firms, hosting companies and a variety of other service providers, many of which are attracted to GoDataFeed’s affordable, efficient model designed to increase visitors and product/brand reach within the individual shopping channels.

In addition to the data feed automation, optimization and tracking processes, GoDataFeed truly cares about their clients success and always aims to exceed their expectations by offering the support and resources needed to meet the demands of their individual client needs.

GoDataFeed Comparison Shopping Solutions Overview:

• Promote products on more than 40 comparison shopping sites & affiliate networks
• Enhance product placement with built-in shopping engine categorization and validation
• Customize feed campaigns for sale, holiday, free-shipping, brand-name promotions and more

Data Feed Automation

• Easy one-time setup process
• Feed fresh product data
• Full integration with Yahoo! Store, ShopSite and Volusion 5.0

Data Feed Optimization

• Accurate product placement
• Robust field and category mapping
• Built-in categorizations and validation for all shopping engines

Data Feed Tracking

• Engine and product-level performance
• Real time data on clicks, conversions and revenue
• Determine your best products and shopping channels

GoDataFeed Features:

• Automate your data imports via FTP or instantly import your fully-integrated ShopSite, Volusion 5.0 or Yahoo! Stores
• Ensure your product data is always fresh with nightly FTP updates
• Submit your feeds automatically- daily, weekly or monthly
• Enhance product placement with robust category & filter rules that let you customize feeds and merchandise products where customers expect to find them
• Validate feeds against each shopping engine’s requirements to ensure your product data is accurate and complete
• Customize feed campaigns by adding or modifying values to your feed- like adding tracking tags to your URLs or creating targeted promotional initiatives for sale items, free-shipping, brand name and more
• Real-Time feedback on your clicks, orders and revenue
• Monitor your best performing engines and products
• Determine the best shopping sites for your store

GoDataFeed $.99 Trial:

GoDataFeed offers a 30 day trial of their professional comparison shopping engine solutions. The cost for the trial is only $.99. That’s right, only 99 cents to try GoDataFeed for a whole month. Visit the GoDataFeed trial page and fill out the brief form to sign-up for your $.99 thirty day trial offer.

GoDataFeed Pricing:

All GoDataFeed plans include: Two FREE Feed Setups, FREE Analytics Module & FREE Support

• Starter – 3 Feeds, 5,000 Products, $50/month
• Self-Managed – Unlimited Feeds, 5, 000 Products, $75/month
• Managed – Unlimited Feeds, 5,000 Products, $250/month

* Note: Each plan charges $5.00 extra per each additional 1,000 products

GoDataFeed Blog:

GoDataFeed also has a blog running where anyone can go to get the latest CSE and GDF news along with tips and resources from the experts at GoDataFeed. Simply visit their main page and look for the link to their blog in the top right corner.

• Official GoDataFeed Blog

To get an idea of the type of content to expect, be sure to read the latest post: Maximizing Comparison Shopping Site Marketing. It’s a great article full of tips to help merchants or pros effectively use CSE strategies. It’s a must read for anyone in the current CSE space.

Lin Grosman, Marketing/Integration, Answers 10 Questions About GoDataFeed:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

GoDataFeed’s software engineers and marketing specialists have developed ecommerce solutions for online businesses since 2000. Responding to the popularity of comparison shopping channels, GoDataFeed’s team combined its collective knowledge of best ecommerce and shopping channel marketing practices to create a single, user-friendly application to manage the product feed process.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

‘All of the above’ GoDataFeed data feed management service automates, optimizes and analyzes product data feeds to more than 40 comparison engines and affiliate networks:

• Automation: The software simplifies and automates the data feed management process through FTP updates as well as automatic integration for Yahoo! Stores, ShopSite, Volusion (5.0) stores, and AmeriCommerce.
• Optimization: Merchants can optimize their product feeds through built-in categorization and feed validation tools that help them make their product data more accurate and complete.
• Analytics: GoDataFeed’s analytics module helps merchants track product-level and engine performance, which helps determine best-performing shopping channels for their store.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

GoDataFeed supports more than 40 comparison shopping sites and affiliate networks including:

Amazon.com, Become.com, BuyersEdge, Ciao.com, FindGift.com, Gifts.com, Like.com, NexTag.com, Oodle.com, MyCoupons.com, PriceComparison.com, PriceforSure.com, PriceGrabber.com, PriceLeap.com, PriceRunner.com, PriceWatch.com, Pronto.com, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, Smarter.com, Sortprice.com, Streetprices.com, Yahoo Shopping, Google Product Search, MSN Live Product, TheFind.com, Dealio, Share-A-Sale, Commission Junction and Performics.

We also provide custom feeds for merchants who submit to specialty sites, such as wine specialty sites, gourmet and affiliate sites, etc.

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

We cater to retail clients, hosting firms companies and search engine optimization and search engine marketing firms. Some of our clients include: StuffedAnimals.com, Puppet.com, CoffeeCakes.com, FootwearEtc.com, AffiliateTraction, Lexiconn Internet Services, WebDex Media Group.

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

Data feed management firms should give merchants the right tools to make their product information as accurate and complete as possible prior to submission to shopping engines, tools like feed validation and built-in categorization and customization options.

Data feed management firms should inform and educate merchants — through a transparent process– about the steps involved in optimizing and submitting their products to multiple shopping sites, acting as merchant advocates, and keeping them abreast of industry developments.

Shopping feed software should:

• Automate the data feed management process
• Optimize product information for each individual engine
• Monitor shopping site and product performance

Data feed management firms should provide responsive, unlimited support — GoDataFeed provides unparalleled turnaround time with support requests, live help with feed setups and live chat — all in an effort to simplify the feed management process, get their stores up and running and save merchants time and resources.

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

The biggest mistake merchants can make is to look for “set it and forget it” or cookie-cutter solutions—merchants should be involved in the process of preparing their product data, as they know their product information best, and monitor their performance on the shopping sites.

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

Each shopping site has its own data feed template, system and resources. We think the most commonly overlooked aspect–which can have the biggest impact– is merchants not tailoring feed campaigns to each shopping site and taking advantage of each shopping sites’ resources—i.e. account manager assistance, shopping site user review programs and shopping site optimization tips.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

The comparison shopping world is definitely becoming more social as shoppers are not only buying, but researching products and looking for ratings, reviews and user experiences. In addition, we think that more shopping sites will adopt a Cost-per-Action model—which is popular with many merchants.

What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?

Our goal is promote a “Power to the Merchant” movement that empowers merchants and SEO firms to understand and take control of their data feed management to unlimited engines—at an affordable rate. We have just launched GoDataFeed’s v2.0—which has an extremely user-friendly interface and appeals to many users, making it easy to customize feed campaigns to more than 40 shopping sites. We aim to grow our business by helping merchants grow theirs.

What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?

It is impossible to generalize on the best performing comparison shopping engine, because each store and industry are different and perform differently on the shopping sites—however, the most popular shopping sites we currently support are Google Base, Shopzilla, Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber and Jellyfish—now known as CashBack.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Lin: Wow Lin, thanks so much for taking the time and effort to participate in our QandA style interview about GoDataFeed. I really appreciate all the thought and information that went into your responses, well done. I love the fact that you are all about empowering the merchant for success, it can be easily overlooked in this fast paced industry. My favorite part, that is so true, is about the commonly overlooked aspects. You hit the nail on the head by stating, “merchants not tailoring feed campaigns to each shopping site and taking advantage of each shopping sites’ resources.” I can’t count the times I’ve worked with businesses who fail to utilize ALL their resources. The rating and reviews are the biggest, as you said. Optimization of feeds is also a big one. Thanks again Lin. I hope you continue to drop by. Please don’t hesitate to send us updates about your service so we can all stay informed about the progress GoDataFeed is making!!

To our readers: Well, that pretty much wraps up our latest data feed company interview. I hope you all enjoyed our time with Lin Grosman from GoDataFeed. It always amazes me to see how companies such as this are revolutionizing the CSE industry. I hope it was as informative for all of you as it was for me. If you liked this article and interview, be sure and subscribe to our articles feed or email updates, that way we can send newly published articles directly to you. If you just can’t wait for more like this, and haven’t already, you may also want to check out some of our past ecommerce interviews.

GoDataFeed is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!

FeedPerfect, a Solid Cactus company, offers professional comparison shopping engine and data feed solutions to eCommerce sellers interested in getting their product information imported, optimized and published within popular shopping portals and destinations. FeedPerfect’s data feed solutions are designed with ease of use and efficiency in mind. Merchants who use FeedPerfect are able to utilize all of the categorization methods and data requirements for each CSE directly from the merchant application dashboard. Once store products are imported into the app., a variety of tools can be used to mass categorize product groups, pre-validate product data and automatically submit products directly into each supported shopping engine.

In addition, FeedPerfect takes the process a step further by providing useful tools to help merchants optimize their individual data feeds, track product performance and analyze product and engine statistics, making it much easier to adjust data or make changes to improve performance.

FeedPerfect Comparison Shopping Solutions Overview:

• Import – FeedPerfect’s global database will give you the tools to mass categorize groups of products saving you A LOT of time.
• Publish – FeedPerfect will automatically submit products on the schedule you determine to ensure your products’ data remains up-to-date.
• Analyze – FeedPerfect’s analytics provides merchants with powerful decision making tools and the ability to act on these decisions right inside of the application.
• Optimize – FeedPerfect allows you to review product performance across multiple channels and optimize each feed for maximum performance.

FeedPerfect Benefits:

• Completely Web-based Application
• Detailed Analytics Tools
• Easy To Use, Comes Supported
• Feature Rich Interface
• Validation And Categorization
• 17 Major CSE’s Supported

Try FeedPerfect FREE For 30 Days:

FeedPerfect offers a complimentary 30 day trial of their professional comparison shopping engine solutions. Visit the FeedPerfect homepage and fill out the brief form on the right to sign-up for your FREE 30 day trial of their popular data feed application.

FeedPerfect Pricing:

• Starter – 1 Store, 1,000 Products, 3 Engines, $89/month
• Professional – 1 Store, 20,000 Products, All Engines, $179/month
• Enterprise – 4 Stores, 100,000 Products, All Engines, $279/month

About Solid Cactus:

Solid Cactus, a total e-commerce solutions provider, has designed or redesigned more than 2,500 e-commerce sites using the Yahoo! Store platform. Our team of world-class designers and experienced programmers know what makes e-commerce sites successful and strive for excellence in each project we undertake.

