26 replies to this topic

[Jerky19]

Good afternoon all.

I am gearing up my marketing plans for the holiday season. Like most of you, I have a limited budget for marketing related expenses. One of the services I would like to try this year is one of the 'shopping' directories.

In general, of all the pay per click/pre-pay 'shopping' directories like Bizrate.com, Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping and NextTag.com, which would give me the best bang for my buck? (If you can't tell already, I am in the martial arts industry.)

I am already enrolled in froggle and I love their service!

I'm leaning towards Yahoo Shopping because they should have the most web traffic. Am I correct in my assumption?

Any help would be appreciated.

Edited by Jerky19, 16 September 2004 - 02:59 PM.

[Jerky19]

Ahhh come on now people. Surely, someone on this board can give me an opinion!

Would you rather I talk about 'Voodoo Economics'? Bueller...Bueller...Bueller.........

[marybetht]

Hi, Jerky19,

In my experience, we do not get many sales from either Froogle or Yahoo Shopping (I regularly submit feeds to both). I can tell you that I get more click-throughs from Yahoo shopping v. Froogle. When Google put a link to Froogle on their homepage and it was all over the news for a while, we got a bunch of click-throughs from Froogle, but that has since quieted down a long time ago.

Most of our sales come from organic listings and PPC campaigns with Overture and Google AdWords. I have a hunch that the majority do not use Yahoo Shopping or Froogle, they just click on organic results or PPC ads. The reason for my hunch is, I work in a user support position and I watch people work on their computers and the Internet all the time. Most don't even notice those tabs on the Yahoo homepage at the top, same goes for Google. They are clueless about many of the other services or ways of searching that Yahoo and Google have to offer. Seems they have tunnel vision and go directly to the main search box only, without ever noticing or clicking on any of the other tabs or links.

Here's our referral breakdown for major search engines and shopping sites:
Google - 24.31%
MSN - 12.66%
Yahoo - 11.93%
Yahoo Shopping - 2.05%
Froogle - 1.01%


Mary Beth

P.S. So you are in Pennsauken? I grew up in Burlington. My parents live in Cinnaminson.

[Jerky19]

marybetht, thanks.

i to have tunnel vision....and i do not use these types of searches when shopping. the funny thing is though, my competition does use these services. that is why i thought i needed to be included in at least one of these programs. maybe, they are wasting their money?

btw, my business is in pennsauken. to top that, i used to live in california myself. sacramento was my old haunt.

[marybetht]

It certainly can't hurt being included in a couple shopping sites, maybe you'll have greater success than myself. Some of the products we sell are highly competitive (automotive parts), which could be why we don't do better on shopping sites. I'll keep submitting my feeds, just because you hate to lose a sale, and Froogle is free so what the heck.

Funny you lived in California too. I live near Los Angeles. I was just in New Jersey visiting the parents last week. We had beautiful weather except for a couple days.

Good luck!

Mary Beth

Edited by marybetht, 17 September 2004 - 03:37 PM.

[vinnie2227]

Hello,

We are also in Froogle and do alright with it. My biggest recommendation would be to join BizRate! They are excellent AND the best part is that Bizrate feeds the results for AOL shopping! See the link below for the story.

http://home.business...369&newsLang=en

Good luck!

[Haystack]

Your results will likely vary in traffic, conversions, and cost. The best measure of which one is the best, is the one that makes you the most money. Consider setting up accounts with a few different programs for a test set of products and see which ones perform for your business. That way you are comparing results over a similar time frame.

If you get on it right away, you may have time to gather some valuable data before the holiday shopping season takes off.

BTW, I don't think the holiday shopping season has started yet, but I did find some candy corn around the house, so Halloween is just around the corner.

[marybetht]

We are also in Froogle and do alright with it. My biggest recommendation would be to join BizRate! They are excellent AND the best part is that Bizrate feeds the results for AOL shopping! See the link below for the story.

http://home.business...369&newsLang=en

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Mary Beth

[jmatlock]

As the designer of a successful Christmas shopping site, www.christmasgifts.com, I have seen the same advertising clients come back year after year. Any reasonable person would figure this means that advertising on that site must be working for them. The site is not PPC, it is a one-time fee for a banner ad and up to 4 text listings in various categories. Ad rates are posted on the site and ads stay up for a year.

