1. How Conventional Wisdom Ruins
Merchant Comparison Shopping
Campaigns
By Andrew Davis
blog.cpcstrategy.com
www.cpcstrategy.com

2. CPC Strategy is a full-service comparison shopping engine (CSE) agency. We
specialize in shopping feed and merchant account optimization for niche retailers and
Internet Retailer 500 merchants.
Our comparison shopping studies and articles have appeared on blogs and industry
publications such as Internet Retailer, Website Magazine, GetElastic, Amazon Seller
Support, and Auction Bytes.
We also provide lots of relevant content on shopping feed and merchant account
optimization on our blog. Be sure to check out our Top 10 CSE rankings that are
released every quarter.
Click here to take our free campaign assessment to see how your comparison shopping
campaigns stack up against your competition.
Let’s Get Started
This book breaks down conventional wisdom about
comparison shopping engines and teaches you unique
ways to manage successful comparison shopping
campaigns.
Chapter 1: Merchant Account Creation
Chapter 2: Shopping Feed Creation and Optimization
Chapter 3: Ecommerce Analytics: CSE tracking pixels
Chapter 4: Shopping Feed Submission
Chapter 5: Product Suppression
Chapter 6: CPC Bidding
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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3. Chapter 1: Merchant Account Creation
Conventional Wisdom
All comparison shopping engines are the same. They send
the same volume and quality of traffic and are worth equal
amounts of my time.
CPC Strategy Insight
Optimize the resources you dedicate to the shopping engines.
Every quarter we rank the top 10 shopping engines by six metrics: traffic volume,
average revenue, average cost-per-click (CPC), return on spend ratio, quality of
merchant tools, and conversion rates.
Click here to see where each CSE ranked last quarter.
Below are links to create merchant accounts for the Top 10 shopping engines.
1. Google Product Search (Free)
2. Nextag (Paid)
3. Amazon Product Ads (Paid) ($75 in free clicks if you sign up and go live before
3/31/2011.)
4. Shopzilla (Paid)
5. Bing Shopping (Free) (Bing Shopping management is now done within Microsoft’s
adCenter. More info on getting started here.)
6. Shopping.com (Paid)
7. Pricegrabber (Paid)
8. TheFind (Free)
9. Become (Paid)
10. Pronto.com (Paid)
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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4. If you’re already listed on or have tried the top 10 shopping engines check out
Shopmania. They have a free listing program and a paid program with CPCs of around
10 to 20 cents.
2. Shopping Feed Creation and
Optimization
Conventional Wisdom:
My competitors who show up higher than I do are doing
something special to their shopping feeds.
CPC Strategy Insight:
Shopping feeds are the brains of your merchant
accounts.
You want to keep yours in tip top shape. Here’s three ways you can create and keep
healthy shopping feeds.
1. Instead of idly browsing facebook or reading up on the latest sports rumor, check
each data feed you’re sending the shopping engines at least once per week.
2. Use the shopping feed resource center below to mold your inventory data into
each shopping engine’s specifications.
3. Visit our blog regularly to check on new ways to optimize your shopping feeds.
Sample Shopping Feeds and Feed Specifications for Comparison Shopping Engines
Tips for more advanced advertisers:
Optimize your Bing Shopping MerchantCategory column
Optimize your Google Product Search product_type attribute
Optimize your Shopping.com shopping feed
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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5. 3. Ecommerce Analytics: CSE tracking
pixels
Conventional Wisdom:
I can track all sales through my webstore using Google
Analytics or another third party system.
CPC Strategy Insight:
Each analytics platform has its own way of tracking sales.
Google Analytics attributes sales to the last path a user came from. It will not track
multiple sources that may have influenced a shopper’s decision.
For example, he or she could have gone to Shopzilla and clicked through to your
website, then came back direct or through a Google search the next day to complete
the sale.
To get a better big picture about which marketing campaigns drive more sales it’s best
to use multiple tracking sources.
The great thing about the shopping engines is that most of them provide free tracking
pixels. Instead of tracking the last click-through to a sale, the shopping engines follow
shoppers that click on their listings with cookies, so you’ll know whenever a shopping
engine had an impact on a sale.
Other advantages from using a CSE tracking pixel:
Shopping engine tracking pixels let you adjust bids on the fly. You can analyze sales,
suppress products and increase bids at the same time in the merchant login.
Using CSE tracking pixels also gives the account managers at the shopping engines
insight that they can relay to you on how to increase your sales.
Each paid CSE with the exception Amazon Product Ads provide merchants with a free
tracking pixel to capture consumer data. These shopping engines highlight their
installation instructions and tracking code in your merchant account.
