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Comparison Shopping Engines

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Comparison Shopping Engines

As an online retailer, comparison shopping engines are obvious places to get your products in front of the masses and see who bites first for that glorious first sale. Sites like Google Shopping, Shopzilla, Bing Shopping, Nextag and Pricegrabber have millions of shoppers searching for the best prices on online products – so surely you’re going to want to get some of those shoppers over to your online store.

Having your products listed in these engines can have a very quick response in terms of immediate business. Almost all of these shopping engines require you to “pay to play”. Regardless, we want to discuss these channels as something you should look into early on to get some business momentum.

How They Work

Generally, most comparison shopping engines work the same: you upload a CSV (Comma-Separated Value) file to their website feed – and they will put your products in their engine. This can be done by putting your products in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (or any spreadsheet for that matter) and saving it as a CSV file.

In these files you will specify typical product information such as:

  • Product tile
  • Price
  • Description
  • Image location

Depending on which shopping engine you are submitting to, they will have different requirements for how you should format your CSV file. It’s pretty easy, and you will get the hang of it in no time.

Once your product data is submitted and processed by the comparison engines, they will display your product on their website to a huge online audience of shoppers! Generally, when a shopper clicks on your listing, you are charged for the click and the shopper is sent to your website to hopefully make a purchase. 

So yes – you are basically paying for window shoppers. But think of it as a highly targeted advertising campaign, where people have been filtered before clicking on your ad. And because they have been filtered, it’s a much better place to put your money than say in an untargeted website banner ad.

The Problem with Comparison Search Engines 

Depending on your business strategy, comparison shopping engines might force you to do something you really don’t want to do, lower your prices.

This gets into a really dicey world and it’s important to understand three critical things before you ever go down this road:

  1. If you decide that you want to be the “low price leader” in your industry, you generally end up fighting a war racing to the bottom. The bottom being rock bottom prices. You can really hurt your business by restricting much needed cash flow.
  2. Your brand tends to highlight your unique selling proposition as the “cheap website”. And the problem with that is you will have many other competitors who are doing the exact same thing (having low prices) – resulting in a position where you don’t stand out.
  3. If you think about the type of users that use these shopping engines, they are typically bargain hunters, who are not always the best customers to have. All they tend to care about is who has the lowest price – and will jump ship to another competitor as soon as a “better deal” comes up elsewhere.

Is There a Way Around This?

In order to get the benefit of comparison shopping engines and still not go down the “cheap road” is to select certain products to be “fed” to these engines. There are two types of products you can do this with:

  1. If you sell something completely unique, that no other online shop sells – well then you’re in luck. Obviously add those items to your product feed, and don’t bother lowering the price on them.
  2. Select a few items that you don’t mind slashing prices on. Not all your items – just a handful. And every few months rotate them with new items. This way you can attract new customers that hopefully they will stay loyal for years to come.

Which Engines are Free and Which Ones Cost Money?

Free Comparison Shopping Engines

  1. The Find – In addition to showing product and price comparisons, The Find can help shoppers discover new products with personalized results.

Pay-to-Play Comparison Shopping Engines

  1. Google Shopping – Google Shopping is probably the largest and best known comparison shopping engine. Products submitted to Google Shopping will also be displayed on standard Google search results and are integrated with Google's pay-per-click platform, Adwords.
  2. Next Tag – Nextag has been in operation since 1999 and has as many as 30 million visitors each month. Nextag is consistently a top performer for traffic and conversions on CPC Strategy's quarterly review of leading CSE's. You can list products, event tickets, real estate, and even travel bookings. 
  3. Price Grabber  – In addition to presenting products on its site, PriceGrabber has a market research tool, Market Report, that allows retailers to track consumer purchase and product pricing trends. When you list your products on PriceGrabber, you'll also be listed on Yahoo Shopping which is a nice added bonus.
  4. Shopping.com – Shopping.com is part of eBay's family of companies and is another great channel for merchants to put their products in front of perspective buyers. Shopping.com also partners with The Find, another CSE on this list.
  5. Shopzilla – With about 40 million monthly visitors and a pedigree dating back to 1996,Shopzilla is one of the best choices for ecommerce merchants looking for some extra sales. This comparison shopping engine has an impressive 100+ million products listed.
  6. Become.com – Become is another leader in the CSE space, allowing thrifty shoppers to compare prices, read or write product reviews, and simply search for the best possible online shopping deals.
  7. Pronto.com – With about 70 million product listings sorted into various retail verticals and millions of visitors monthly, Pronto certainly merits consideration for any retailer's 2013 CSE campaigns.
  8. Amazon Product Ads – Amazon isn't technically a comparison shopping engine, but they work in a similar fashion. When you register for Product Ads you can upload your products manually or via FTP. Amazon will then create ads for your products using the information provided in your product file. When you set your budget, your ads will go live and you'll pay-per-click.

Which Engine Should You Choose?

Certain comparison shopping engines will have a better ROI (return on investment) for your business than others. The only way to know which ones will yield the best return is to try each one. 

Certain sites will work better for the types of products that you sell over others. For example if one engine has a lot of competitors then you have a good idea that the targeted traffic you need is there. On the other hand, if there are no competitors there might not be the traffic you need, but you’ll get all the sales if there are any.