The site gets a fair amount of traffic. Last year it had about 2.8 million page views in October-November-December. While many sites get more traffic than that, in my opinion it's still worth looking at if one is advertising online to specifically target Christmas shoppers. They come to the site, check out the categories, see the ads and text listings, and go shopping.

It helps that the site has been #1 at Google, Yahoo! and most of the other search engines for the phrase "Christmas gifts" since I first optimized it in 1997. It does no other advertising to get that traffic, it's all coming from "natural" search results.

Incidentally, the site is database-driven, yet the individual pages are all indexed by Google and other search engines because I didn't use question marks in the links. There's an easy workaround to the problem of database-driven sites not getting indexed, which I've put in place on several sites to good result.

Jere matlock


[You can create a sig. in the "my controls" if you'd like. - Jill]

Edited by Jill, 21 September 2004 - 07:40 AM.

[Jill]

Welcome Jere! Nice to see you here.

Regarding dynamic pages with questions marks in the URL, it actually isn't a problem any more for the major search engines as long as there are static links to the pages at hand.

[Corey]

I agree with Haystack. We have heard of clients doing very well on Shopping Search Engines, but we have also heard of some doing poorly. Not unlike PPC, the key is to monitor your conversions and ROI.

The one big difference is that click costs are generally considerably lower and more qualified than AdWords and Overture. It's not that expensive to be on these sites, so I recommend trying the "big four" - Froogle, Yahoo Shopping, BizRate, and Shopping.com. The next options would probably include NexTag, PriceGrabber, and MySimon.

Please let us know what works best for you. We are trying to capture the value of these sites.

[Matt Br]

I have found that PriceGrabber has good organization to its site and is a lot more specific in its categorization. As a matter of fact they have a Boxing and Martial Art category. The other nice thing is that they don't have any products listed in that category when I checked! A little bit of a corner market? Check it out!

There are so many places you can go to get good exposure. Froogle is free yes... but to try and find something specific quickly? That's another story. I did see however an article that shows BizRate takes 8.33% of the shopping search engine market, NextTag 8.18%, and PriceGrabber 8.06%. so if your interested in traffic... not much of a difference there. The heavy hitters are Yahoo! Shopping (36%) and Shopping.com(22%). Things may have changed but as far as I see it, don't waste your time with Froogle (.5%) on Christmas shopping this year. Get listed with Froogle? Yes! because it's free! And we all know their mother company can whip something out at the last minute that can change the whole scene (like in times past ).

So after saying all of that, you might consider PriceGrabber. People are probably looking at empty Martial Arts pages quite frequently. Put your link there and WHAMO! a sale!

[BrianR]

Hello and welcome to the forum, Matthew - and thanks for your input.

BrianR

[CSE Monkey]

I am a biased Lurker, but knowlegeable about the industry. Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE's) can be extremely successful for merchants, but there are some things to consider:

1.0 They are different than Google/Overture placements and you need to learn how to best maximize performance on them.

2.0 First many require that the merchant provide a data feed. For Soft Goods you will need to provide images, short descriptions, part numbers, etc. Each Shopping Service has different specs, but usually the mandatory fields are the same (i.e. if you build a feed for one site, you can use it on nearly all of them).

3.0 Most are PPC and you will need about 2-3 weeks run time to understand the conversion and ROI. Not all sales happen in the first 24 hours. You can find limited Rev Share opportunities, but they are not as effective.

4.0 Learn the ranking algorithm for each individual CSE.

5.0 Work with Customer Service and Account Managers who can provide you with the knowledge to be successful on the site.

6.0 Use the backend merchant tools such as ROI tracking.

7.0 Get in early to build up a 'merchant review' base which will help in conversions.

Most CSE's have very low turnover rates so merchants who are diligent and patient are making it work. Expectation for your Cost of Sales to be 10% or less depending on your web page and product mix. Volume can be quite significant, especially if you get good placement.

Good luck!

[Haystack]

Welcome, CSE Monkey.

Thanks for stepping out of lurkdom to share your valuable insights.