How Comparison Shopping Engines Work
Comparison Shopping Engines, or CSE for short, are THE best way to sell products online. Other than organic SEO, CSE data feeds have been the most successful campaigns for e-commerce merchants. If you sell anything online then you can utilize the CSE to sell more products. Some examples of comparison shopping engines are Shopzilla, NexTag, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Google Product Search (formerly Froogle), Yahoo! Shopping, and Pronto.
The Basics
Comparison Shopping Engines work on a CPC (cost-per-click) model. So you submit your products to them in a special format, typically a .csv file in Excel, and they post your products, descriptions, and prices on their site. When a visitor clicks on one of your products they are taken directly to your product page where they can make the purchase. Typically you are listed with many other merchants on the site that are selling the exact same product or very similar. So if you are competing directly with other merchants, selling the same exact product, then typically you will need to provide a cheaper price, higher store ratings (reviews/ratings), cheaper shipping, or be higher up on the page in order to beat the competition. Most CSE allow their visitors to calculate shipping and tax right there in their site so that shoppers can see who truly offers the cheapest price. That is what comparison shopping is all about and that is why people use CSE to shop and compare prices and merchants quickly!
The Meat And Potatoes
Visitors that come to your site via comparison shopping engines will convert at a much higher rate than other visitors. Why? Because the visitor from a CSE is much further down the sales funnel. They have already done their research and due diligence and now they are looking to purchase. The majority of people that find your products via organic rankings or PPC are doing research for a purchase at a later date or an in store purchase. This means HIGHLY targeted traffic that is actually ready to make a PURCHASE!
The other thing that makes CSE a great sales channel is that click costs are fairly low, unless you are selling electronic, but even then the costs are low compared to some of the PPC costs associated with electronics keywords. That means that you as an e-commerce merchant can get targeted traffic at a very fair price. Obviously the higher your average order size is the easier it will be to make a profit but even if your average order is under $100 you can use the CSE as an additional, and very profitable, sales channel. If your average order is under $100 you will need to monitor your results alot closer than you would have to with a higher average order size, but again you can still be profitable.
The Bottom Line
If you sell products online then you need to be using the comparison shopping engines to sell more! Configuring, optimizing, and managing your CSE product data feed(s) can be a daunting and time consuming task. Each engine has their own specs that you need to meet and optimize for, plus each engine allows you to submit feeds at different times. Basically, its alot of work but it can be profitable if managed correctly. There are a number of companies, like Channel Advisor, that offer tools to help you manage CSE data feeds. But they can be very expensive and you still need to do alot of the work. I offer CSE management at a very reasonable rate and with exceptional results backed up by analytics that spell it all out for you. The comparison shopping engines are a fairly untapped resource for e-commerce merchants. Either way that you decide to go about it, run it your self, hire and independent consultant, or hire a firm, you can increase you sales significantly by submitting your products to the CSE.
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Tags: CSE, data feeds, e-commerce, SEO consultant