Conversion Rate Analytics

There are a couple of answers to this question, most of which are contingent on the goals you set while configuring your analytics. But some of the most important data you need to watch has to do with your conversion rates. What are conversion rates you ask? Well, the conversion rate is the percentage of people who, upon coming to your site, download or purchase your products. This makes conversion rate one of the most telling indicators of how well your website is working, since it is directly related to your ability to sell your ideas. Whether your intentions are to make a profit selling through your online store, or to sell visitors on an idea, getting them to download your brochure, attend your conference or subscribe to your newsletter, conversion rates can tell you how well you’re doing.

Although conversions are not the be all and end all of eCommerce, they are certainly essential data. This is because conversion rate provides you with concrete evidence that your campaign is working (or not), and a general idea of how well it’s doing. After all, knowing our conversion rates before and after you start buying ads on a certain site can allow you to calculate how effective your advertising budget is, and if they go down when you decide to switch your ads to a different site, you’ve acquired yet another bit of hard, useful data. And while there are several reasons why you shouldn’t obsess over conversion rate, with enough micromanagement, it can help you improve the website experience for those who prefer to do their buying on the internet, rather than just research or job hunting.

What Effects Conversions?

However, in the process of not obsessing about it, it helps to remember that there are a number of concerns on your website that might effect conversion rate. It must be remembered that the internet is a land of misclicks and distractions, a factor which once computed in, can provide you with a great deal more confidence in that 2% conversion rate. Keep in mind that sometimes people click accidentally both to your site and away, that some people haven’t figured out tabbed browsing yet, and will use your window to check their back accounts before returning to buy, and that more than ninety percent of conversions happen offline. I know, this can be frustrating for those of you without brick and mortar retail stores, but don’t let it become discouraging. In the process of setting goals, remember to include micro conversions as well. If macro conversions are things like downloading your programs and purchasing your products, micro conversions can be used to measure how many times “contact us” was clicked, or “about us“, or jobs were applied for, or “print this page” was clicked, and the other signs that your site is being used for research, even if nothing was purchased. Someone interested in your site enough to research it is likely to come back, especially if you were convincing enough with your web copy, which will help you calculate your conversion ROI, which is every bit as helpful as the conversion data itself. After all, if you aren’t measuring the metrics that matter, you’re wasting time that could be used on more valuable metrics.

I’m sure at this point things are starting to feel a little complicated (and if they aren’t, congratulations!), but don’t worry. While tracking the various conversion rates can be difficult, it’s not any harder than following your favorite team. All it takes is a bit of time and practice before you’ll get it, and keep in mind that the web is a large, scary place, and if you keep in mind that even a 2% calculation can lead to a great deal of profit, depending on your average order value. But the obvious follow up question is, assuming I’m not obsessing, and have discarded extraneous metrics while incorporating necessary ones, how do I improve my conversion rates?

Improving Conversions With Web Analytics

Well, as we’ve already mentioned, web analytics is all about data. And now that you’ve got your conversion rate practices refined, you can start thinking about how you wield that data. Using this data, you can refine the processes on your websites, particularly when it comes to leads and the sales process. Consider that you check your data, and you find that an odd amount of people start the checkout process, but never finish (abandon the checkout). This could be a problem with your security loading speed, trust, your density of text, or even your safe words display being unreadable so they can’t checkout. Once someone has made the decision to buy, they’re close, but not roped in yet, so you need to make the checkout process as smooth as possible, and your analytics data should provide plenty of opportunities and insights towards improvement.

But if they’re not even getting to the sales page, then maybe the problem is with your sales copy. Thanks to your analytics and conversion rate, maybe your strategy for making a simple website with less professional copy, so as not to scare away the old ladies, is hurting your business, and it’s time to invest in someone to write better copy for you. Sometimes the right data can mean the difference between finding out whether you’re capable of being a one person band, or if what you really need is a slightly larger team. Checking the ROI of your analytics can tell you whether or not your investment in a copywriter will increase sales enough to cover the position.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

And after you’ve streamlined your checkout process, and written stellar copy thanks to a few late night courses on speech writing and psychology, if you still want to improve your conversion rates there are a few tips and tricks you can try. After all, you’ve found out that information is beautiful, and there’s no reason your customers won’t either. Show them how your products and ideas will improve their life, then assign them their own metrics, and study their conversion rates to see which charts, graphs, and graphics are the most effective. Save those, build more in their style, and use them in your advertising campaigns, where they can spread their impact across the entire internet. As you can see, the potential of an entrepreneur wielding a solid set of goals and data is limitless. And if you get stuck in the process, you can always come back to refresh your knowledge. Or just because you feel like there’s always more to learn, and places to improve.