Kurt Illian, Solid Cactus, Answers 10 Questions About FeedPerfect:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

After working with online merchants everyday since 2001, we saw the need for a product to help them manage their feeds early on. We originally had a simple feed service that allowed merchants to send their products to each of the engines from one centralized place. As time went on we realized our customers were blindly sending feeds to the engines without watching their spend or optimizing their data feeds accordingly. Basically we saw a lot of customers wasting money. We decided to meet this need by introducing FeedPerfect in early 2007.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

FeedPerfect provides one centralized location to manage products available to be sent to the Comparison Shopping Engines. We then provide a way for the merchant to select which engine they would like to advertise in, as well as a walk-through simplified setup wizard. Not only will you find the ability to select which products you would like to advertise but also a comprehensive list of the different categories available within the engine. Once the feed has been sent out to the engine, FeedPerfect provides analytics to track the conversion down to the product level allowing the merchant to take action (change or remove that product from a feed) from one interface without having to learn each engine’s unique admin.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

• Google Product Search
• Price Grabber
• Shopping.com
• Shopzilla
• Yahoo! Shopping
• MySimon
• NexTag
• Smarter
• PriceLeap
• PriceSaving
• Jellyfish
• Become.com
• StreetPrices.com
• Live.com
• SortPrice
• Pronto.com
• Amazon Product Ads

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

We have a large variety of customers ranging from small “Mom and Pop” companies with small advertising budgets who are only advertising in a few engines, to large e-commerce businesses with a dedicated marketing manager watching the spend on a daily basis. FeedPerfect also caters to agencies with multiple accounts/stores by making it possible to manage their customers from one easy-to-use interface.

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

Time and money. We’ve seen too many merchants simply set up their feeds and “walk away.” Your CSE advertising is an important part of your business. If you are not going to take the time to manage it properly, you should look for a solution that can help. Find a solution that will save you time through the automation of data feeds, and money by telling you where your money is being spent. If that is still too much for you, consider using a firm to manage your CSE feeds for you.

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

I have found some merchants simply send their products to the engine and never take time to look at the data. Many people send their products to Google Product Search but are not aware of which items are performing well. In fact, many of them do not even have access to such valuable statistics. This is a great way to test new product offerings in the world of Comparison Shopping Engines, and at the same time provide valuable statistics to use across other advertising channels.

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

People often overlook how much data they are providing a CSE. Conventional wisdom says the more a customer is informed (by product information), the easier the sale. The CSEs have required fields, but not many people look beyond those fields and populate the fields that are optional. Consider updating your feeds to include as much information as possible.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

Technology changes everyday so the possibilities are endless. With social media being so new I can see more CSE adding in social components into their engines allowing shoppers to communicate with each other. One trend that we have noticed is larger e-commerce stores are starting to compete in CSEs which is making it harder for smaller merchants to compete.

What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?

We continue to add more CSE’s into FeedPerfect. More importantly, however, we are adding new tools that will make it easier to manage your data feeds and see which products are producing the best results, and which items are not producing desirable results for your bottom line.

What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?

Due to the various demographics that each merchant targets, it varies across each store. However, one feed that continues to not only have the best ROI (since it’s free), but drives traffic and sales, is Google Product Search. The sales many of our merchants get from Google Product Search compare to other CSE’s that you are paying for. Outside of Google Product Search, our merchants have been able to find success within all of the engines we support, depending on the merchants target demographic.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Kurt: I want to personally express my thanks for your participation in the QandA Kurt. I appreciate the time, thought and effort that went into your answers, such detailed responses! I love the fact that you’ve put so much emphasis on technology and tools to make everything so simple and easy. You hit the nail on the head by stating, “some merchants simply send their products to the engine and never take time to look at the data.” I find this to be true in nearly one in five people I discuss current CSE strategy with. Analyzing performance and drilling content down to the product level is so overlooked it’s not even funny. Glad you brought it up and reinforced that it is NOT OK! Again, thank you for taking the time to participate. Love what you’re doing with FeedPerfect and at Solid Cactus, it seems like you’ve got a quality team. Keep up the good work.

To our readers: It’s great to get this kind of information directly from the professionals, isn’t it? I hope you all enjoyed this, and past interviews, as much as I have. We’re almost out of data feed providers to interview, so it won’t be long now before we begin some new QandA series’ and expand on some we’ve already begun conducting. If you liked this structure and the interview content, be sure you subscribe to our articles feed or email updates, that way we can send newly published articles directly to you.

FeedPerfect is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!

ShopWiki is one of the most creative, intuitive concepts I have ever seen spun from the comparison shopping engine business model. Their crawler based CSE is smart, powerful and capable of including products from nearly every merchant seller online (given the site is crawler friendly). ShopWiki is also currently the most recognized shopping engine in existence that utilizes the power of user generated content through their built-in wiki platform.

ShopWiki was originally founded by two ex-DoubleClick execs, Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, and Eliot Horowitz in 2005. Since launch, ShopWiki has continued on their goal to find and index every possible offer by a merchant that can be purchased online. ShopWiki is an advanced shopping crawler, product engine, wiki or gift guide, social community and much more. They currently even offer user submitted shopping video content and product reviews.

ShopWiki is the ultimate shopping search engine, combining powerful Web-crawling technology with wiki buying and gift guides. ShopWiki doesn’t sell any products and doesn’t charge retailers to include their products in your search results.

ShopWiki’s Overlooked Blog:

• Official ShopWiki Blog

The ShopWiki Overlooked Blog gives the people behind the ShopWiki concept a new place where they can share daily product finds, sites and other unusual offers from around the Web with users. Anyone interested in finding new creative products and merchant shops from industry professionals who know their stuff should certainly save and tune in to the Overlooked Blog by ShopWiki.

ShopWiki Mobile Search:

• Official ShopWiki Mobile

ShopWiki also offers a mobile version of their comparison shopping search. As far as I know, they were one of the first CSE’s to release a mobile version of their product shopping engine and have certainly gained many more users by offering their technology and tools through mobile devices. Now shoppers can find and buy their favorite products “on the go” with ShopWiki’s official mobile shopping site.

James Keating Answers 10 Questions About ShopWiki:

Roughly how many merchants are included within ShopWiki?

ShopWiki.com includes products from over 200,000 merchants in the US, plus another 50,0000 in the international markets we’re entering, such as the UK (ShopWiki.co.uk), Australia (ShopWiki.com.au), and even France (ShopWiki.fr).

ShopWiki.com crawls ecommerce stores to actively pull in products from any store we find on the Internet. This is very different than a typical shopping comparison engine which waits for a merchant to send them a data feed. We will present products from merchants even if they don’t opt in for premier placement, which makes it the most comprehensive shopping search engine on the web.

Roughly how many products are included within ShopWiki?

There are over 250 million offers in ShopWiki.com!

Roughly how many individuals currently work on ShopWiki support and coding teams?

There are 7 people writing code at ShopWiki.com, and since we use crawlers, there is minimal need for support, with two people available for merchants to work with. The automation and self service we designed in from the beginning makes it possible to run ShopWiki.com with a modest size team. As we expand into more countries, we will bring on staff with native language skills for those markets. We even manage to squeeze in some fun with our blog (blog.shopwiki.com) to comment on the wonderful diversity of product ideas and ponder their potential usage.

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

We have done co-branded shopping solutions for MensHealth, and have been speaking with several other sites about working together. As those distribution deals are launched, we will announce them.

What, in your opinion, are the highlight features ShopWiki offers it’s users?

The completeness of shopping search is ShopWiki.com’s core strength. Our shopping search engine will find anything and everything for sale on the Internet. We also make sifting through all of those options a breeze by using natural language in our search, such as “burnt orange strapless dress for under $100″.

What, in your opinion are the highlight features ShopWiki offers merchants?

Ease of participation: We’re probably already crawling your site, so include us in your CPA affiliate program, and we will do all the rest to give you preferred placement in the search results.

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

Every week we make improvements to the site and the infrastructure, some major, some minor. All updates are aimed at improving our ability to find stores with new features, better layouts for shoppers, etc. to make it easier for visitors to find the products at the stores they know and discover stores they didn’t know. We also continuously improve the crawling technology to find more stores and more products.

How does ShopWiki plan to stay competitive with sites like Amazon and eBay marketplaces?

Due to the nature of our crawling technology, we can easily foresee having greater selection than Amazon, and become the de-facto standard to start shopping.

Where do you see ShopWiki in the next 3-5 years?

ShopWiki.com has been designed from the ground up to roll out to just any country in the world, especially smaller countries that would have a hard time supporting a traditional shopping comparison engine relying on data feeds. You’ll see our presence in the US increase, as well as establish a global presence. Any country with even a modest ecommerce market is prime for ShopWiki.com to help shoppers and merchants come together.

What Online product marketplaces, other than ShopWiki, do you personally use to shop from?

Of course, Amazon is a favorite of mine, and I enjoy reading shopper’s opinions on stores at Reseller Ratings before I try a new store. Epinions has been a treasure trove of product information, to which I’ve even contributed.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To James: I would like to personally express my thanks for your participation in this interview style QandA, despite your demanding schedule and responsibilities. Myself and our readers sure appreciate the detailed thought and effort you have put into each of your answers, allowing for all of us to get to know your CSE a bit better. I like the fact that you have started with your goal and stuck to it over the years by building up your crawler technology to the point it’s at now. I love the crawler approach as opposed to the “submission of data” model. It’s great that merchants can get products included within ShopWiki without paying or going through the trouble of generating and submitting a data feed. Another wise move, in my opinion, has been your recent jump into the international shopping-scape. Hopefully that continues to help you grow beyond expectations!! Thanks again James, and please don’t hesitiate to send us any feature releases, updates or announcements in the future.

To our readers: I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading our most recent comparison shopping engine (CSE) QandA with James from ShopWiki.com. I have several more interviews in the works with other comparison engines, data feed companies and top 100 retailers in the future. You may also wish to read back in the archives at some of the ecommerce interviews we have already conducted.

ShopWiki is Featured as one of the comparison shopping wikis on our Product Listing Guide!

Awhile back we kicked off a new interview series with top comparison shopping engine and data feed management companies in an effort to introduce our readers to some of the industry players and to inform merchants about the types of services offered by the different providers. This interview is roughly the fourth CSE services one we’ve conducted and I am happy to report that it appears as though we’ve got a few more in store due to be released within the month.

CPC Strategy is a provider of comparison shopping engine and data feed marketing services for merchants interested in leveraging the power of online shopping engines in an effort to increase shopper, buyer and brand awareness in the world of online retail. CPC Strategy’s solution is meant to take an individual approach to CSE selling taking into consideration that different sellers may have separate goals when it comes to marketing through comparison shopping.

CPC Strategy Comparison Shopping Solution Overview:

CPC Strategy understands that each merchant is different and has unique goals for their Comparison Shopping Campaigns. We strive to work with each of our clients individually to ensure that we fully understand and meet your expectations.

A few of the data feed services offered by CPC Strategy include adding custom product attributes, optimizing individual data feeds, automation of data feed submission, proper feed categorization and even micro-management of each campaign. The overall goal of CPC Strategy is to boost merchant ROI by lowering costs associated with CSE marketing and by increasing shopper conversion rates.