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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6. 4. Shopping Feed Submission
Conventional Wisdom:
I’ll send a shopping feed when I can.
CPC Strategy Insight:
Sending fresh shopping feeds to the CSEs increases conversions because shoppers
see data that most closely mirrors your website.
Make sure you keep your product data and inventory information identical to the
information in your shopping feeds.
Do:
 Submit site-wide or product specific coupons to the shopping engines
(Shopping.com, Pricegrabber and Shopzilla let you for free).
 Submit accurate product information and inventory.
Don’t:
 Submit products that are out of stock.
 Submit products that have a different title, description or picture on your website.
If you’re a medium to large company that goes through inventory often it’s best to
submit a fresh feed to the shopping engines once a day.
This can be done manually, using a FTP program such as FileZilla or CuteFTP. It can
also be set up through an internal or external submission platform. Some other options
include creating your own custom system or hiring an agency to create and submit your
feeds on your behalf.
Talk with the support teams at each CSE.
The shopping engines appreciate when you let them know about changes to your data
feed. Don’t worry about notifying them with you insert or remove products or change
attributes in existing columns, but make sure you do notify them when you submit your
very first feed and when you update any column headers in your shopping feed. All of
the shopping engines are sensitive to change.
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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7. 5. Product Suppression
Conventional wisdom:
If my entire inventory doesn’t hit my ROI goals in the
first two weeks the shopping engine just don’t work.
CPC Strategy Insight:
Product Suppression Helps You Optimize Your ROI.
Merchant A and Merchant B have an identical set of
products, but Merchant A has a stronger conversion
funnel because he removes the products in his
shopping feed that get lots of clicks but no sales.
Merchant A then allocates the funds he would have
spent to increase the CPC bids of high converting
products. Merchant A ends up with more revenue and
a better ROI than Merchant B.
Identify a return on investment target.
What return on ad spend ratio do you need to keep in order to stay profitable on the
shopping engine?
Remember to account for the supplemental benefits of any marketing channel, such as
repeat customers and phone orders.
Whatever your ratio needs to be, suppress products in your shopping feed that prevent
you from reaching that goal. You may be shooting for a 5 to 1 return but you’re currently
at a 3 to 1 return, so you need to be fairly aggressive and remove products from your
shopping feed with 30, 40, 50 or more clicks and no sales over a 30-day period.
Product suppression shouldn't be permanent.
Your website and product details are changing all the time, so it's good to reintroduce
products into your data feed at least once a year or after any major changes to your
products or website.
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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8. 6. CPC Bidding
Conventional Wisdom:
The higher I bid, the more sales the shopping engines
will send me.
CPC Strategy Insight:
Bidding is like investing
You’re essentially betting on the probability that your
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) increase will favorably position a
product or category to convert more often. Just like
investing, there are professional bidders and novice
bidders.
You’re never guaranteed a certain return. Sometimes it’s best to cut your losses and
sell (decrease bids) while other times it’s best to keep buying (increase bids).
Strategy:
If a product or category is going above and beyond your ROI goals, increase bids by 5
to 10 cents.
Reasoning:
You likely have a competitive advantage over other merchants selling the same product
or similar products in a category that you can capitalize on for a period of time.
Why 5 or 10 cents?
5 or 10 cents is more or less a rule of thumb that we use to test three things:
1. How much traffic will increase over time with a relatively small bid increase.
2. How much conversions will increase over time with a relatively small bid increase
3. Where your product(s) will show up in search results.
These three variables help you determine whether the new bid is sustainable, if you
should increase bids further, or lower them to their previous CPC.
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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9. Most importantly…
A bidding strategy that works this month might not be as effective in subsequent
months. Your competitors are changing their own bidding strategies and product
offerings so you should be ready to adjust frequently.
Final tips:
1. Bids aren’t instant. Each bid can take up to 48 hours to process on a shopping
engine.
2. Don’t judge the effectiveness of a bid after a few days. Look at bids over the
course of a week or more to analyze their impact. If your product gets extremely
low traffic, it may be wise to use an even larger data set (a month or more) to
measure the effectiveness of a bid.
3. When you increase bids you increase your rate of spend which may or may not
be in line with your ROI.
Conclusion
Thank you for downloading CPC Strategy’s white paper, How Conventional Wisdom
Ruins Merchant Comparison Shopping Campaigns. We hope this guide makes
managing and optimizing the shopping engines at least a little easier.
Ever wonder how you stack up against your competition on the shopping engines?
Click here to take our free campaign assessment and find out.
©2011 CPC Strategy LLC
www.cpcstrategy.com
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