New technologies allow consumers to freely explore seemingly endless amounts of products and information online. Because of this, consumers are becoming increasingly self-reliant. People check-in to flights and hotels with automated machines and purchase groceries through check-out stations. Consumers are responding positively to self-service systems and the need to interact with customer service employees is rapidly decreasing.

With this rise of self-service, more customers are buying products through online retailers and shopping sites are growing fast. Most consumers are pleased with the effortlessness of shopping online. However, when customers do encounter a problem, finding solutions can often be tedious and frustrating. Retailers work hard to constantly improve the online shopping experience but many are still using out-dated customer service techniques. Search engines and FAQ pages are not satisfying customers and businesses have to look for new ways to allow consumers to navigate themselves through potential issues.

In the past, many businesses thought their only solution to customer relationship management (CRM) was to create call centers with a large trained staff. Smaller businesses struggled with the cost of such an extensive increase in employees and larger business had too much traffic to adequately provide helpful service to every consumer. Companies are relentlessly creating new technologies and trends for online shopping and the old strategies of CRM no longer apply. Consumers will have questions and concerns and they expect to receive answers quickly and easily. According to Consumer Technographics, 57% of US online consumers report that they are very likely to abandon an online purchase if they cannot find quick answers to their questions. The dichotomy of online consumers is that they both demand guidance and self-reliance. For many businesses, virtual agents have proven to be the most effective way to help consumers help themselves.

What are Virtual Agents?

Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are programs that work as online customer service representatives. They have a human appearance and a conversational style of speaking. These agents interact directly with the customer to help with a variety of online services. Essentially, an IVA is the ideal customer service employee. They have an extensive knowledge of the business, can speak several languages, work 24 hours a day, and can personally help hundreds or thousands of customers all at once. The agent provides personal and direct guidance for consumers, making it more effective than search engines or FAQ pages. Many companies have successfully implemented an IVA program including Ikea, Ebay, and Paypal. Now, customers visiting these sites can ask “Anna“, or “Alex” or “Sarah” to help them find what they find what they are looking for or help get them the answers they need.

How Virtual Agents Can Benefit your Business

Using IVAs to help with customer service can help a company in many ways. They can converse and answer questions, giving customers personal and immediate assistance.

Consumers can chat with the representative in a way that feels familiar because it builds on the in-store customer service experience. The more self-reliant customers prefer an automated representative because they feel less inclined to rush and freely ask any and as many questions as they like.

The virtual agent has the unique ability to be everywhere at once. Human agents can only help a certain number of customers for a certain number of hours. As a company grows, maintaining a trained staff that can sufficiently respond to a growing number of buyers can be costly. AVIs can help customers find solutions without contacting customer service representatives.

Most of the information consumers are looking for is already available online. However, navigating through pages of information without help can be frustrating and potentially keep customers from returning to the eCommerce retailer. Mark Gaydos, VP of worldwide marketing for VirtuOZ explained that simply giving the customer a big repository of information and hoping they find what they need isn’t enough. “Virtual agents have the ability to instantly assist customers rather than leaving them to look for the information on their own.”

AVIs can also work as an information gatherer for the business to improve the customer’s experience when they need to speak with a human agent. Customer concerns can be transferred to the appropriate call center and provide personalized information to the customer representative making things easier and faster for both the representative and the consumer.

In Closing

As new technologies and trends develop in online shopping, AVIs allow customer services to adapt and improve along side these changes. Consumers are now able to shop with mobile devices and through social media. While many people are struggling with using search engines on new programs and devices, AVIs are making an easy transition to phone apps, Facebook, and even Second Life. As businesses experiment with new ways to reach customers, AVIs are effortlessly going along for the ride.

