eCommerce Articles, Industry News & Trends | eCommerce, Marketing, Design Articles » eCommerce Marketing

Interview: Tom Zawacki Talks About Lemonade Marketplace

eCopt — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:43:25 +0000

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.
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Interview: Linda Snow Talks About Shopping.com

eCopt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:19:27 +0000

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.
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Interview: Lin Grosman Talks About GoDataFeed Shopping Engine Solutions

eCopt — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:57:15 +0000

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.
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Interview: Kurt Illian Talks About FeedPerfect Data Feed Solutions

eCopt — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:20:12 +0000

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.
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Interview: James Keating Talks About ShopWiki

eCopt — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:58:25 +0000

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.
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Interview: Rick Backus Talks About CPC Strategy Data Feed Services

eCopt — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:01:06 +0000

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.

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Interview: Steven Roth Talks About Channel Intelligence Data Feed Services

eCopt — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:49:33 +0000

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.
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Interview: Gary MacDougall Talks About ChannelBrain Data Feed Services

eCopt — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:18:13 +0000

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.
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Google Testing New Universal Shopping/Product Results Displays

eCopt — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:42:49 +0000

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).
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Interview: Stuart Larkins Talks About DoubleClick Performics Data Feed Marketing

eCopt — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:33:26 +0000

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.
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eCommerce Ideas: Using Live Product Links Within Videos & Product Demos

eCopt — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:20:56 +0000

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.
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New eCommerce Trends Tool: Get Google Checkout Merchant Trend Data

eCopt — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:54:36 +0000

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.
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eCommerce Ideas: Using Creative Linkbait & Engaging Customers At The Same Time

eCopt — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:48:53 +0000

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

eCopt — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:04:26 +0000

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

eCopt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:51:42 +0000

I recently noticed a change to the ‘Products’ link in Google’s main navigation. Not too long ago they removed the ‘Video’ link and replaced it with ‘Products’ instead. Now they have changed the ‘Products’ link again, but this time they renamed it to ‘Shopping’ on the main navigation found on all results pages and Google’s main page.
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Google Product Search Traffic Down, Other CSE’s Report Steady Or Increased Traffic

eCopt — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:55:10 +0000

I was browsing news headlines yesterday and came across an interesting one on CNN Money about Google Product Search. According to the news piece, the comparison shopping engine site by Google has been experiencing dramatic drops in traffic to their shopping service while comparable shopping search services such as TheFind.com or Pronto.com and even Yahoo Shopping have all increased or remained steady, at the least.
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TheFind Launches Local Search Capability With In-Store Availibility & Maps

eCopt — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:21:38 +0000

Our regular blog readers know that I am quite fond of the comparison shopping engine known as TheFind.com. It’s one of the CSE’s I regularly post about and advocate for and continues to move up on my list as one of the best product search destinations with social shopping capabilities. Not too long ago, we posted about some of the things TheFind is doing to make their search service even better including their mini-malls, virtual shopping districts, improved product mouse hovers and even an advanced search and browsing history features.

Today, TheFind has launched yet another new and useful feature for shoppers and merchants which allows TheFind.com users to be able to search and discover local shopping destinations for products within a specific geographic area. Not only that, but the new local search sorting and refinement capability also includes an in-store availability feature and shows the user related maps, all from one page for quick and easy access to products close to a shoppers’ physical locations.
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Google Base Bulk Uploads New Name, Now Called Data Feeds

eCopt — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:20:20 +0000

Google Base Blog announced today that they are changing the name of their ‘bulk uploads’ tab to be more in line with eCommerce publisher and merchant terminology. The tab will now be called ‘data feeds,’ which still appears under the My Items tab next to Active and Inactive Item links (see screenshot above).
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New PayPal Storefront Widget Beta by PayPal Labs

eCopt — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:55:21 +0000

A few weeks ago we posted about the new PayPal Labs program and widgets for Facebook and MySpace. Yesterday, PayPal officially launched their Storefront Widget Beta. These widgets allow users to embed virtual PayPal storefronts into blogs, sites, social profiles and anywhere else where HTML can be embedded in the code.

Basically, blog, site or profile shoppers select products or items from the widget to add into the shopping cart, then they checkout and pay using PayPal. The idea for storefront widgets was suggested by PayPal users as a way for them to sell easily from MySpace profiles, Facebook profiles and more (Note: At this time, the PayPal Storefront is not available for MySpace, you can get notified when it is by clicking here).
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Froogle Remnants & Google Product Search/Directory Duplicate Content Issues

eCopt — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:23:59 +0000

I have been researching some duplicate content topics lately for a friend/colleague of mine and while trying to find some examples for him I accidentally came across some interesting issues that Google is having on their own domain/subdomain with content being duplicated. I understand that massive sites (like Google) with as many different domains/subdomains and services as they have might be tough to manage. I imagine that their duplicate pages could get overwhelming to manage for anyone really quickly. Since they don’t seem to be aware of the issues I happened across (maybe more), I decided to write this post to help them out with a couple of the things I found (if they listen, I will consider posting more about other services).

In addition to the duplicate content issues I found, I also wanted to bring to light the many Froogle pages that still remain in Google’s index, despite being replaced by Google Product Search back in April 2007. Right now, if you type froogle.com into your address bar or even froogle.google.com, you’ll be redirected to the new product service at www.google.com/products. This is common, especially when changing domains or file locations, and it is good practice to use these types of 301 redirects, as Google stated about a year ago on the Webmaster Central blog.
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