'Net Features : winbuyer

Merchants Seeing Higher Conversions Through Price Comparisons

Linc Wonham — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:00:00 GMT

The use of online price comparisons is one of the most intriguing and compelling trends in e-commerce today. It is intriguing because the concept of displaying prices from competing businesses on your own website seems counterproductive to some merchants. But many retailers are attributing their rising conversion rates and increased revenues directly to the implementation of price-comparison tools, making for a very compelling argument in its favor.

This week’s newsletter will look at some of the latest information surrounding this hot topic, aimed at helping you decide whether a price-comparison platform is right for your e-commerce business.

There are two definitive facts about onsite comparative pricing: 1) consumers want it, and 2) a growing number of e-commerce retailers are providing it for them. Online shoppers are spending more time researching products and prices than ever before, and the use of price comparisons has become a successful tool for many retailers to keep customers from leaving their sites.

Giant e-tailers Amazon.com and Buy.com have implemented internally designed systems with proven success for several years now. Overstock.com, Tigerdirect.com, Backcountry.com, Hayneedle.com and hundreds of others are utilizing price-comparison platforms provided by companies like WinBuyer. In a recent case study performed on the sites of six users of its application, WinBuyer arrived at the following conclusions using a blind A/B test:

•    The average order value increased by 3.2 percent on pages utilizing the price comparisons
•    There was an average revenue lift of 4.9 percent on pages that applied onsite comparative pricing
•    Total site revenues increased by 2 percent after implementing the comparisons

The data suggests that providing price comparisons to customers does more in the way of building confidence and loyalty than in driving shoppers to competing sites. “Since implementing WinBuyer’s comparison shopping application, we’ve seen higher conversion rates and an increase in repeat shoppers due to the greater customer confidence our users gain from the comparative pricing,” said Chris Smith, President of Aqua Superstore. “Users online today are already comparison shopping, so including comparative pricing on a retail website only helps.”

WinBuyer’s comparison suite can be implemented within just a few minutes to give customers the pricing information they desire, but it is essential to ensure that the information is always accurate and up to date. The trust a merchant hopes to gain by providing price comparisons can be lost immediately by posting false or inaccurate data.

Three ECMTA Announcements In One

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:35:00 GMT

Trade association for small and medium sized ecommerce businesses ECMTA (eCommerce Merchants) announced three partnerships today.

- The association entered into a 2-year partnership with comGateway which enables merchants to sell to Visa and American Express card holders in the Asia Pacific region who shop from US Internet Retailers on www.onenow.com and www.globaleshop.com. ECMTA members will have the set up fee of $2,500 and the yearly fees waved for two years.

- eCommerce Merchants members will also have access to GamaSec's online web vulnerability-assessment service; testing web servers, web-interfaced systems, and web-based applications against known vulnerabilities. No information was provided on the scope of the offering to ECMTA members.

- Finally, WinBuyer has become a Corporate Partner of the ECMTA. WinBuyer's ecommerce application enables retailers to provide competitive pricing information. Since WinBuyer is a free service to merchants, I am unsure of the actual relationship details of this announcement.

WinBuyer Pricing Validation

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Online shoppers often make buying decisions based on price comparisons - makes sense, right? After all, the Internet is one of the best places to find a good deal.

According to Forrester Research, the U.S. online retail market is expected to reach $335 billion by 2012. WinBuyer addresses this growing market by offering etailers the ability to provide online shoppers with competitive product and pricing information without leaving their site, thereby speeding the time to sale. Further, if the consumer navigates to a different site, the retailer’s site still generates lead-based program revenue.

“While larger ecommerce sites provide competitive product pricing information, no one enables smaller retailers to benefit from the same strategy on their own ecommerce sites,” said Dan Clarke, chairman of WinBuyer. “Online shoppers often make purchase decisions based on price comparisons. With WinBuyer’s technology, it is now easy for any merchant, regardless of size, to deploy precise competitive pricing information on their site, positioning core products as the low cost leader, turning browsers into buyers, and generating click-through revenue.”

The technology essentially positions a retailer’s core products as the "low cost leader." In the end, this increases conversions and positively impacts lead-based revenue (albeit incrementally.)

WinBuyer For Affiliates/Partner/Publishers:

Common sense dictates that a majority of your online store’s traffic will not end up completing a transaction. Traditionally, these prospective customers would go back to a search engine and continue shopping somewhere else. The problem with this old model is that while you pay for every person that is referred to your site, many are not converted into paying customers. Up until now, this has been widely accepted as "the cost of doing business."

Now, by adding the fully automatic Winbuyer Shopping Widget, you can turn this unused traffic into another asset for your online business. Instead of the user going back to a search engine, thereby earning you nothing, shoppers can continue their search straight from your website. When they purchase somewhere else, you earn a referral credit each and every time.

For any product appearing on your site, the widget presents a list of other online merchants selling the same item. By presenting only stores that are offering the same item for more, you gain a reliable third-party recommendation on your own site while your visitors can enjoy a more interactive shopping experience. If for any reason the prospective shopper chooses to navigate away from your store without purchasing, he will naturally follow the link you provide. This is how you can start profiting from nearly every person that enters your website.

The Winbuyer Shopping Widget: the unique new way to recycle your unused traffic and make more revenue.