As mentioned in part 1, there are many different kinds of shopping engines and comparison sites that could benefit your e-commerce store. Within those sites though there are a variety of search determinants that affect the positioning of your store as well as specific product types that shopping search engines focus on. I tried to find the categories that shopping comparison sites excel on, and for those that do not have such data available, I analyzed their search sorting results to see what kind of information they showed customers.

The Free Shopping Channels

The only way to be prominent in TheFind is by having a detailed Data Feed

Everyone likes the big 4. Search anything you want in Google Base and you will most likely find it. This is great because the smaller stores can compete with the larger companies, however for stores willing to pay for positioning this poses an issue. There is no way to differentiate yourself from others in free shopping channels apart from having a very detailed data feed. Google Base lets customers sort through their search results by price, brand, store and more importantly, product type. GB has categories as specific as “Home & Garden > Earthquake safety > furniture anchors” and as broad as “Electronics” so everyone can find what they are looking for easily. Bing and TheFind also have very specific categories to sort through, yet not as many companies feed to these comparison sites, because they are smaller than GB. To be prominent in either Bing or TheFind all you need is a complete data feed with many keywords. As TheFind and Bing only have a limited number of field attributes a store can complete, this is easily done. In contrast, Google Base allows stores to send as many attributes as they want to help in search criteria (not for sorting purposes). Stores can send youtube links, volume measurements, color variations between many other fields which allow customers to find their products easier. GoShopping is the most limited free shopping engine as stores can only feed 13 product fields. GoShopping mainly focuses on electronics, however customer can find all kinds of product types here. The main drawback with GoShopping is that they require sites to add a button at the footer of their homepage that links back to their site. Many companies are sceptical about doing this as they obviously want visitors to stay on their site. As mentioned before keywords are also very important when writing feeds.

Cost-per-click Shopping Channels

Shopzilla offers an extensive sorting criteria for customers

The great thing about CPC sites is that stores can choose which sites to feed to based on which products perform well on each site. While every type of store feeds their products to the free shopping channels, there are only a limited number of stores in each CPC because of budget constraints. Shopzilla targets European and US markets, and is strong in a series of categories including: Home & Garden, Sports Equipment & Outdoor Gear, Toys & Games, Electronics, Health & Beauty Supplies, Jewelry & Watches, and Appliances. Please note that there are many products which shopping sites will categorize arbitrarily, for example: Jewelry and watches includes both sunglasses and wallets. Shopzilla also has the best sorting criteria of all the four CPC channels mentioned here. Their criteria is product type specific and lets customers sort by categories as broad as price and manufacturer and as specific as wireless interface if you are looking for mobile phones. All the other CPC search engines only let customers sort by large factors such as price, brand, popularity, etc. Nextag claims they are a great store for all types of products and based on previous experience I concur. They have a relatively broad sorting criteria but not as specific as Shopzilla. Stores which do not have a lot of information available for their product might benefit from feeding to Nextag, as they do not require a lot of information, but rather focus on showcasing discounts and sales on their site instead of product functionality. Although Pricegrabber has a large reach, the products that do well in their site include: Computers, Electronics, Cameras, Home & Garden, and Clothing. Stores that sell outside these categories are better off not feeding to Pricegrabber as their CPC is high. Pronto is the newest of the bunch and although they have seen success across the board, they have had the greatest success with stores that sell: Electronics, Home & Garden and Apparel & Accessories. They are trying to expand to other markets, and because of this they offer a more reasonable CPC for categories outside those mentioned (clothing and accessories can cost as low as $0.35 although these stores will probably not be as prominent on the site).

International CPC Sites

Shoptoit offers customers the option to sort by discounts

Shoptoit has a large range of products they target to; they try to be as broad as possible for the wide Canadian audience they aim to help. Their top selling categories are: clothing (including jewelry) and electronics (including DVDs, computers, etc). Their search criteria let’s customers sort search results by manufacturer, store, price, etc, but they stand out because of their “on sale!” sorting field were customers choose the sale discount (they can choose all the way up to 80% off). Stores with large discounts would benefit from feeding to this site. Myshopping.com.au has a series of categories listed on their main page, and based on their sorting criteria they are able to find a product for everyone. If you search for “Mobile phones”, their sorting criteria let’s you choose features as broad as price and brand, and as specific as if it allows Skype connectivity. They do not provide any information available for which products they are successful in as they want to target as many stores as possible. Pricerunner.co.uk doesn’t have the sorting capacity of Myshopping.com.au and only allows customers to sort by price, popularity, name and brand. Their top categories are: Electronics, Computing, Clothing and Accessories, Home and Garden,  and Health and Beauty. MySimon has every kind of product as shown on their “top products” site. They do not have specific categories that outperform others, but what is interesting about this site is that their search criteria does not allow customers to sort by any specifics. Stores who do not sell at competitive prices and who are willing to pay a large CPC might benefit from this exposure as it is harder to compare products in their site.

In conclusion, every merchant should choose a shopping comparison site based on the product types that sell well in each comparable shopping site and on the type of search criteria of each site. A merchant that sells DVDs might do well in all shopping channels, but might fail to show up in those that have detailed search criteria (like Myshopping, Shopzilla and Google Base) if their  data feed is not as detailed as their competitors. Either way, every merchant should create a detailed data feed for their store and try send as many fields as possible so people can find their products easier. It is also the only way to showcase properly on the free shopping channels. If you have any emails please email me at Mario@allinclusivemarketing.com