CPC Strategy Data Feed Service Details:

Data Feed Optimization

CPC Strategy will create, optimize, and manage data feeds in an effort to take advantage of the individual unique opportunities offered by each of the most popular comparison shopping engines.

Automatic Data Feed Submission

CPC Strategy will automatically upload the most recent data feed as a way to ensure that each CSE will have access to the most recent, up-to-date and accurate information for the entire product line or catalog.

Product Level Bidding

CPC Strategy will use their precise in-house ROI tracking system to determine and help estimate the most appropriate bids for the entire product line or catalog.

Custom Attributes

CPC Strategy will add any custom attributes to merchant data feeds in an effort to increase product relevancy and shopper conversion rates for the entire product line or catalog.

CPC Strategy Case Studies:

• Online Diamond Merchants (PDF Format)

A competitive analysis of diamond merchants and their experiences with marketing on comparison shopping engines.

• Garden Decor Merchants (PDF Format)

A competitive analysis of garden decor merchants and their experiences with marketing on comparison shopping engines.

• Hand Bag Merchants (PDF Format)

A competitive analysis of hand bag merchants and their experiences with marketing on comparison shopping engines.

CPC Strategy Blog:

• Official CPC Strategy Blog

CPC Strategy now has an official blog. Some of the blog topics include topics ranging from product bidding, click fraud, tracking and landing pages to specific engines such as Google Base, Shopping.com and more.

We strive to provide busy merchants with a Comparison Shopping Campaign Management Solution freeing them to focus on the day to day intricacies of running their own business.

Rick Backus, VP New Accounts, Answers 10 Questions About CPC Strategy:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

CPC Strategy was founded in January 2007 by former employees of the comparison shopping engines. We saw firsthand how merchants were struggling to manage their spend and achieve their target ROI. It was frustrating seeing merchants making the same mistakes repeatedly again without even realizing what they were doing wrong. The lack of uniformity between CSEs makes managing multiple campaigns in-house very difficult and thus ineffective for most merchants.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

We do all of the above as we are a true Full Service Data Feed Management Solution. We provide each merchant with an ftp for data feed updates and then we take care of the rest.

New feeds are generated based on the specifications of each CSE, and our system is set-up for daily deliveries and to track the results. A weekly report is also sent out to each merchant which breaks down ROI at the product level for each CSE Campaign.

In terms of specialty services, we pride ourselves on keeping up with the constantly evolving algorithms of each CSE via regular A/B testing. This helps us in understanding what each engine is looking for and enables us to manipulate our client’s data feeds accordingly.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

If the engine accepts a data feed, we can work with them. A few examples include Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, Google Product Search, etc.

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

We’ll let our merchants speak for themselves: http://www.cpcstrategy.com/testimonials.html

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

Merchants should understand the difference between companies that provide data feed submission tools and full service firms which handle all aspects of data feed management. There are plenty of excellent tools that help merchants manage their own campaigns in-house but we are not one of them. Our goal is to provide our clients a comparison shopping management solution that frees them to focus on the day to day intricacies of running their own business.

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

Underestimating the time and resources needed to build successful long term campaigns. CSEs are not like those rotisserie grills that you see advertised on late night TV, in which you can simply “set it and forget it.”

They also tend to overestimate the similarities between comparison shopping and traditional PPC. While the two share certain similarities, there exists many differences between the two, and requires true niche experts within the field to run effective campaigns.

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

A/B testing! Should you alter your titles and descriptions? Should you implement a price floor and/or price ceiling? Should you run all or some of your inventory?

Data feed management is often times more art than it is science, and different merchants may yield different results–even among those within the same industry–so experimentation is a must. Without A/B testing you’ll never truly know what the right marketing mix is for your products on the CSEs.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

We believe that as time goes on CSEs are going to be thought of as less of a stand-alone destination and more as part of an integrated buying experience.

As it stands, a consumer making a purchase must first research a product, decide on a make and model, as well as where/how to buy it. We believe that in the future CSEs consolidate the buying process, allowing the consumer to make a decision without having to first visit a stand-alone destination.

Social networking will also have a major impact in comparison shopping, as applications are currently available for people to learn the buying habits of their friends, and receive recommendations via that route. Facebook already has an application that has reached the million user mark that attempts to recommend its users products that they may be interested in.

What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?

Hopefully we will stay true to our roots and stay focused on comparison shopping exclusively. Most of our competitors were SEO or PPC agencies that decided to offer a comparison shopping branch to their host of services. As far as I know, we are the only full service firm that focuses exclusively on comparison shopping and I think gives us a competitive advantage.

Also hopefully our new blog – http://blog.cpcstrategy.com – will be as popular as yours

What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?

It’s very hard to make a generalization like this. Performances will range considerably for different types of merchants depending on the engines, and each use different metrics to measure “success”, whether it be on profit margins, or total exposure, etc.

That being said, Nextag has been converting pretty well lately.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Rick: First, terribly sorry for any delays in getting your interview answers published Rick!! I am extremely grateful for your contribution and for you taking the time to provide such detailed, informative, entertaining answers for our readers. The thing I like most about your company and mission is the fact that CPC Strategy was started by ex-CSE employees who saw a need that wasn’t necessarily being fulfilled by competing comparison shopping engine service providers. It shows that your company representatives really do care about the success of your clients and that there is real passion behind the services you offer. It’s a pleasure to advocate for such a firm and quite refreshing to see in this world of “passion for greed” providers. On a side note, glad to see you guys went the blog route, looks like your authors are off to a tremendous start, so keep that up! I look forward to working with you again in the future on more project collaborations such as this interview and wish you a successful future as a leading CSE service provider.

To our readers: We hope you’ve all enjoyed this interview with Rick Backus about CPC Strategy’s data feed and comparison shopping engine services. Remember, we conduct interviews like this one and similar topics on a regular basis so be sure to grab our articles feed or subscribe to email updates so you’re never out of the eCommerce news loop. If you enjoyed this interview you may wish to read additional QandA’s we’ve conducted by visiting our eCommerce interviews category. Thanks again for tuning in everyone, see you next time.

CPC Strategy is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!

This interview marks the second of two we have conducted with the folks over at Channel Intelligence. For more insights into the company and their services be sure to check out the first interview we did with Vik Murty about SellPath.

As a core part of their solution, Channel Intelligence offers industry leading comparison shopping and data feed services for merchants and eCommerce sellers who are interested in receiving high-end channel marketing technology from a company with a long standing reputation in this industry. The individual comparison shopping services are designed to make the process of generating, uploading, optimizing and tracking feeds as simple and easy as possible on the publisher. Also, they are setup in a way that makes it absolutely clear which campaigns are producing what, giving additional insight into the campaigns that may need to be improved or tweaked in order to produce the desired results.

Channel Intelligence Comparison Shopping Services Overview:

Channel Intelligence uses proprietary technology blended with years of industry experience to offer a level of service sought out by some of the biggest brands in eCommerce. CI uses a variety of data services that make up their CommerceIQ technology including AttributeIQ, CategoryIQ, FeedIQ, ImageIQ, ItemNameIQ, KeywordIQ, ModelIQ, TaxonomyIQ, UnificationIQ and UPCIQ. Each of the separate intelligent data services is used to generate and provide the most meaningful and complete information about each product and is then distributed throughout the CI supported comparison shopping engines.

Through our patented and patent-pending technologies, we automatically find and group like products together in our database by understanding and interpreting various naming conventions, categorizing each and every product into our Universal Type-based categories and harvesting essential search variables such as attributes and keywords. This optimized product data can be sent and received in all the commonly used formats, integrating seamlessly with existing channels and offering greater possibilities to marketers and publishers.

Steven Roth, VP of Strategic Consulting, Answers 10 Questions:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

We entered this market in April 2004 at the request of clients that were struggling to get timely data feeds from their IT departments. Since then our services have evolved into full marketing consulting and product optimization services.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

We provide everything mentioned. From a data perspective we provide enhanced product-level optimization services to help ensure retailers’ products are complete, accurate and properly placed on each shopping engine. These services include automated product-level categorization customized for each shopping engine, harvesting of attributes and keywords, and matching of product identifiers between the product catalogs of a retailer and each shopping engine.

You can see more about the data technology platform behind our services here:

http://www.channelintelligence.com/commerceiq.html

We also provide an option that lets a retailer outsource management of all aspects of their shopping engine activities, from strategic consulting to the management of the legal and financial relationships with the engines. Our services are customized to the unique needs of each client and leverage our unique expertise in this very complex and constantly changing marketing channel.

Our day-to-day management includes analyzing trends for each client and the industry in general and taking action that may include adjusting bids, suppressing products or highlighting promotions. We offer complete transparency in these activities through regular client reviews and detailed reports that drill down to the category, brand, product and order level.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

We work with over 50 destinations including all major and upcoming shopping engines, online marketplaces, affiliate networks and others.

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

We have more top-ranked retailers using our service for shopping engine management than any other provider in the industry today. Currently we have over 100 retailers using our SellCast Services including Target, Neiman Marcus, Best Buy, Spiegel, Circuit City, Coldwater Creek, Overstock.com, ShopNBC, West Marine, OfficeMax, Drs Foster & Smith, Skechers, eToys Direct, Northern Tool + Equipment, Smart Bargains, BenchMark Brands, Teleflora, Casual Male and ICE.com.

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

When shopping for a feed generation or management firm, it’s helpful to look at the type of clients a provider works with to help assure a good fit. For example, a typical client at CI is ranked among the Internet Retailer Top 500 online retailers and is committed to profitably growing sales in this marketing channel. Merchants choose Channel Intelligence because of our unique combination of technology and expertise within this marketing channel. There are many low-cost tools from other vendors that smaller retailers can use, but we pride ourselves on providing excellent service and results to the leading online retailers.

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

Underestimating the time and effort it takes to make this marketing channel succeed. Our services and technology solutions are much more scalable than a single retailer could develop on its own, which makes our solutions more cost effective with a shorter ramp-up time.

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

Good, accurate and complete product data. Techniques like bidding and product suppressions are useful, but only after all products are accurately displayed and placed for optimal performance. It is only after this is achieved that business decisions can be made to fine tune the results on the shopping engines.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

We definitely expect to see the best-known shopping engines maintain their presence and hopefully start to become more innovative again. The smaller shopping engines like Jellyfish and Like.com are driving innovation in this industry, which is creating a more compelling user experience and delivering qualified consumers to merchants.

We’ve already started to see specialization of shopping engines by vertical (HealthPricer, CNET, Builders Square, etc.) and target audience (“green” sites, social networking sites, etc.), and this trend will continue. We’re also seeing the product listings on the shopping engines being distributed to thousands of “mini-shopping engines” that are appearing on sites that include FaceBook, review sites and blogs.

As this marketing channel becomes increasingly complex, Channel Intelligence is leading the industry in innovations that include tracking sales from each distributed listing and supporting all of the emerging shopping engines.