But when you recovered, as the serious eCommerce entrepreneur you are, you got online with the goal of looking the term up. And now you’re here, you’re interested, and you’re a little confused. What are web analytics? Are they really worth investing in? What are they going to cost me? How much time do they take?

Don’t worry, all these questions have answers. And I’ll make sure to direct you towards the experts capable of helping you have the best possible experience with analytics.

What are Web Analytics?

Web analytics are any system of taking the information about your website visitors and using it to improve your website. Simple enough, right? Unfortunately, most people who own their own website are unaware of the tools and definitions that make this field useful. How many times have you sat down and wondered why your visitor count never goes up? Or wondered which pages on your website are visited the most?

Sound like exactly what you need to help improve your site? I thought so. But now the obvious question is, how do I use them?

Well, maybe you want to start simple, test this mysterious new system out before you really dedicate yourself to them. If this sounds like you, then I would suggest starting your own Facebook Analytics page, just to see what’s up. Even the website will give you a crash course on how to use their program and why it’s useful for those businesspeople trying to reach a larger audience via Facebook fan pages. For those of you more interested in taking a direct plunge into the deep end, you can try Google Analytics, or the Webtrends Data Extraction API.

But maybe you’re still nervous, checking your payroll to see if you can afford to add web analytics, and the personnel to manage it. This is understandable, after all, how can you be sure these programs will help you improve your traffic enough to help cover their costs.

The good news? They’re free. And you won’t even need to hire an extra webmaster to manage them. Like any other part of your business, so long as you know your goals, analytics will provide you with all the information you need.

However, like anything else, analytics has its dark side. Due to the nature of humans to misunderstand and underestimate things, some programs have gotten a bad reputation they’re still trying to overcome, often due more to mistakes made than any sort of deficiency in the program itself. However, since everyone reading this blog is interested in being informed consumers, that’s nothing you have to worry about.

It sounds time consuming, doesn’t it? Before you go leafing through your accounting book again, trying to figure out whether you can afford a second webmaster, or even a temp, just take a moment to breathe and gather your thoughts. You may find that it will take far less effort than you first thought, and in no time at all, you’ll be turning your website into a highly efficient, customer pleasing machine.

Well, that seems like enough for now. Even if you were all bright enough to find this site and read this article, we have to be careful, analytics are a powerful tool, and while even a beginner can use them, there are plenty of depths left to master, such as conversion rates and cross program compatibility, as well as plenty more experts willing to lend a hand. But for now, your best bet is to go out, get an analytics program, and plug it in to start gathering data. Take some time to really see how the innards of your website work. Then, you can come back here and learn some advanced methods for using the information you’ve gathered.

Set Your Goals

Mobile commerce should generate revenue either directly by allowing customers to purchase items or indirectly by creating a positive experience for consumers. A mobile presence can engage consumers and provide valuable information with a simple and unique design. Before deciding to move forward with mobile commerce, retailers have to clearly define what they hope to get out of it.

While many retailers are going mobile or developing a mobile strategy, others are simply choosing the “do nothing” approach. Mobile commerce is still in its infancy and the value of a mobile presence is still uncertain. While the number of mobile consumers is small it’s growing fast. According to ATG Commerce, “27% of all consumers used their mobiles to browse and research products at least four times over a 12 month period. For the 18-34 age group, this figure is 41%“. Potential buyers seem to be testing mobile commerce and if a company is willing to give mobile the time and resources required, their business could be at the forefront of a booming trend.

Website or Application?

Once a company sets their goals for going mobile, they’ll have a better idea of what approach to take. Retailers can create a mobile presence two different ways: optimizing the retailers site for mobile devices or creating a mobile application or “app“. The best option depends on the retailer’s goals for going mobile. Apps may be best if a company wants to create interactive features and keep loyal customers happy. However, a mobile website is a simpler design that could attract more potential buyers. Here are a few things to consider before deciding on which direction to go.

Not All Phones Are Created Equal

Once a business decides to go mobile with either a site or an app, the next and most complex step is the design. Retailers need to target the right devices and highlight the most important features in a simple and attractive way. A mobile site or app has to have a balance of providing enough information to satisfy consumers without overwhelming the connection. Mobile devices are still evolving and nothing will turn a potential buyer away faster than an overly-complicated or slow running site/feature. A simple layout with large text and easy-to-touch links and buttons will provide the best experience for consumers and regularly updated information will keep them coming back for more.

