Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition

Putting the Changes at Comparison Shopping Engines to Work for You Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor CEO

Overview of Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs)
CSE Landscape
Changes from CSEs in 2010 and beyond
eBags - CSE Case Study
eBags Background
eBags and CSEs
CSE Best Practices
Q+A

Forrester – 55% of online shoppers influenced by CSE
ChannelAdvisor ‘assist’ technology shows this is true

Google search changes have put pressure on the CSEs

CSE 1.0
Vintage <2000
Product catalog driven
Usually very electronics oriented
CPC
Stagnant, little to no innovation since 2006 timeframe
Primarily acquire traffic from paid-search
CSE 2.0
Vintage >2006
Variety of models to enhance experience/business
Reviews (Ciao)
Social (Pronto)
Traffic/fun (Jellyfish)
BizModel (CPA )

Shopping Engines All Categories Apparel Consumer Electronics Health & Beauty Home & Garden Sports & Outdoors Tools & Hardware Toys, Baby & Hobby Amazon Product Ads 3.90% 3.20% 3.10% 3.30% 4.70% 3.10% 7.80% 5.00% Nextag 3.10% 3.20% 4.30% 6.70% 2.30% 2.50% 1.70% 4.60% Google Product Search 2.60% 3.80% 2.60% 1.30% 3.60% 2.00% 1.60% 2.70% Bing Shopping 2.60% 1.20% 3.60% 7.50% 2.00% 1.60% 2.20% Become.com 2.30% 2.50% 2.30% 6.10% 1.60% 1.90% 2.60% 3.70% PriceGrabber 2.70% 2.70% 2.80% 4.20% 2.60% 1.50% 1.80% 2.20% Shopzilla 2.80% 3.20% 3.00% 4.80% 2.50% 2.00% 1.90% 2.50% Shopping.com 3.20% 4.00% 3.70% 4.30% 2.90% 2.00% 2.30% 3.40%

There are more changes coming in 2010-2011 than past 5 years
CSE 2.0 companies becoming top 10 – CSE 1.0 companies lowing share rapidly y/y
Overall focus on coupons, product reviews and updated user-interfaces
Some consolidation: Pricegrabber took over Yahoo!
Will some of the next-generation mobile CSEs be the platform that consumers adopt on smartphones?
PriceGrabber is introducing sku-level bidding
Bing is ending cash-back

Optimizing Comparison Shopping Engines Peter Cobb Co-founder, SVP eBags.com

eBags Overview
eBags.com launched March 1999
Luggage, Handbags, Laptop Cases, Backpacks
500 brands, 40,000 products
Shipped over 11 million bags to date
Drop-ship model
2 million customer reviews
Frugal marketing spend
CSEs range from 12-25% of sales per month

Relationship with CSEs
Involved with 14 CSEs
Direct weekly contact with 9 CSEs
Weekly calls to discuss performance and set expectations
Feed revisions
New ideas to optimize
3 month strategy review/outlook
Large CSEs are key, but don’t forget small guys
Like.com, Pronto.com, Gifts.com, Smarter.com
Direct contact key to meeting performance goals

Relationship with CSEs
Be an Early Adopter
Competing against mega-retailers with high awareness and $$$
Participate in “Betas” to get first mover advantage
You want to be site they come to first with new idea
Need to weigh impact on IT resources and assess probability of success
Share internal data with CSEs
Discuss KPIs and site performance data to level-set
eBags reporting sometimes differs from CSEs
ROAS, sales, traffic, conversion rates
Encourage CSEs to tweak mix to increase performance
Become.com can highlight “top 20 products”
Get higher quality CSE affiliate traffic mix

eBags Engine Mix

eBags CSE Holiday Results
Very strong holiday for CSEs (+38% yoy)

eBags Results
Some softness during March and April (-21% yoy)
Challenges with Google’s changing algorithm
Changes in major engines’ affiliates reducing traffic
Shopping.com and Bizrate traffic softness
Nice rebound and ramp up in May (+12% yoy)
Title optimization – make it clear and concise
Feed template updates (provide relevant additional information)
Original price + sale price, material, colors, dimensions
alt images, higher res images, star & text reviews

Reviews in Google Product Search

Best Practices
Watch your products
Closely monitor your “power SKUs”
Be sure to regularly evaluate poorly performing models
Title optimization is key
Make sure your titles are clean, concise and contain all relevant information
Diversify across many engines
Provides opportunity for revenue growth
Reduces chances of single event causing catastrophic effect
Team with your CSE account managers
They know what is working for other clients
Often have too many accounts so they work on those they like
Get the right data management team
They spot changes within CSEs immediately
Unbiased view of which CSEs are growing and which are faltering
Are incentivized to sell more
Often make introduction to “friendly” online retailers

Q+A Question & Answer

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Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition

by Scot Wingo

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