'Net Features : ecommerce, comparison shopping

Merchants See Performance Gains at Channel Intelligence

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:43:00 GMT

With consumer confidence still at record low levels, and in an increasingly complicated technical environment, Internet retailers that are actively marketing products on comparison shopping may be the only ones that will be left standing as consumers continue to look for the lowest price – and not just their favorite merchants. Those merchants with an eye on performance optimization will be thriving and not just surviving.

Retail clients of Channel Intelligence (CI), a provider of performance-based e-commerce services (product search, paid search, display ads), saw a thirty percent year-over-year sales increase (on a same-seller basis). Retailers using CI Product Search saw a 28 percent year-over-year sales increase, and clients using CI’s Shopping Engines service experienced a 32 percent increase compared to the same period in 2010.

“Although there is a significant increase in year-over-year sales, our analysis reveals that consumer confidence may still be weak because we see the majority of online shoppers currently making selections based on price.” said Rob Wight, CEO of CI. “The good news is that consumers are spending. They are just being very deliberate and price-conscious in how they spend.”

Channel Intelligence has a long roster of leading companies as clients including Best Buy, Target, HP and others and drives upwards of $2 billion annually in online sales.

Comparison Shopping & Brand Awareness

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:30:00 GMT

For building brand awareness, shopping search engines are a retailer’s best bet.

As the online shopping experience becomes more social every day, it is important for retailers and their products to be seen in all the right places. High on the list of those destinations are comparison shopping search engines, on which consumers are increasingly relying to drive their purchasing decisions.

Read "Comparison Shopping Engines: A Retailers' Best Friend" by Website Magazine's associate editor Linc Wonham now.

This article appears in the November 2010 edition of Website Magazine.

SortPrice Adds Shop by Color Feature

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:57:00 GMT

Shopping search engine SortPrice added a new "Shop By Color" feature. That might not be big news to those that use other shopping comparison engines, but if you're taking the time to customize a XML shopping feed with attributes such as color it's certainly worthy of note. Bidding on a keyword containing a refining descriptor such as the color could ultimately lead to a lower bid price and a lower cost per conversion.

The "Shop by Color" feature at SortPrice allows users to narrow a detailed product search by color, or shop for a product by color alone, such as green MP3 players, white women's sandals, or even red blenders. Product thumbnail images across the site can now be enlarged, along with the text of product descriptions, for easier reading and research. When consumers are cutting spending, you need every feature you can to get users comfortable and this is certainly a way to do that.

"In the five short years since we started this company, Sortprice has become a reliable online shopping partner for millions of people and a trusted ally among merchants," said Doron Simovitch, Sortprice co-founder and CEO. "These new tools, designed with the shopper in mind, represent our commitment to using cutting edge technology to give consumers the best online shopping experience available."

PriceSpider Social Comparison Shopping

Administrator — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:46:00 GMT

Another day, another social shopping offering (this time a comparison engine). PriceSpider.com, backed by leading Microsoft National Systems Integrator Neudesic, announced the launch of its price comparison web site to help consumers (what else) save time and money. PriceSpider.com is billing itself as the latest in social networking and ground-breaking web-crawling technology. Let's look at how it works.

Traditional comparison web sites only post pricing and availability periodically for a limited group of retailers. The advantage of PriceSpider.com is that it is an active search engine using technology that continuously scans for pricing and product information. The search spans hundreds of online retailers in real-time to provide consumers with the true lowest price available on the web. PriceSpider also enables users to create a personal network to share their product lists with others and features the ability to communicate with their personal network to track and share product and pricing information.

Comparison Shopping Survey: Your Opinion Counts

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:33:00 GMT

Comparison shopping online already transformed retailing, but how has it affected you? Whether you’re leading the charge as an active merchant, or you find it’s a big bore, your opinion counts. As a valued subscriber of Website Magazine, you are invited to answer a survey that should take no more than 5 minutes to complete. Your responses will help us gauge the impact of comparison shopping online on web professionals like you. The data collected will be available in the August edition of Website Magazine.

Take the survey on comparison shopping and comparison shopping engines now.