Conclusion

Going mobile is complicated business for any retailer. However, many leading retailers believe mobile commerce may be on the verge of taking over. Retailers that start planning now will most likely be the first to attract loyal, tech-savvy customers. Ryan Peterson, mobile strategist for Ubermind puts it best: “If nothing else, look ahead two years and assume everyone you care about – customers, suppliers, and employees – will have a powerful, always-connected, GPS-enabled mobile computer in their pocket… plan accordingly.”

Basic User Experience

Design Is Not Added Value, Design Is Value.
- Gui Bonsiepe

There are as many different theories to design as there are styles of art – all of which have their merits. However, as we discussed in Beginning UX Part 1, a website proprietor must never lose track of their customers. And although this sometimes comes at the expense of one’s own ego, the small business owner attempting to design their own website needs to remember that, it is more important to make a good website than to capture a “feel.” This is not to say a website can’t do both (in fact, the very best websites do exactly that – capture a feel while retaining functionality), but since most people don’t have the time to study art history, technique, and principles of advanced design on top of running their own business, but also can’t afford a full design firm, lets focus on what it takes to make a user experience pleasant enough to keep customers coming back.

Towards that goal, there are a few things every website should strive to do:

• Look Professional
• Be Easy To Navigate
• Give The Customer What They Want
• Be Honest With The Customer

Now, let’s take a look at how even the most basic business owner can accomplish these goals.

Designing your Website

Despite sounding difficult, creating a professional looking website and making it easy to navigate are almost identical issues. Simple things, like making menu bars visible without being obtrusive by choosing simple colors that stand out against the background, and using easy to read fonts instead of “cool” ones that may be illegible or ugly. In general, when first designing for usability, it is better to favor function over form. Think of building a website like building a car – the chassis has to be solid before you can add the fancy bodywork. And also, to keep with the car metaphor, remember to add a place for the customer to put gas in – so make your shopping cart obvious. While it seems like this might seem pushy or scare customers away, remember that the people who want to buy your product don’t want it to be a hassle, and they’re your customers.

And if you’ve gotten ambitious and feel like adding an element of social media, remember not to force someone to sign up for an account (even if it’s free), to browse or buy the goods. However, after they’ve paid, then ask them to join in order to leave comments, or for an easier shopping experience next time. Make joining a convenience, and many more people will choose to do it.

Thinking Of The Customers

Continuing on of this idea of convenience, the savvy eBusiness owner should always keep in mind that they aren’t running a brick-and-mortar store. To that end, remember to show pictures of the items, or even full panoramic rotations if you can. While it is always advisable to have a good copy and written descriptions, humans are very much visual beings. And while you can’t offer a tactile sensation of the product, it’s important to let the customer see what they’re buying. This creates a feeling of trust (remember how we talked about be you becoming their 24 hour “local” store), and establishes that you have nothing to hide. And who doesn’t want to trust their local businessperson?

And on the issue of honesty and transparency: If you’re asking someone to join your website, don’t hide the delete button after they do. While this seems illogical in the short term, you have to remember that you’re relying on a certain level of curiosity to draw them to your site in the first place. Ignoring the fact that many of your first customers with have an inquisitive nature, will lead to trouble, particularly if the lack of a delete button makes them search one out. It’s best to make them not think about the delete button any more than they have to, and to that end, we should all take a lesson from The Purloined Letter about hiding in plain sight. You don’t have to outline it in a flashing neon marquee, but make it visible enough they don’t have to hunt for it- and by doing so, display your confidence they won’t be clicking on it any time soon.

As you can see, it’s relatively simple to design a good user experience – and while basic attempts may not meet the level of the professionals (they have put a lot more time and thought into this after all), hopefully you can take these tips and build a website that is functional and easy to navigate without excessive discretionary funds. I look forward to seeing new, professional looking eCommerce sites springing up all over the web any day now, so good luck, and see you next week.

However, researching the best systems, software, tools and other resources for social commerce campaigns can be exhausting and investing in the wrong place can potentially hurt a retailer. Here are a few essential technologies and some successful/highly rated systems and tools for the best possible social commerce strategy.

