Comparison Search Engines 101: Getting Your Products Found
1. Comparison
Shopping Engines 101
Getting Your Products Found
IMA Las Vegas | August 13, 2012
Ryan Douglas - Product Manager, SingleFeed 1
2. Personal Bio
• Over 7 years hands on ecommerce experience
• At SingleFeed – Customer Development and Full
Service Account Management
• Working directly with hundreds of retailers
• PlumberSurplus.com – Online Marketing for Internet
Retailer Hot 100 Retailer.
• From 10 orders a day in a garage to 500+ orders a day
with 3 locations
• Product Manager of SingleFeed – help integrate our
tools for Vendio users
• Remember - I used to be in your shoes as a retailer
2
3. About SingleFeed
• Leading data feed management tool for small and
medium sized retailers
• Founded in 2006 True Ventures, Acquired in 2011 by
Vendio
• Trusted Partner – To Google and many of the leading
shopping engines
• Core Customer - Retailers doing $250K to $20M
• Pricing – Flat Rate Service plans from $99/mo
3
4. Overview
• What are the Comparison Engines?
• Why Should I use Shopping Engines?
• How to Get Started
• Recap
• Q&A
4
5. What are Comparison Shopping
Engines
Comparison Shopping Engine? Shopping Comparison
Engine? Price Comparison Engine? What's the difference?
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6. What are Comparison Shopping Engines?
• Traditional shopping engine lists one picture,
one title, one description and all of the
merchants that sell that particular product
• Product listings help consumers quickly and
easily make apples-to-apples comparisons to
make smart buying decision
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7. Where to begin?
• CSE – Comparison Shopping Engine
• There are 25+ Major CSE’s
• General to Niche
• Google Product Search, Pricegrabber,
Nextag, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, etc
• Pricing – Cost per click (CPC)
• Flat CPC rates, determined by each engine
• Variable CPC rates “bidding” at a category or
product level
• Budgets managed per engine
• Does this work with your budget and cash
flow?
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17. Why use CSE’s
• Each CSE spends $$$ on marketing and SEO to
drive traffic, adding to your “reach”
• They have more experience and deeper pockets than
you do. Let them help you.
• Unique visitors per month (comscore April 2012)
• Google Shopping >20M
• Shopzilla >18M
• Nextag >17M
• Pricegrabber >7M
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18. Why use CSE’s
• What do you sell?
• Shopping Engines support Widgets to whatchamacallit’s
but no services
• Each engine has different policies on allowable products – ie no
tobacco or alcohol, digital downloads, etc
• Part of a complete online marketing presence
• CSEs contribute 5-20% of total sales/traffic
• A way to increase traffic and sales on your site
• Controlled and profitable approach
• Own the customer, not like eBay/Amazon
• Relies on your own site conversion experience
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19. Who uses CSE’s
• The Shoppers
• Top CSE’s account for over 200 Million unique visits per
month
• Price isn’t the only driver in their searches
• Seller reputation, product rating, shipping cost are all factors
• Typically already know what they are looking for
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20. Who uses CSE’s
• The Merchants
• Already listing on other channels – Amazon/Ebay
• Actively using online marketing such as SEM (AdWords),
SEO, and email.
• Selling well established brands of products – no obscure
generic/house brand items
• Price competitive to a degree – won’t work well if you’re
selling at the highest price
• Have bandwidth/people to handle Marketing duties
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22. You Need the Basics First
Requirements
• Access to product data/catalog
• Ability to frequently updates feeds
• Shopping Engine Accounts
• Credit Card for CPC engines
• Tax and Shipping Information
• 5-10 hours for initial setup/launch (not
including feed generation)
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23. Step By Step
Step 1 - Create Shopping Engine Accounts
• Typically takes 20-30 minutes to register/setup
• Need basic store information – tax, shipping
rates/rules, store logo, Support phone #, etc
• Pay initial deposit (if required) via Credit card
• CPC fees are set by product category rate cards
• Fees from $0.15-$1.00+ (avg $0.35)
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25. Step By Step
Step 2 - Create Data Feeds
• Enter the “Feed Matrix”
• Most CSEs use 10-15 fields or more
• Product Title, Description, UPC, Color…
• Every CSE has different requirements - download feed spec’s
from each one and follow instructions
• Common and unique data fields between each CSE
• File formats – csv, txt, xml, etc
• Use Excel to open/create/read files.
• Get a Developer to help create a feed generation script
• Re-useable solution for your website
• Data Feed Management Services
• Streamline/automate the process.
• SingleFeed helps in this area
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26. Step By Step
Step 3 – Upload/submit Feed Files
• Automate this process if you can via scripts
and FTP delivery.
• Will require Developers
• Deliver feed files regularly – as often as
your product data changes.
• Upload via web for small files, FTP for larger
files
• Once per day is our recommendation
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27. Step By Step
Step 4 – Review & Correct Errors
• May take several tries to get the feed file
“just right”
• Strive for >90% approval and move on
• Error messages from CSEs are not always
clear
• Warnings vs Errors vs Recommendations
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28. Step By Step
Step 5 – Setup Tracking and Reporting
• Don’t want to be “flying blind” on performance
• Use Google Analytics at a minimum
• Utm parameters: utm_medium and utm_source will
get you started
• Most CSEs have their own tracking as well, we
recommend you install too
• Helps w/ ranking and bid amounts and conversions to
have this installed
• Monitor performance regularly – look at least 1x a
week
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29. Key Takeaways
• Submit Feeds frequently
• Don’t submit the same feed to all the CSEs
• Set a budget – daily/monthly to avoid overspend
• Remember to check results – “Don’t set it and forget it”
• Start with 1 or 2 CSEs then expand – avoid shotgun
approach
www.singlefeed.com 29 (800) 705 8852