One thing to keep in mind is to not pull out early. It will take time and focus to understand these marketplaces. As you get more comfortable working with these engines, you will hone your skills on how to market and price your products.

Finally, realize that online shoppers may click on your listing, come to your site, leave and come back another day. So it’s important to understand that you might get charged a few times for the same customer to finally make a purchase which is why you should stick around for a while. Chances are they will come back to the same engine to find your website when they are ready to make a purchase.

Make Friends on Facebook

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Make Friends on Facebook

One of the easiest and fastest ways to make your first online sale is by leveraging the power of Facebook. This social media powerhouse has two separate mechanisms for you to launch your brand. They are:

  1. Your Personal Facebook Profile
  2. Your Brand’s Facebook Page

You're probably familiar with your own Facebook profile. However, Facebook Brand Pages are a totally different beast and should be operated in a different way. Lets get into how you should operate both your personal profile and your brand page during the early stages of your new online store.

Your Personal Facebook Profile

This will be your best friend during your first months of starting up. However, you have to treat your Facebook profile with a lot of respect. Otherwise you will lose friends and potentially lose your account.

There is nothing wrong with doing a little self-promotion on your personal Facebook profile. Your friends and family will likely love to see what you’re up to as long as you don't overdo it. Sharing products with your personal Facebook profile is very effective, in fact, studies show that upwards of 62 percent of people read such posts.

Source: Sociable Labs

A good rule of thumb is to update your profile about once a day with either a link to a product from your online store or website. 

You can also share a press mention about your business.

Or a link to a tweet from a fan, friend or family member.

Another idea is you can post a survey or ask a question.

Also, maybe about once a month share your “about us” or “story” webpage. The story about your business is a great form of social currency, so spend time crafting a good story. From time to time you might also want to paste in the text about your story from your website instead of just pasting the link. The reason for this is that more of the text will show up on your friend’s feed, thereby delivering more of the story right off the bat.

Now it’s still possible that once a day is too much for your friends and family. You will have to be the judge of how much is too much. If you need to tone down your posting frequency because of complaints or loss of friends, then consider scaling it back a notch.

Finally, remember to keep using your personal Facebook profile for what it’s meant for. Continue to share photos, news articles, liking people’s posts and being a normal user. Don’t switch over to “business only” mode. All you are going to do differently is occasionally posting something relevant about your new business.

Your Business' Facebook Page

Facebook Pages are designed for businesses, brands, and other types of organizations. Facebook only wants you to promote your business through your Facebook page. That’s why we stress that you should keep business promotion through your personal Facebook profile to a minimum.

With Facebook Pages, only people who have Liked your Facebook page will see your updates. In a sense, these people have given you permission to advertise to them. This is a very key point about online marketing these days – permission marketing is much more effective than the old days of spamming everyone under the sun. The good news is that with a Facebook page, you're in good company, with over 70 perfect of B2C companies acquiring a customers through the social platform.

Source: Hubspot.

You will promote on your Facebook page exactly like how you do it on your Facebook profile with posts and links to products, PR mentions, and stories about your business. However, a better way to get deeper engagement on Facebook is to post updates on things that are not directly related to purchasing one of your products.

A great way to get more Facebook page engagement is to post:

  • Industry trends and news
  • Funny, cute, and high-quality photos (that you have a legal right to publish)
  • Uplifting stories
  • Inspirational Quotes
  • Fun polls or surveys

Although some of these updates won’t have anything to do with your brand per se, they will bond a stronger relationship between your brand and those that have “Liked” your Facebook page. What you are doing here is strengthening your fan base, which generally pays dividends down the line.

Here's the key: Do not overly promote your brand and your products – only post a couple times every day. Most importantly, be sure to respond to comments and keep 
the conversations going.

Since a portion of your Facebook friends will also be fans, be sure that you don’t post the same content on both your profile and page on the same day. Always change up what you’re posting to keep your Facebook campaign fresh from every angle.

At first, there is a large likelihood that your Facebook page won’t have as much as an effect as your profile. But the important thing is to keep it updated often. Years down the road, this effort will pay off. The reason for this is because you will be nurturing a marketing list – a powerful marketing strategy that we’ll talk about extensively in this book.

Now that we have gone over the difference between profiles and pages, lets get into some actionable stuff you can do right now: 

  1. Create a list of all your family and friends. Go through your Facebook page and email contacts one by one. We suggest putting their names and email addresses in a spreadsheet. 
  2. Reach out to each person with a personalized email or Facebook message. You don’t have to ask them to buy your product, but simply ask for their feedback. Even ask if they will write a testimonial.
  3. A few days later, ask each friend and family member to Like your Facebook page. You may not want to send a spammy all-inclusive email to everyone, but actually take the time to message each person individually.
  4. At a later date, ask them to post a message about what you are doing on their Facebook feed. Don’t forget to give them information on where they can purchase your products. 

Check out 10 more Facebook Pages optimization strategies here.

Now if you are incredibly lucky, this initial marketing campaign might be enough to ignite your business into an overnight success story. However, chances are it will simply be a good introduction to a wide audience of people, and it will likely cause you to make your first sale.