Blogs

Movable Type (MT) allows you to blog, manage large amounts of content, and can be quickly changed or rearranged to meet the retailer’s needs. MT does require some knowledge of HTML but can be designed to match your website completely. This system is recommended as a no-nonsense tool for businesses wanting to create a quick and professional blog site.

• Movable Type

Typepad is a popular system among businesses and made by Sixapart, the same company that created Movable Type. Unlike the other systems listed here, this platform is not free, but the monthly fee is small ($4.95-$14.95). Typepad is most famous for its feature Photo Albums, which allows retailers to display products in their blogs. For users to take full advantage of Typepad’s design templates, they will need a general understanding of HTML.

• Typepad

WordPress is easy to install and use and can be listed in Google within days of starting. This system is built for businesses with a large or fast growing online community. Also, for retailers who want a more complex system, there are several plugins and widgets available to use with this software.

• WordPress

Blogger, a blogging platform created by Google in 2003, is probably one of the most well known systems available. Blogger has sometimes been credited with bringing blogs to the masses because it doesn’t require any knowledge of HTML. This is a simple and easy system best recommended to beginners.

• Blogger

Social Networking

Facebook’s appearance on this list (as well as the next network) won’t come as a surprise to most retailers. With over 400 million users, retailers can’t ignore the potential for building a large and dedicated community. Businesses involved in Facebook can engage with consumers, make announcements, and get instant feedback from a committed fan base.

• Facebook

Twitter is considered a micro-blogging service as well as a social network and boasts over a 100 million users with 300,000 new users joining per day. On Twitter, customers can easily connect and companies can easily provide information about products and services.

• Twitter

Delicious makes bookmarking social and allows members to share their favorite sites with one another. Businesses can find loyal customers who will act as brand ambassadors. This site is a good way for retailers to connect with their customers and spread the word about products.

• Delicious

Ning is quickly growing as an alternative to other social networks that sometimes feel too overcrowded. This site allows users to create their own social network (or niche community) and create a unique space to bring customers, potential buyers, and vendors together. Retailers will have more control over the design of their network and can create the best space possible for visitors.

• Ning

Badoo, the European answer to social networking, is perfect for online retailers hoping to go global. Badoo has nearly 70 million users. This network offers many of the same features as Facebook and Myspace but reaches an entirely different audience that could potential expand business.

• Badoo

Ask and Answers

Bazzarvoice, a leader in social commerce, offers several tools to help companies engage with their customers. With Ask and Answer, customers can get the information they’re looking for directly from the company website. Also, the business can collect and use customer feedback to provide better service and decrease potential returns.

• Bazzarvoice

PowerReviews provides social commerce solutions to hundreds of companies and brands both big and small. Their popular tool AnswerBox lets consumers view popular and informative questions and answers along with the product. Potential buyers can get the information they need and the purchase process is uninterrupted. For more information you might also consider reading our recent interview on social commerce with Andy Chen of PowerReviews.

• PowerReviews

RateVoice allows customers to post reviews and comments on products and respond to other shopper’s feedback. This system promotes the sharing of opinions between consumers. The information also helps potential buyers.

• RateVoice

Social Recommendations

Loomia is a leader in recommendations and provides easy and personal solutions to businesses of any size. This system provides two types of recommendations. One gives shoppers a list of similar products while they shop, and the other tracks what the customer is looking at or buying and creates a more personalized experience.

• Loomia

Aggregate Knowledge offers “Discovery Platform” which gives retailers the ability to manage and personalize advertising through consumer data. The system gathers information from web users to help customers find products that will most interest them.

• Aggregate Knowledge

Choice Stream uses shopping data to create targeted product recommendations and advertisements and provide a unique experience for each customer. The goal of the Choice Stream system is to increase profitability and increase the number of returning customers.

• Choice Stream

Baynote is a recommendation system that prides itself on real time user behavior. They emphasize tracking referrals, questions, and the amount of time spent on pages to better understand the latest trends and patterns of consumers visiting a retailers site.

• Baynote

Social Shopping

Turnto lets consumers share ideas and opinions with each other about products and services and allows visitors to view these comments while exploring the retailer’s website. With this system, potential buyers are getting the right information from people they trust.

• Turnto

KickApps gives retailers the ability to engage consumers with user-generated content including video sharing, message boards, widgets, and much more. All of these features keep consumers engaging with and talking about the retailer’s brand.