What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?

Our specialization in the shopping engine niche has already been expanded to include paid search, mobile marketing, online rebates and our own CI Ad Network. These services share a patented data optimization platform that will allow Channel Intelligence to continue growing the services offered to our clients – while still maintaining the excellent customer services that our clients have come to expect.

What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?

Each client has a unique set of goals, so “best performing” could be measured by traffic, sales, profitability, return on ad spend or any number of other success metrics. The “best performing” shopping engine for a client is the one that delivers on its goals, and the best engine for one client could be the worst engine for another. The key is to first identify how success is measured, and then to customize a marketing plan for this channel that is focused on achieving those success metrics.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Steven: I really appreciate all the time and effort you spent writing and providing these answers to us Steven. I can tell by the passion in your words that you really do care about your customers, company, services and the industry, which are all extremely important in my opinion. It was an absolute pleasure learning more about CI’s data feed services from you and I hope that this isn’t the last time we are able to collaborate on a project. It’s funny to see how the answers one person provides differ from the next. I thought you did a superb job on your responses, spot on. My favorite was probably the very last response you provided in regards to the “best performing” engines. Your answer is so right, I’m surprised others fail to realize the importance of their own unique situation rather than comparing their situation to other sites or competitors and how they perform.

To our readers: Well, I for one hope you all enjoyed reading our latest eCommerce interview with Steven Roth of Channel Intelligence. It was fun for me, I really enjoy these write-ups and it’s that much more enjoyable when I get to conduct them with some of the companies I am a major fan of, like CI. If you enjoyed this interview, you may consider visiting our interviews category which features several from all across the industry. Or, you can always subscribe to our RSS feed and we’ll deliver the news and interviews to you each time a new article is published. Until next time.

Channel Intelligence is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!

ChannelBrain is Freeportway’s (parent company) service for eCommerce merchants looking to market or sell within Online marketing channels such as comparison shopping engines (CSE’s) and shopping portals. ChannelBrain’s solution is designed to help and facilitate the process of syndicating various products offered by merchants and eTailers to numerous CSE’s all from one, simple to use location and tool. In addition to the formatting, ease of syndication and one-click solution, ChannelBrain also offers users the ability to create their campaigns so that progress, or lack of, can be tracked.

ChannelBrain Comparison Shopping Services Overview:

ChannelBrain currently offers three different levels within their data feed marketing solutions. There is no need to install or download additional software in order to use the service. Instead, all the data feed tools are offered within an easy to use, simple to understand web-based application and software. In short, ChannelBrain’s services help merchants to automate, measure and optimize all their Online channel marketing campaigns.

ChannelBrain Service Level Details:

Standard Package

Cost: $59
Engines: 4
Products: 10,000
Support: Yes
API: No
Back Office: No
Analytics: Yes

Basic Package

Cost: $99
Engines: 8
Products: 10,000
Support: Yes
API: No
Back Office: No
Analytics: Yes

Pro Package

Cost: $199
Engines: Unlimited
Products: Unlimited
Support: Yes
API: Yes
Back Office: Yes
Analytics: Yes

View the ChannelBrain Brochure (PDF Format)

ChannelBrain User Forums:

• Official ChannelBrain Forums

The ChannelBrain user forums cover topics ranging from how-to’s and announcements to tips and information about supported engines. Right now the user-base doesn’t seem to be that large, however there are some good posts about the system in there like setup and starting out topics.

ChannelBrain Blog:

• Official ChannelBrain Blog

ChannelBrain also has a blog, where those interested in finding out more, or receiving updates on ChannelBrain, and the CSE industry, can go to learn about insider happenings. The blog archives go back to March 2007, and although it appears as though it hasn’t been updated recently, I checked it out and there is some really good information about their services and views on the industry on it. Be sure to drop by and take a peak when visiting the site.

Gary MacDougall, CEO, Answers 10 Questions About ChannelBrain:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

Our existing customers were requesting feed output from our shopping cart system. We also so a great need to simplify this process as there were (at the time) no affordable solutions on the market that brought all the facets of channel marketing into one package.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

We provide feed generation, tracking and reporting and optimization / management. We also provide integration tools for back-office and shopping cart systems to further ease the process. We support shopping carts like Yahoo Merchant and back-office systems like Mail Order Manager.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

We support 13 at the moment, but we add new ones periodically.

• Google Products
• Yahoo Shopping
• PriceGrabber
• PriceRunner
• Gifts.com
• TheFind
• MSN Live
• Become.com
• BuyersEdge
• Pronto
• Shopping.com
• Shopzilla
• Smarter.com
• Nextag

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

We have about 50 or so customers using the product.

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

Does the company understand the model and is just not selling a “tool”. Lot’s of factors about CSE marketing are not just about getting the data-feed in, there’s a lot a of things that need to be done to be able to understand how to optimize the feed to improve its performance.

Not a lot of tool providers care about that, they focus on the ability to get the feed up to the engine, and thats it.

Choosing a provider that cares about conversions is something that the customers overlook. They look at the cost of the product, pick the cheapest and really get what they pay for.

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

Not understanding how to measure. Just syndicating your inventory and not being able to optimize or improve your ROI is one of the biggest mistakes merchants make. Choosing a good tool to help you do this is probably one of the most important parts of the process.

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

The increased natural link exposure that your products will get. Many of the CSE’s will advertise your links / products to various places that are typically going to help with improving your sites natural search exposure. For example, Shopping.com will syndicate links to your products in Google, this is considered more “back links” to your site, which can improve your organic search results of your site.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

Broken. Sadly, I think that the CSE’s have gotten a little greedy in that they are not keeping up with technology and focusing far too much on clicks and costs per click vs. trying to provide a valuable service to the visitors of their site. When you look at the landscape, its changing rapidly as Google Base / Products has really leveled a lot of the playing field and made it hard to compete in the space for shoppers. The bottom line, customers are getting “savvy” in that they know if they search for a product, the first couple links are “paid”.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Gary: I just wanted to express how appreciative I am that you were able to participate in this QandA! I am a big time advocate of the services you offer and it’s always great to get introduced and find out more about some of the best ones, such as you offer. I am truly sorry for any hick-ups along the way, like email issues or lost question answers, I am not sure what happened there, but really glad that despite all that, we were still able to get it done and posted. Please don’t hesitiate to drop by and comment or fill us all in on anything new going on at ChannelBrain, or Freeportway. Thanks so much for the quality answers and for getting them back as quickly as you did. Look forward to watching your service blossom and grow.

To our readers: I hope everyone enjoyed reading our latest CSE data feed services interview with Gary from ChannelBrain. I have personally learned so much from these QandA’s, it’s been really fun. I look forward to conducting many more in the future, so be sure to let me know if there’s anything missing in them that you’d like to see in future interviews. As always, if you would like to read past interviews I have posted, simply visit the eCommerce Interviews category on our sidebar. If you’d prefer to subscribe, we offer a full articles feed, email updates and RSS for the interviews category only. Just copy and paste any of those URLs into your favorite feed reader. Thanks for your loyal readership everyone, your the reason I do all this and without our readers, it wouldn’t be nearly as special as it has been!

ChannelBrain is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!

While conducting some research last night I accidentally stumbled across what appears to be new Google Universal testing within organic search results. I noticed the new look and layout on several universal searches I queried such as seattle, wa (featuring both book and news universal results), 10,000 bc (featuring video universal results), ecommerce (featuring news universal results) and ball (featuring image universal results).

Notice anything I left out of the above examples? If you guessed shopping/product universal results you are right, but in case you are worried Google forgot about them, don’t be. They do have the new format for shopping results as well. While searching for several different shopping or product related keywords I noticed that Google seemed to be adding an additional horizontal grey line roughly under the third result in the natural search listings. Under the line were the universal results for shopping with a link to Google Product Search results for the same keyword query. I have seen universal results for shopping before, I have even seen them placed throughout the natural listings, even mixed into the middle at times. The thing that I immediately noticed that was different about these universal shopping results were that they were horizontally listed (similar to some horiz. Adsense layouts) rather than stacked on top of one another. Take a look at the first screenshot below.

Universal Shopping Results for ‘silk trees’…

Notice how the natural listing are all vertically stacked 1-3? Then they break up the page with the horizontal grey line, followed by the horizontal shopping results, followed by a second horizontal grey line. It’s pretty funny looking and would take some getting used to for me, but I kind of like the simplistic approach to this layout. It has limited info, so it should prompt a click through to Product Search, which I like as Google has under utilized and under emphasized that vertical for a long time now (the only recently added and tweaked the Shopping link featured in main nav). Also, it has the site name (for branding purposes) and prices. The universal results stand out so they should gain attention in that position, unlike directly under the top or sidebar Adwords sponsored listings position, where they have tested universal results in the past. The only thing missing in my opinon are the little icons next to the universal results, you know, like the shopping bag and movie icons.

Any hoo, it was interesting to me so I decided to write on it to see what everyone else thought of the new testing and layout, or even Google Universal in general. I will add some additional screenshots and notes below, so when you’re finished checking those out, be sure to leave your input in the comments.

Universal Shopping Results for ‘ceiling lamps’…

Universal Shopping Results for ‘silk scarf’…

Universal Blog Results for ‘handbag’…

Go ahead, try some on your own to see what different layouts and universal results you can find! If you notice anything interesting be sure to share it with all of us in the comments. I’ll give you a hint. Most searches for products, movie titles, cities, book, companies, weather, pictures and blog topics should bring up the new universal search layouts in Google.

We have recently added a new section to our comparison shopping guide dedicated to the top data feed companies that currently offer comparison shopping engine listing services including feed generation, submission, distribution, management and tracking. Some merchants find it difficult to setup, manage and track their individual CSE campaigns and sometimes they just don’t have the time to deal with all that’s involved. For this reason, several companies now offer different services designed to help ease or take-over these tasks for any merchant who may fit into either category.

One such company featured on our data feeds list, DoubleClick Performics, was gracious enough to spend some time with me in order to discuss their comparison shopping solution details more in depth. I hope to eventually take the time to talk with each company on our list so that our readers can pick and choose based on the individual needs or goals of any CSE campaign.

DoubleClick Performics is the search engine and affiliate marketing division of DoubleClick Inc. (recently acquired by Google) Performics is based out of Chicago while the international headquarters of DoubleClick are in New York. The company and subsidiaries feature a host of digital marketing and technology services ranging from affiliate marketing, SEM, data feed solutions and consulting to proprietary tracking or reporting technologies, account management and much more to add to their years of industry expertise.

DoubleClick currently services many of the world’s top marketing, publishing and agency brands including About.com, PriceGrabber, Vegas.com, Ford, Friendster and MTV. Performics also serves as a valued resource for top brands such as iRobot, Pottery Barn, United Airlines and many hundreds more to add to their years of expertise.

Here’s what Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, had to say about the DoubleClick acquisition…

We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users.