• Kickapps

JS-Kit, also known as Echo, uses several features to gather and share what people are saying all over the web. Consumers can converse across social networks in real-time without leaving the retailer’s site. This is useful system for companies just beginning to build an online community.

• JS-Kit

Small World Labs provides several social commerce services including community building. This feature gives retailers the power to guide and moderate their online communities. Small World Labs can best help businesses managing larger online communities.

• Small World Labs

Conclusion

Preparation is essential with social commerce and having the best systems in place is the best way to get the most beneficial results. Businesses need carefully dig through information, contradicting opinions, and veiled advertisements to find what best works for them. Hopefully, if nothing else, this guide shows the complexity of preparing a social commerce strategy and encourages retailers to take thier time and find the best options.

User experience, also known as UX, is the art of creating a website that makes your customers want to come back. It’s that simple. Although misunderstood today, the old adage “the customer is always right” was the brick-and-mortar equivalent of good user experience – in that by creating an atmosphere wherein the customer felt like they were in control, they would return to your business. The customer felt empowered, you got paid, and it all worked out fine for everyone, since you had the best products on the market anyway, whether you ran a restaurant, a hotel or a general store.

Enter the internet; and with it, the world of eCommerce.

Benefits of a Well-Crafted User Experience

What kind of subtle changes could you make to your product/website/application/service/business that would discretely help your customers succeed, thereby feeling better about themselves, and in turn, your brand?
- Alex Rainert (everyday UX)

There are many benefits to a well crafted user experience:

• Easier site navigation
• Viral marketing potential
• Happier customers

These are all key points, especially when you remember that, while eCommerce is a wonderful thing, it has an essential problem that brick-and-mortar stores don’t have – double blind anonymity. When you sell things online, you will meet almost none of your customers, and will get only the barest glimpse of those who contact you through email and such. This is a far cry from the days where you could know the name of your local butcher, baker, and curio seller, and while the novelty of being able to shop 24/7 was enough to sustain eCommerce in the early days, the market has become so flooded that customers can choose to shop where ever they want.

Why is UX Important?

This is where UX comes in. After all, if the customer is looking for something that sets your product above the rest, a website that makes them feel like they’re buying from more than an anonymous person on the internet can help a great deal. In particular, those who have managed to work the principles of social media into their websites are doing rather well, by allowing their customers to create an online word of mouth through Facebook and Google. A well crafted UX can turn your website (and by extension, your ad campaign, all of your hard SEO work, etc) from the traveling salesman hawking his wares on the street corner, into that village shop that all of a person’s friends like, and they just haven’t gotten around to visiting yet.

Except your store is open all day, every day – so the odds are much greater they’re going to make it in eventually.

“But,” you may wonder, “I already have a good product. Better than anyone else’s on the market in fact. Why do I need to worry about UX? Won’t a good product sell itself?”

And you’re absolutely right. Good products do sell themselves, but being the logical businessperson you are, can you deny the free advertising that comes with winning something like The FWA, or having millions of fans on Facebook? If you already have a good product, isn’t it worth the effort of putting in that time to make sure the website selling it looks as good as the product works? First impressions can be important, especially with the double edged sword that is the internet. All the metrics and web analytics in the world won’t save a website that is hard to navigate – especially if you make it hard for customers to buy your products.

But most importantly, keep this in mind as you ponder redesigning that website you made ten years ago: The internet is in constant evolution. A decade ago there was no Facebook, no YouTube, no Myspace. File sharing was in its infancy, and download rates measured in MBPs were astonishing to contemplate, much less hard drive space in terabytes. The world of computers simply moves faster than the world of brick-and-mortar, and businesses that fall too far behind are in danger of dropping out of the race. Even slow and steady progress is still progress – and remember, the hare didn’t lose because he moved too fast, he lost because he fell asleep. So ask yourself: Is your business’s website moving forward with the times? Or are you napping by the side of the information highway, letting all of those UX wielding tortoises pass you by.

Either way, it never hurts to learn a few ways to improve your website – which is why you should tune in next time for “Beginning UX (Part 2): Crafting Your User Experience” where we’ll explore improving your UX. See you then!

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!

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.