(I’ll save comments on all that for another article and topic in the future)

DoubleClick Performics Comparison Shopping Solution Overview:

DoubleClick Performics uses a proprietary feed automation platform to build, optimize, and submit your product catalog. Rapid implementation places power back in the marketer’s hands to better control messaging, promote in-stock items and react to seasonal demands.

DoubleClick CSE Solution Allows Merchants To…

• Upload product data via email or FTP site
• Automatically validate and report errors
• Exclude certain products from select partner feeds

In addition, DoubleClick Performics will distribute your feed across 18 of the top comparison shopping engines and much more.

Performics Blog:

• Official Performics Blog

For updates, news and articles on Performics solutions be sure to visit the official DoubleClick Performics blog. While you’re there, make sure you subscribe to their feed, that way you never miss out on upcoming news or announcements. Performics blog categories include affiliate marketing, emerging opportunities, product features, search marketing and system maintenance.

DoubleClick Blog:

• Official DoubleClick Blog

For more information and updated announcements be sure to check out the DoubleClick blog. They have categories covering all their individual products and solutions including topics on creativity and innovation, industry commentary, news and events, research and tips.

Stuart Larkins, VP of Search, Answers 10 Questions About Performics:

What made you decide to get into the feed generation or management business originally? How long have you been servicing merchants, vendors and Online sellers?

DoubleClick Performics was founded as Dynamic Trade, an affiliate marketing company, in 1998 and launched comprehensive search engine marketing services in 2001.

DoubleClick Performics takes a thinking forward approach to performance marketing for 300 of the world’s top brands. With the right blend of insight, technological investment and response-oriented marketing plans we engage and deliver more consumers for our clients.

What are your specific service specialties? Do you currently provide feed generation, distribution, tracking, management or all of the above?

DoubleClick Performics serves clients with three primary performance marketing solutions: affiliate, search and digital consulting. Its affiliate marketing solutions provide advertisers and publishers large and small with industry-leading technology, superior customer service and exceptional support. The firm’s comprehensive search offering pairs consumer engagement expertise with technical innovation to empower advertisers to think forward about search engine marketing; marketers utilize these industry leading services for a wide range of programs, including integrated search, paid search, natural search, local search, comparison shopping and paid inclusion.

Our comparison shopping solution distributes single feeds to multiple sites, facilitating quick and simultaneous updates across properties. DoubleClick Performics manages programs for more than 100 clients across 13 comparison shopping engines. Our experts utilize advanced technology to enhance program development through a proven methodology.

What comparison shopping engines are supported by your service? Which engines do you work with?

DoubleClick Performics manages client data feeds with comparison shopping engines, Web publishers and participants in the company’s affiliate network, some of which include:

Google, Yahoo!, MSN, BizRate, NexTag, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Smarter.com, Gifts.com, Findgift.com, Become.com, Pronto, and PriceRunner.

Who are some of the merchants that currently use you as a feed generation or management firm?

DoubleClick Performics’ data feed management technology helps power more than 100 current DoubleClick Performics data feed clients and offers online advertisers an opportunity to leverage online distribution, improve reach and ranking, and drive sales through search, shopping comparison and affiliate Web sites.

What factors should merchants consider when shopping for a feed generation or management firm?

When selecting a feed management firm, it is important to align with an agency that understands the merchant’s business goals and encompasses the following features:

• Proven expertise in the feed management space
• Scalable technology
• Dedicated account team
• Proprietary optimization methodology
• Strong partnerships with CSEs
• Understand and practice a holistic approach to digital marketing

In your opinion, what is the biggest mistake merchants make when venturing into the comparison shopping world?

Choosing the wrong partner is the biggest mistake merchants can make when venturing into the complex world of data feed marketing.

• Over-automation: Strong technology is only one element of data feeds; experienced practitioners are crucial to successful programs
• Underestimating the value of new-to-file customers; feeds provide the highest NTF rates
• Under-utilization of search, affiliate and other online marketing data to strengthen data feed program
• Too broad an ROI focus; merchants should closely manage ROI at the product level

In your opinion, what is the most commonly overlooked feed aspect, that makes the biggest difference with CSE’s?

Robust tracking and analysis drives more efficient programs. Using analytics to the fullest potential grants deep insight into why some products sold more effectively than others and creates opportunity for correction. DoubleClick Performics analyzes data down to the SKU level, and leverages search and affiliate data to optimize feeds. Knowing what you didn’t sell and why allows you to optimize and correct problems.

In your opinion, what will the comparison shopping-scape look like in the future? Replaced by traditional SE’s? Better than ever? Hardly used? More social? Anything?

As consumers become more sophisticated online and increase their use of comparison shopping engines, advertisers will allocate more resources and budget towards feeds. DoubleClick Performics has superior relationships with the top comparison shopping engines, enabling advertisers to expand reach, improve relevancy and cost effectively connect with more consumers. Through audits of current client initiatives, DoubleClick Performics also provides an understanding of the market landscape and potential opportunities within emerging media and offers strategy based on clients’ capabilities.

What goals do you hope to accomplish and where do you see your firm heading in the next 1-3 years?

DoubleClick Performics continues to strengthen and invest in its teams, technology, proprietary methodologies and strategic partnerships to deliver qualified consumers for clients. Emerging media, mobile, etc.

What is the single best performing comparison shopping engine you currently support? Who earns the most revenue on average for your merchants?

As a leader in the feeds, search and affiliate space, DoubleClick Performics works successfully with thousands of publishers and engines to earn optimal revenue for our advertisers.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

To Stuart: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer a few QandA questions about DoubleClick Performics for our readers. I especially like your stand on empowering the merchant, keeping control in their hands (that is important to the point that they know everything that’s going on with their campaigns in order to properly track ROI). I am really relieved to see that you continue to reach out and inform potential clients about your services and that the recent acquisition hasn’t seemed to put any cramps in the way things are done at your company. I personally can’t wait to see some of the newer innovations a company like DoubleClick is capable of creating, it should certainly be a fun and exciting year in the comparison shopping space. Once again, thanks for taking the time to spread the word about your comparison shopping engine and data feed management solution. Please don’t hesitiate to send us any developments or news about feature releases or company happenings, I would love to work with you again in the future.

To our readers: I really hope all the readers out there have enjoyed this interview with VP of Search at DoubleClick Performics about their services. Keep in mind that we hope to eventually conduct more QandA type interviews like this with other data feed management and service companies. If you liked this interview be sure to check out the others in our interviews section and if you don’t want to miss out on any in the future, you can always subscribe to our articles feed or email updates, that way we can send the next one to you!

DoubleClick Performics is featured as one of the data feed companies on our Product Listing Guide!

JetBlue Airways announced today that they will now be accepting PayPal payments for passengers who wish to make ticket purchases off of their website, JetBlue.com. Todays partnership between JetBlue and PayPal makes for the fifth major airline to begin accepting PayPal as a website payment option for ticket transactions.

Previously, we have reported on other airlines that now accept PayPal including AirTran Airways, US Airways, Southwest Airlines and Northwest Airlines. The addition of JetBlue makes me think that my prediction of multiple payment methods for airlines becoming a trend, back when we reported on Northwest Airlines, was spot on. It’s a common practice nowadays to see many websites accepting a variety of payment methods no matter what is being sold or checked out. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to see Google Checkout make a similar move in the near future.

Here’s what Don Uselmann, Manager of Business Development for JetBlue Airways had to say…

By adding PayPal to our website for safer and easier payment, we are offering more options and even greater flexibility to customers purchasing travel on JetBlue. PayPal provides just the kind of security and convenience that meets our travelers’ expectations.

Here’s what Tyler Hoffman, senior director of merchant services at PayPal had to say…

Millions of consumers around the world prefer to pay with PayPal because of its safety and simplicity. We are thrilled that, as one of the nation’s most popular airlines, JetBlue is now offering its customers the ability to pay for flights via PayPal.

An extra added benefit to airlines accepting PayPal is that the purchaser doesn’t have to share financial information with the airlines each time they buy a ticket online. Now, with PayPal, JetBlue customers can pay online through debit cards, bank accounts, stored balance, or credit cards without sharing any financial data.

Don’t look for this trend to end anytime soon. There’s still plenty of airlines that do not accept PayPal, and other alternative payment methods. I expect a few others to jump on board, given they probably should have done this a long time ago at the beginning, or peak, of the online travel spike. Imagine how many ticket purchasers went somewhere else or didn’t buy directly off of an airlines site because a travel comparison site offers a variety of payment methods and the airlines themselves do not? I expect it was a lot and now the airlines are scrambling to attract more buyers direct through their own sites. Not to say that they will end partnerships with price comparison travel sites, just that they spent a lot on their own sites and don’t spend near as much advertising them as sites like Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz.

PlumberSurplus.com, one of the top Online retailers of 2007, has recently launched a brand new eCommerce and entrepreneurship blog dedicated to sharing their experiences, lessons and insights within the eCommerce space during their time selling Online.

I think the idea of retailers sharing their experiences with the rest of the space is fantastic and could really shed some light on many of the things that work and some that don’t. It’s a great way to dispel myths, gain insights into real world experience and an opportunity to learn from someone who knows many of the steps needed to reach that ultimate goal of entrepreneur success. It reminds me of our Store Spotlight series with some of the top 100 retailers. In fact, not too long ago we conducted an in depth interview with Zach about some of the things that have led up to PlumberSurplus’ success.

Here’s what Zach Applegate of PlumberSurplus.com had to say about the new blog…

Many of us here at PlumberSurplus.com have been talking about this for a while are excited to get it up and running. The blog will be a collective of experiences, thoughts, processes and updates from people that are not only actively working in eCommerce but are also zealous about the industry.

The PlumberSurplus blog is not the typical eCommerce merchant blog, where retailers share product information, updates, contests, etc. Rather it is a blog where the folks at PS get to share their experiences from the eCommerce industry with the rest of us as they happen. They already have a bunch of staff members lined up as authors, so it will be interesting to see what each of them have to bring to the table, specialty wise. So far, Vanessa, Zach and Matt have been blogging the most, but it looks like there may be up to 10 authors who will contribute regularly.

Some of the PS blog authors include…

• Zach
• Vanessa
• Matt
• Brian
• Josh

Some of the PS blog categories include…

• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Marketing
• Development
• Customer Service

It’s great to see this type of enthusiasm/participation from one of the top 100 internet retailers, and their willingness to share experiences, findings and their story makes it that much more of a great idea, in my opinion. I for one can’t wait to see where they take the blog and how it (and the links it generates) affects their retail side of the site (since the blog is on the same domain as the store). So far, the posts and content seem to be right up my alley and I’m sure it will be the same for others here. If you haven’t already, be sure to drop by the new PlumberSurplus eCommerce blog and begin learning about eCommerce from a top online retailer.

Today Kriyari, Inc., a Web 2.0 storefront network creator, launched their latest Online retail project, a unique personalized shopping service, called iStorez. Earlier this week I was able to get together with Kriyari’s CEO, Anand Jagannathan, to discuss iStorez in more detail. In addition, I took advantage of the special site launch preview and went through the steps necessary to create and publish my own personal storefront to shop from on iStorez.

The concept behind the newly launched site is wonderful and see all kinds of potential for an “opt-in, opt-out” shopping service like this within the Online selling space, for both merchants and shoppers, but especially for retailers who already run regular email marketing campaigns.

iStorez already has some biggest names in eCommerce participating in their unique shopping experience, including many of the hottest 100 retailers. With strategic partnerships, innovative features and a unique concept to create a more personalized shopping experience, it won’t be long before iStorez becomes a regular destination for today’s most savvy Online consumers. It’s certainly found a permanent home in my shopping bookmarks.

iStorez Personalized Shopping Overview:

Think of a glossy magazine featuring 1000s of current deals and trends directly from top brands and stores. Only this time it’s online, on-demand and one-click away from you. Think of a storefront as an extension of a retail store’s website. It is similar to the physical store window displays that you see as you walk through a mall. At iStorez, you can browse 1000s of storefronts from 100s of stores without ever leaving your warm chair and hot cup of coffee. And iStorez always presents the most relevant and newest storefronts based on what you are looking for.

With iStorez you can:

• Discover cool or trendy products
• Find the latest product releases or brands
• Shop from a wide variety of top stores
• Browse other shoppers’ personalized storefronts

Navigate your tabs to see the different store offers:

The iStorez tabs make it easy to browse the different store offers within your personalized storefront. Simply click from tab to tab and get instant offers from the stores you have chosen to include within your personalized shopping experience. Arrows to the left and right of the end tabs make it easy to navigate in either direction. High resolution graphics, new products, hottest offers and trendy brands are all part of the iStorez shopping service.

Enter search terms into the search bar or use tags:

Simply enter in words or phrases related to what you’re shopping for and get instant results from iStorez massive product, brand and store index. The results are very accurate, for instance I entered “shoes” as a search term and iStorez brought back results for Endless, Shoes.com, Nordstroms, Steve Madden, Shoemall, Puma, Zappos and more. The tags for “shoes” included leather, payless, styles, boots, sandals, fashion and more related to the original query term.

Browse by category or by store or brand:

Once you have created a custom shopping experience on iStorez, you can browse “your mall” by navigating your categories, stores, or tags. There is also an advanced search option to browse within your personalized storefront. Users can easy navigate between the store names, classification or even deeper through the use of personalized tagging. Easily search categories, sub-categories and alphabetically.

Creating Your Own Custom iStorez Storefront:

Some easy steps to help you create your iStorez storefront:

1. Sign in or Sign up to begin using iStorez
2. View the top right drop-down menu and select, “See all stores”
3. Click the “My Mall” menu and select “Manage My Mall”
4. A full list of available stores should appear organized into categories
5. Click any check boxes next to the stores that you shop at most and click Add
6. You have successfully created your personalized iStore storefront
7. View the top right drop-down again and select “See [username] stores” to refresh
8. Share your personalized shop with anyone (preview.istorez.com/m/stores/username)

Anand Jagannathan, CEO of Kriyari, Inc., Answers 10 Questions About iStorez:

How did the idea for iStorez come about originally? What’s your main mission?

The idea for iStorez came about when a mall-averse person like me found myself frustrated-to-death with online shopping. Why isn’t there an online equivalent to browsing through the shopping inserts in the Sunday newspaper? Why is it so hard to find out what’s really new and on sale? Email newsletters are great when I need them and can find them, but most of the time I don’t and I can’t. Having founded an e-mail marketing company previously, I thought to myself, how cool would it be if there was a way to intelligently collect, organize and search e-mail newsletters across hundreds of stores and brands? And along those lines, why not transform those newsletters into visual, impactful storefronts as well? And that was how iStorez was born.

Our mission? Simple. To introduce consumers to a brand new online shopping experience that’s just as fun as strolling through their personalized local mall!

How can shoppers benefit from using a site like iStorez?

iStorez combines a ‘patent in process’ storefront creation engine with Web 2.0 technologies to deliver continually fresh, timely and relevant content for shoppers. What that really means is shoppers no longer have to sign up for email newsletters to find out about promotions, or search their in-box for what’s new or hunt across the Internet for special coupons! An added plus is that many of our promotions are exclusive and not generally available on other sites. For those who read in bullets, iStorez gives you:

• Recency: only see what’s current, not last year’s trends and expired promotions
• Relevance: only see what you asked for, not thousands of product listings
• Personalization: only see content from your favorite stores, not everyone’s

What makes iStorez shopping experience different than a traditional comparison shopping engine?

Wow. A lot. For starters, it’s well known that comparison shopping engines (CSE) perform well for products with SKUs, like electronics, but rather poorly for soft goods like apparel, furniture, gifts, etc. This is because soft goods are less feature-based and you often want to know what’s in season or what’s hot, before making a purchase. CSEs, unfortunately, don’t have a strong notion of recency or seasonality. iStorez, on the other hand, focuses on making it easy for consumers to find out what’s new and what’s on sale across their favorite stores. It delivers a customized shopping experience that dynamically changes based on what a visitor to the site is looking for (e.g. handbags, iPod) or a season theme (e.g. valentines, spring fashions). No more looking through thousands of product listings of products you’re not really interested in!

What are some of the stores shoppers can expect to find within iStores?

You will find many popular favorites as well as niche stores in our network, like Coach, Burberry, Aeropostale, Nike, Puma, BabyCenter, Cole Haan, Aerosoles, Sony, The Apple Store and many more.

What are some of the useful features iStorez offers its users? Store partners?

iStorez users can:

• Build-a-mall: Select only the stores you like and build a personal shopping experience
• Share-a-mall: Share your mall with friends using an iStorez link that’s uniquely yours
• Tag storefronts: Tag products you like or even create a visual gift registry
• Search storefronts: Search the rich content by promotional theme (eg. Valentine’s), by product category (eg. women’s apparel), by product item (eg. handbags), by store (eg. Lancome) or term (eg. coupons, free shipping)

Store partners/retailers can:

• Target demographic groups: Advertise to the groups that are most likely to respond to your brand, eg. shopaholic SUSAN, wall street WILLIAM. (Edit by eCopt: I also built my own iStorez Storefront)
• Upload custom storefronts: Leverage our granular targeting to deliver different experiences to different shopper profiles, eg. male-targeted storefronts for male shoppers, etc.
• Get detailed reporting: Measure the effectiveness of your advertising real-time
• Get full-page advertising: Keep your merchandising message and advertise your brand in all its glory

In essence, retailers get a 3-in-1: the Branding of display advertising, the traffic of Search Marketing and the Conversion of e-mail marketing!

Can any store become a partner with iStorez? How can I include my store or products?

Yes, any store with an e-mail marketing program can partner with iStorez with zero effort on their part. Stores without an e-mail marketing program can also participate easily by leveraging the retailer tools that we have built. For more information on partnering with iStorez, please contact sales [at] kriyari [dot] com.

What future features can we look forward to seeing on iStorez? Anything in the works?

Lots. We are continually working towards our mission of making iStorez a shopping experience that’s just as fun (if not more!) than strolling through your local mall. Get on our newsletter list and we’ll keep you posted. Absolutely no spam.

Is there a way for me to network with other shoppers? See what they like?

Yes. Today, you can share your mall with friends and check theirs out to see what stores they shop at, what products they like and what tags they have added. We have some major initiatives to add to our social networking features as well as tie into the leading social networks!

How will a personalized shopping experience, such as iStorez, change the way consumers buy Online?

Well, consumers’ expectations are going to rise. They are going to expect to see store experiences that are relevant to them, not advertising. They are going to expect to see the latest and freshest content every time, not outdated trends and expired promotions. They are going to expect to get recommendations for new and interesting stores and brands based on their shopping preference. The level is definitely going to rise.

What are some of your favorite online stores? Which would you include in your iStorez profile?

Wow, that’s a tough one since it changes all the time. You can check out my current list (http://preview.istorez.com/m/stores/anandj), but then in a few weeks it can be different, and that’s the beauty. After I have bought my iPod and camera accessories, I don’t want to see electronic stores. Come to think of it, I better start looking for Valentine’s.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

It is so great to be able to preview and review new and innovative ideas like the newly launched iStorez personalized shopping service. I love it when someone sees a need for a particular product/service, or a need to make one better and creates a solution for it. In instances where this happens the solution is often times really beneficial since usually the idea is sparked from a passion or interest in the idea topic.

I see a lot of potential for a service like iStorez, it kind of blends high-resolution print or email ads, with deals, new items, promotions and trendy products within a social comparison shopping environment, very creative. I do have some recommendations for the layout, usability and some personal feature requests that I plan on sending through isTorez feedback form. I won’t be too picky since they only launched today and are probably still testing a lot of the main functions. If you have feedback, or just want to send iStorez your opinion, simply email feedback [at] istorez [dot] com or fill out their feedback form.

I can’t wait to see how iStorez’ launch goes and how they begin to improve their already useful shopping service in the future. I was really surprised by some of the stores who are already participating, there are many big names.

To Anand & iStorez Team: Thanks for the chance to get a sneak-peak trial run of iStorez guys, I think you have all done a wonderful job putting everything together in preparation for your beta launch today. Please congratulate your team and let them know to keep up the good work. Please don’t hesitate to keep us posted on upcoming iStorez improvements or feature releases, I would be happy to cover the service more in the future.

To our readers: I hope you all enjoyed this little interview style QandA with Anand from iStorez. Look for more eCommerce interviews like this one with other great shopping services, industry professionals and company founders. As always, you can subscribe directly to the interviews category feed or our main articles feed to get updates in real-time from any RSS feed reader. What are you waiting for, get feed already!

Practial Ecommerce (PE) and Yahoo Small Business have teamed up for an excellent offer going on right now where Yahoo Store merchants can get a full one year subscription to Practical Ecommerce’s annual print magazine, complete with all 6 issues for FREE (magazine printed bi-monthly). Yes, I said FREE for a year compliments of Yahoo. This is a great way for PE to gain new reader subscriptions to their industry leading eCommerce magazine, it also helps many of Yahoo’s small to medium-sized merchants gain insights into the world of eCommerce and selling Online.

PE has three main ways of distributing information to their readers; one is the print magazine previously mentioned, they also offer an Online version of the magazine through their blog, podcasts, forums and regular columns and finally they send out a regular newsletter (EcommerceNotes) with tips and resources to help more merchants on their journey to Online selling success. PE magazine, site, blog, forums and newsletter contains unique eCommerce related features, tool, interviews, site profiles, professionals and many recurring departments, such as search engine optimization, email marketing, customer conversion, legal issues, pay per click advertising and much more.

If you are a Yahoo Store owner and wish to take advantage of the FREE subscription, visit here.

I am not sure exactly how many Yahoo Store merchants there are who read our blog, however I do know there’s at least a few of you out there I have spoken to. If you are currently selling on the Yahoo platform, be sure to take these guys up on their offer, anything that gives you more insight into the business, marketing and designing side of eCommerce, the better.

It appears as though the complimentary subscription offer is paid for by Yahoo, and although I am not the biggest fan of their platform or support, this promotion does show that they are trying to help their merchants and aren’t afraid to spend some dollars to do it. I think this offer is great promotion for both companies and excellent linkbait to boot.

I personally do not subscribe to the print version of PE, however I am a regular reader of their blog and am a fan of the authors, topics and ideas that they offer within the Online version. PE is one of the eCommerce information resources featured in our best eCommerce blogs and sites article.

I came upon an interesting new service for Online sellers the other day and I wanted to share it with all our readers as an eCommerce Idea article. It’s really unique, useful and right in line with current eCommerce trends.

Before we get into the new service I wanted to briefly mention our last eCommerce Ideas article on Using Creative Linkbait and Engaging Customers At The Same Time. It featured another really creative eCommerce idea that at least one merchant is using. This idea article has the same concept, in that it’s a unique or creative idea that eCommerce merchants can use to improve or enhance their stores, however it’s not related to linkbait and customer features as much as it is related to eCommerce video content and store usability. Same concept, different topic basically.

Finally, on to the new service by interactive video design company FlipSeek, who has recently released a very unique application which allows eCommerce store shoppers to click on items displayed within video content or catalog demos as a way to make product purchases directly from the interactive video. The product is called Live Link Video, it allows merchants to develop and implement videos in which users can click on hyperlink ‘hot spots’ to either get product information or buy certain items highlighted within the video content (sort of similar to the transactional banners and shopping gadgets article we published).

Here’s what Adam Marino, Flipseek President, had to say about Live Link Video…

They send us the electronic video and we convert it by layering over the hyperlinks and adding the captions to it, and then saving it as a Flash file so it’s compatible for everybody on the web to see it.

Flipseek apparently released Live Link Video on January 2nd after about two months in beta. Their specialty is not creating the videos, or implementing them into a merchants site, it is more about converting a typical Web video into an interactive video capable of displaying the hyperlink hot spots (although they will work with merchants either using their own in-house video specialist or another third party ad agency). Once the merchant has submitted their video content to be converted, whether it be for a commercial, video tour, product demo or any other video presentation, the converted files are then returned in order to be implement into the site design and content. Currently, the following video formats can be converted into a Live Link Video; mpeg, mpg, flv, mov, avi, or wmv. The videos will then be converted to a standard Flash SWF file. Their standard delivery time to convert files is about 3-5 business days, however more complex projects can take longer. Contact a representative to see if your project fits within the standard time frame.

Here are some other video uses suggested by Live Link Video…

• TV Show Product Placement
• Online Store Tours
• Commercials
• Online Infomercials
• New Product Showcases
• Movie Trailers
• Fashion Shows
• Cooking Shows
• Training Videos
• How-To Demonstrations
• Business Proposals

Here are some Live Link Video Samples (click images to watch)…

(Click image to watch, video is not embedded so you will be taken to a different site)

(Click image to watch, video is not embedded so you will be taken to a different site)

(Click image to watch, video is not embedded so you will be taken to a different site)

I am really impressed with how this feature works and all the potential uses it has within the eCommerce space, especially if video marketing on the Web is already part of your strategy and you already have the content developed on your end. Video is already being implemented by several Hot 100 retailers and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. Unique ideas such as interactive shopping links are setting new trends and are sure to become a standard in eCommerce before too long.

Take an interactive video for a spin on your site, see how it converts and determine if there’s potential for it for your products, brand or store. You never know what will work and what won’t unless you try it out, but please, be sure to have the necessary tools in place to track ROI. That’s one thing I think a feature like this is lacking, a great way to track which videos are being clicked and how many purchases are coming from those clicks. Something to think about maybe. Let me know if anyone here knows of a good way to track these things through the checkout process, I am not very familiar with multi media files and the potential uses for them.

Caught this announcement on the Google Checkout Blog yesterday and it also appeared on Search Engine Land today. It looks as though Google has added another Trends tool to their arsenal that caters to eCommerce sellers, shoppers and even eTail professionals and search engine marketers.

The new eCommerce trends tool is called Google Checkout Trends. The tool is similar to Google Web Search Trends, except that the Checkout Trends tool only aggregates useful sales data from Google Checkout merchants and charts the data on an easy to use, easy to read interface for the user to see. Basically, it shows users important trend data about who is buying and selling what from Checkout.

Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds. (Of course, all the data is anonymized first.) So if you’re interested in how sales of Batman or Spider Man paraphernalia compare, or are wondering just how popular Ugg boots are these days, visit Checkout Trends for a glimpse into online shopping.

Here’s a screenshot using the example… shoes, boots, heels, slippers

Click the thumbnail to see a larger version of this screenshot.

To use Google Checkout Trends simply type a keyword or phrase into the search bar or compare multiple words by separating phrases with a comma. The example above illustrates how the terms shoes, boots, heels and slippers were entered into the search field and compared within the results below. Other common examples include ipod compared to zune, nike compared to reebok, dress compared to skirt and any other comparative data you can dream up.

To interpret the results simply drag your mouse over the lines in the chart and view the colored phrases in the top right of the chart. You will see the numbers next to each phrase will change for all the compared terms. The example shows that in middle December boots were at an all time high, showing 100, while shoes were very low, showing 1.90, but not higher than slippers at .14 or heels at .08. Interesting stuff, but doesn’t quite seem right that the shoes was lower than boots from December to January, the other two make sense. Maybe there are lots more boots sold due to it being winter in so many places? Lets go check June for the same query. Ah, just what i thought. If you scroll to the left back to June, you’ll see that indeed shoes is higher than boots as people tend to buy less boots in summer and more shoes. Makes sense.

Keep in mind that the data and results are from Google Checkout merchants only and do not represent the entire shopping search scope, however as Google eCommerce services continue to grow in popularity and among users we will see more useful, accurate data from the various Google Trend tools. It would be interesting to compare the main Web Search Trends to the Checkout Trends for the same query. I think I might try that out, one sec…

Ok back, here’s the data from Google Web Trends on the same query…

Interesting to compare the two. On Web trends shoes has out performed the rest for the past three years, but if you look at the end of 2007 (around November to December, you’ll see boots gets very close to shoes on the trend data chart. So the data looks pretty close, just not as refined, like Checkout Trends is. It’s great to be able to gain access to data like this strictly related to buying and selling products. I applaud Google, thanks guys I can see some great potential for this new Checkout Trends data.

Other Google Trend tools include the main Google Web Trends, Google Hot Trends, Google Reader Trends and Google News Trends.

It’s always interesting to see the new and innovative ways that Online retailers are coming up with to generate buzz, links and customer interaction on their eCommerce sites in an attempt to boost rankings, visitors, conversions, average orders or sales. Recently, I came across a great example of one retailer who uses creative ideas to generate new links and engages customers at the same time.

May’s Lab, a clothing retailer, has recently added a feature to their site which allows shoppers or current customers to upload photos/videos of themselves wearing different items from the clothing manufacturers site. The new section, labeled Gallery, is a fun, innovate, creative way for May’s Lab to engage their current customers or shoppers and build brand buzz, which also helps to generate more inbound links to the site.

In addition to the new section and upload feature (as well as the promotional benefits), May’s Lab is also giving their customers a chance to be featured in the shop gallery, which wins them a swell prize from the retailer. The photo/video with the best rating will automatically be eligible to become a May’s Lab featured model.

You are the core of our company and we want you to be featured in our site. Submit a photo or video of you wearing any May’s Lab item and you will win a prize if chosen to appear in this gallery. The person in the photo/video with the best rating will become our next featured model.

How cool is that? Not only are they helping to boost their business, while engaging customers at the same time, they are also building a community of followers and even give several of them a chance to get modeling exposure on the site (which could even lead to other gigs for the featured models). This creative eCommerce idea is a perfect example of how to do it right. I had never heard of May’s Lab before finding out about the unique feature, but believe me, their name remains imprinted in my mind due to the fantastic branding and promotion move on their part.

Here’s one of the photos to give you an idea of what they are looking for…

Picture of Tanya taken during a photo shoot in San Diego, CA. (May’s Lab staff member)

Take a few notes from May’s Lab when brainstorming or thinking up new, fun and innovative ways to build brand buzz, generate more exposure, build community interaction, build customer relationships and appeal to the linkerati. If you can think of a unique and creative way to accomplish all of those things, that’s ideal. If not, keep trying, I am sure companies who use strategies like this regularly try many times before getting it right, so don’t be upset or get down if a few of your ideas flop, keep trying. It will be worth it when you finally think up the ones that are successfully or generate results beyond expectations.

If you’re like any other person on Earth you have probably subscribed to one or more print catalogs in the past and currently receive them via your mailbox each month. Personally, I receive about 3 -4 paper catalogs each month from companies including Cabelas, Land’s End, Victoria Secret, Business 2.0 and many even a few more like the Costco business catalog or my update catalogs from Dell, HP, T-Mobile and more.

Brief Overview & Article Motivation:

Recently, I was forced to rummage through my different catalog subscriptions in an attempt to slim down the junk mail I often receive. The reason I decided to slim down my mailing subscriptions was due to my 9 day vacation and having three post office bins of mostly junk mail (plus Holiday cards) to go through when I returned.

When I got Online and began researching different methods to unsubscribe from my catalogs, I accidentally discovered a site I had never seen before called Catalog Choice. It’s basically a way for individuals to unsubscribe from paper catalogs they receive in the mail at no cost. Catalog Choice takes the approach that their service can make your life easier, eliminate unwanted catalogs and helps to save and preserve our environment (sort of along the lines of a green initiative). Their main objective is to reduce the amount of unwanted catalogs sent to consumers each month.

The Catalog Choice community is presently 355,659 persons strong, having already opted out of 4,495,373 catalogs. Together, we are going to improve our lives, and conserve our planet’s natural resources!

Simply go to the Catalog Choice homepage and click the Get Started link to sign-up.

Catalog Choice Service Overview:

In a nut shell you use the site as follows…

• Find and opt-out of catalogs. Find your catalog, click decline and fill in the details. We will contact the merchant on your behalf and request that they no longer send you their catalog.
• Review and manage your declined catalogs. Add notes, report infractions, change your customer number, revoke your request on the My Choices screen.
• Manage your profile. Add additional names and addresses you need in the opt-out process, change your login, or delete your account on the My Profile page.
• Help spread the word. Tell your friends about this service on the Invite Friends screen.
• Questions? Check the FAQ screen first, then contact us if you need help.

Finding Catalogs:

Finding popular print catalogs using Catalog Choice is easy. Just navigate to the Find Catalogs tab after you’ve logged in and use the search or browse functions to find the catalogs you wish to unsubscribe from. Users can even suggest catalogs that do not currently appear within the catalogs database. In addition, you can navigate to catalogs using the alphabetical listings under the search and browse tabs. Once you have located a catalog, opting out or unsubscribing is easy.

Opting Out:

After the catalog you wish to unsubscribe from has been located just click the Decline button to the right of the catalog subscription you are planning to opt out of. I light box window will pop up with additional fields for information needed in order to opt out from the catalog you choose. In the window you will see the catalog you are declining, your name (along with choice for current resident or new name), your mailbox and an optionally, your customer number. If there is no customer number on record simply click not available and move to the next step. Once the appropriate information is included, just click the Decline Catalog button near the bottom (you can also cancel the form by clicking the appropriate link to the right of the button).

Managing Catalogs:

In the My Choices section you can manage and view your declined catalogs. Actions in the My Choices section include the ability to see merchants online shopping alternative, view details of online shopping links, add individual catalog notes, report infractions if you continue receiving declined catalogs, revoke decline requests and modifying your custom numbers. So far the features in this section are very handy and useful to users who are attempting to unsubscribe from a particular catalog.

Profile Management:

The My Profile section allows you to manage personal information that is used when opting out of catalog subscriptions. Actions in the My profile section include the ability to manage your catalog names, change logins, manage, edit or delete addresses, manage email preferences and lastly you can even cancel your Catalog Choice membership. It’s an easy way, from one page, to manage all you account or personal information.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

Obviously, I only expect you to use a service like Catalog Choice if you do indeed WANT to unsubscribe from print catalogs you receive in the mail. During the demonstration above I listed some of the print catalogs I subscribe to, however I never ACTUALLY declined, opted out or unsubscribed from any of the catalogs I listed (who would unsubscribe from Victoria Secret anyway?). I am happy to receive the catalogs I currently get each month, so I didn’t really want to decline any of them, however I thought the tool, concept and application were worth posting about and mentioning for anyone who might possibly need a service like Catalog Choice offers.

So, is catalog marketing and concept behind print catalogs done for? Not in my opinion, although many younger generations probably will not see the need for print catalogs in the future, especially with the ever emerging technology, information and shopping that the Web has to offer. Do I think it’s a good idea for professional catalogers or catalog companies to consider environmental effects of their catalog campaigns? Absolutely. I also think that Online versions of print catalogs will become more common, but if these companies offered eCommerce, it could potentially kill two birds with one stone.

I personally think print catalogs could include less pages within them, but with advertising sales it’s probably not realistic to think they will skim down their own content to reduce the number of pages I have to thumb through. In the end, it’s about the company that is sending the catalog. Many of them have been around for years, do not bug the crap out of you and tend to follow the rules for opting out, but there are flaws in the current system. If companies continue to use direct mail and paper catalogs the way they currently do, it won’t be long before they are long forgotten and replaced by technology on the Web, or other.

It looks like the folks over at PriceGrabber have rolled out a fresh new look for the comparison shopping sites homepage. There were some initial reports from around the blogoshere that they have been testing it for about a month now, and it looks like they are pleased with it, as the new design appears to be here to stay (before it was only being displayed at certain times to certain visitors).

The first thing you’ll probably notice that’s different is that they are no longer using a 100% fluid width homepage design, which can still be seen if you navigate anywhere off the new homepage. Not only that, but the new fixed width layout is center aligned, which is a common practice among many of the CSE’s, although 100% widths make it easier to squeeze in all the different data that is needed to run a comparison shopping engine in 2008 (comparisons, reviews, useful features, updates, etc). In addition to the new layout and fixed design, there are other much need improvements that have been made.

New PriceGrabber Homepage Screenshot:

Click the thumbnail to see the whole page, then check out the individual sections below

New Search Bar & Quick Links Section:

One of the things that stood out to me the most about the new design was the new and improved search bar with quick links section. On the old design, PriceGrabber had the quick links on a green background and the search bar was on a gray background below the links. Now you’ll see they reversed the order, and background colors in an attempt to improve how user interact with their product search.

Now the search bar appears on the green background and the quick links are within the whitespace below the search. The search bar also features a sampling of popular product searches such as iPods, Digital Cameras, GPS and Plasma TV.

Better Category Layout & Mouse-Hover Subcategories:

Another much needed improvement to the PriceGrabber design is their new category structure featuring mouse-hover subcategories (which I haven’t seen too much within the CSE space). The old categories were plain jane text links without any access to the subcategories other than clicking through to one of the category pages. The links were blue and appeared within a lightly shaded rounded corner gray background image (they can still be seen by clicking off the new homepage). It looks to me that they have added a few new categories or maybe promoted some of their popular subcategories to the main category tree (cats used to start with computers, now appliances are at the top).

The new categories are green, bigger and have a 100% better looking background image to make them stand out even more on the page. Also, near the bottom of the homepage category tree you can see featured or special interest categories which are purple in color, rather than green. not only have the categories been rearranged/expanded, colored differently and improved in appearance, they also feature new and improved mouse-hover subcategories. Hover over any of the new homepage categories and now shoppers can catch a glimpse of popular subcategories that reside within a main category. for instance, if you hover over Appliances, you’ll see subcategories for Small Appliances, Large Appliances,, Air Cleaners, Heating & Cooling, Vacuums and a link to more for that category. Pretty impressive feature, useful too. It also makes for good usability and provides easier access to deeper pages.

Featured, Most Popular & Highest Rated Products Section:

One of the best improvements to the PriceGrabber front page is the addition of their featured products display. It runs displays and describes product details for some of the featured items including GPS, Storage Devices, Cameras, Boots and TVs in a visible, easy to use, easy to read display box. The previous homepage design main space was filled with their categories much like link directories do, in my opinion, this is much better use of the prime real estate right at the top middle of the main page content area. The old look gave a lot more precedence to the categories and very little to the different useful shopping sections. To their credit, the graphics off to the right they used to have for these sections were nice, but this is much better.

Now the featured product area on the main page includes a variety of information and links to the featured product details and of course, links to buy those items or compare prices. The screenshot example above show the TomTom One GPS, priced as low as $173.98, with 4.5 out of 5 stars from 25 reviews, description, link to more GPS, and finally, the really useful links for comparing prices, reading product details or reviews and discussions. Overall, this works out great as they are able to display 5 of the different featured products, with all the pertinent information a consumer would need, only using up a small portion of the main page. Great use of technology, space and information by the PriceGrabber team.

Not only does PriceGrabber do a quality job of displaying their featured products, they also do it with their most popular and highest rated products. As we mentioned above, the old homepage look focused on categories in the main content space. Another wise move on PriceGrabbers part was adding sections here instead dedicated to showcasing popular and rated items. Using that space in this manner is much better and was indeed another much needed improvement.

The new most popular and highest rated product section is a great example of the direction PriceGrabber is headed. The most popular products are chosen and displayed based off of the top three viewed items on the site. The highest rated products are chosen and display based of user votes. The three with the most votes are displayed on the new homepage. Most Popular items show shoppers a thumbnail, product name and prices where as the highest rated items show shoppers a thumbnail, product name and the number of stars/reviews received. Below each section are links to view more popular or rated products on PriceGrabber.

PriceGrabber Sponsored Blogs & ShopGreen Section:

PriceGrabber has done a very smart thing by introducing more of their blogs and the content within them right in plain view on the new homepage. Blogs are a great source of traffic, links and community loyalty, I am impressed when I see CSE’s use blogs, but even more impressed when they use them in the right manner. PriceGrabber is now able to direct more traffic to their blogs and vice versa, making it easier for the community or readers to interact with the shopping engine. The old design featured small banners off to the right of the category links, they were in plain view, but they didn’t make them sound as exciting or look as coo as where and how they do it now.

The new blog and ShopGreen section is directly under the featured, popular and rated product within the main page content area. The first banner and text link goes to blogBytes (personal computing news), the second to Gadget Blog (gadget news) and lastly a banner and link for their SHOPgreen section and blog (learn about green shopping). Notice how all the blogs and ShopGreen section reside on the PriceGrabber.com domain and not separate domains link shopgreenblog or whatever. Many sites do not follow this rule and are missing out on links, traffic and making their domain authoritative by not putting blogs and useful site section on the company domain.

Plenty Of Room For Anything Else:

The old PriceGrabber site didn’t leave much room within the main page content for promotions, new sections or anything else the team might have to showcase on the main page. Seasonal graphics, specials, linkbait ideas, contests, more items and more could all be possible fits for the remaining space below the featured, popular, rated, blogs sections.

The extra space on the main page currently features a PriceGrabber promotion for post holiday products. The post holiday guide is meant to help consumers shop for gift ideas, post holiday stress relief and more. This is a great idea that I can’t remember seeing on any other CSE before. It is a useful section that adds some great content to their site. I know these kind of guides get tons of visitors, lots of links and pretty decent buzz around the Web, depending on the type of guide or products mentioned in it. It”s a good start for them and the extra space on their main page. Can’t wait to see what they decide to rotate in ant out of that area.

Storefronts, Alerts & Product Reviews:

The old PriceGrabber main page hardly gave any attention to some of their main features including PriceGrabber Storefronts, Lists and Alerts or Product Reviews. They used to just appear as text links, there was never really anything that made them stand out on the page before.

That’s all changed with the new look. As Pricegrabber is attempting to improve overall, of course they are going to have to continue promoting the things that have made them what they are today. Some of those things include their storefronts, alert feature and product reviews. Near the bottom of the new homepage are links to those sections with a brief description of each one. I like how they use pleasant graphics along with brief descriptions and links to these important sections. They make good use of space and bring the proper attention to these features and site areas. It’s interesting to see them promoting their storefronts so much, as well as the alert feature. I don’t remember seeing anything on them being updated. Might be something to keep an eye on, the storefronts and some of the other sections may shortly be getting a fresh look too.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

All in all I think PriceGrabber has done an excellent job testing and implementing their new homepage design. I hope they roll out something simiar for the rest of the pages soon as I could really get used to this look and new and improved functionality, concentrating on core content and useful guides rather than JUST the price comparison side of things.

I like the new layout and use of space within the page. I think they chose to link to and display some of their really useful site features and sections. I am impressed at how they have blended in their social, review and blog content without it appearing too messy or crammed into the design. It’s also a very wise move for them to bring more attention to those features, it’s certainly going to be a trend in 2008, if not already.

Nice work PriceGrabber team. hopefully you liked my feedback and I can’t wait to see you implement a newer design for the rest of the site, it is MUCH NEEDED. For anyone else who wishes to provide direct feedback to PriceGrabber, they are asking for it. Simply email them at feedback [at] pricegrabber.com.