Next Generation Shopping

By the time I had checked my feed reader this morning, Brian Smith had already covered Shopping.com’s latest press release.  If you are a reader of Brian’s blog then you know he has been very critical of Shopping.com the past couple years.  So I was sure I was dreaming when I read his post title “Shopping.com Gets With The Program.”  Alas, I was not dreaming… They are planning to release the following quality innovations for merchants:

• Product Performance Reporting
• SKU Level Bidding
• Shopping.com Cart
• Distributed Commerce Program

These will be accesible through a merchant portion of the Shopping.com API, slated for beta release in 2008.  You can read the details about the items mentioned above in the press release or on Ed’s etaildtail blog entry.

Now, what does this mean to a Partner in the Shopping.com Developer Network?  Simply put conversion will effect your CPC rate.  Directly from Shopping.com:

“the revenue per click to publishers will also be adjusted based on the merchant CPC. We evaluate the quality of traffic from our distribution partners by measuring the conversion to sale and adjust the merchants’ cost per click accordingly.”

More…

• All existing agreements to remain the same
• To continue to receive a share of the merchant revenue
• To be evaluated based on a new metric: Quality Score. This metric will determine the value a partner receives on each click and will be available in the Partner Account Center upon launch of VBP.

I’m hoping that Shopping.com will ensure publisher partners have the information neccessary to increase their conversion and provide a higher quality of clicks.

This will change the landscape dramatically, especially for those pumping low quality clicks through SDC.  But at the end of the day, its all for the better.  From Shopping.com:

“Value-Based Pricing will encourage merchants to increase their investment with Shopping.com, driving a mutually beneficial relationship between partners and merchants and reinforcing our ecosystem.”

Shopping.com had a big announcement at the eBay Developers Conference. A complete revamp of the API is in place (version 3). The new API will support REST and SOAP protocol formats. Phase I is to be released in mid-August, with a feature set focused on search type integrations. The product specs and reviews will not be included in the initial phase. The rest of the functionality for the API will be released in Q1 ’08. The current API will remain available for at least one year after the new API is fully released (estimated Q1 ’09). Documentation for the new API is slated to be released in Mid-to-Late July.

They’ve added a new part of their site dedicated to their partner developer network. For starters they’ve launched a blog and application gallery located at http://developer.shopping.com. Planned for Q3 are several enhancements including Forums, Documentation, Sample Code and a Knowledge Base.

With the added protocol support and documentation, this should continue to give Shopping.com the edge as the strongest API overall in comparison shopping industry.

I’ll be sure to continue coverage as they roll it out. More on the eBay Developers blog.

I was coding a bit today with the Shopping.com API and something was messing up my HTML and screwing up my app.  After debugging for a while it turns out the description field for a product coming from an Amazon Marketplace merchant’s description was the culprit.  Here is the entire description:

<span><img src=”http://www.comfortchannel.com/images/Get_Adobe_Reader.jpg” alt=”Click here to download Adobe Reader 7.0 for faster loading speeds” bor…

Malformed HTML. The whole description was a portion of HTML, without the end “>” bracket.

You’d think:
a) The merchant would fix it in their datafeed.
b) Amazon would strip it out.
c) Shopping.com would strip it out their partner feed.

Wait, Shopping.com doesn’t even strip it out of their own site! Aghhhh!
 

Maybe Comfort Channel (via Amazon Marketpalce) should try using SingleFeed, or another datafeed optimization product, which I’m sure would reject the feed prior to submission until the issue was corrected.

Soo… Then I tried to write this blog entry via Windows Live Writer and it crashed with an “Unexpected Error.” I clicked OK, but the error wouldn’t go away. Good thing Live Writer is marked as Beta, otherwise I would have been a little upset (sarcasm).

Its been a good day, really.

If I was to ask a random merchant ”Does your site advertise in the Music or Movies section of Shopping.com?”   From what I have seen lately, the likely result would be 99% of them telling me “No.”

So here is the scenario… I searched for the most recent Star Wars DVD on Shopping.com. My Search was for “Star Wars Episode III DVD“, which I think is a pretty popular one.  The result: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, is ”No longer available.” Oh really? Well over at Yahoo! Shopping they tell me different. Yahoo! tells me the product is still available and shows me 9 merchants who all have the product in stock.

It doesn’t stop with this one example.  Many DVDs are listed “No longer available” and most of the Music section has only one or two Merchants selling a product (mainly Overstock.com).

How does this effect the developers using the Shopping.com API?  The Shopping.com API will return no results for a search where a product is “no longer available.”  As far as a developer knows, the product doesn’t exist in the Shopping.com database.  Developers using the API are left with no option but to report that the users’ search returned no results.  The API should be at least be returning the product data without any store offers since this is happening with many DVDs, CDs, and especially with older product models in other categories as well.

To me this is a serious problem for both consumers using the Shopping.com website and developers using the Shopping.com API.  I hope the new management is going to do something about this.

Shopping.com just updated their site look and feel. Here are two sites that have utilized the Shopping.com API as the backend to their shopping site. They also have a Web 2.0ish vibe about them showcasing CSS, AJAX, Community, etc. I’ve highlighted some points of interest:

Camera Prices - Dedicated to Camera Shopping

• Editor Blog
• Community Features (Drupal Integration / Commenting on any Product)
• Social Bookmarking of Reviews
• Usage of Shopping.com UK / AU

Camera Prices is also currently giving away $100 to 1-in-10 members who write product reviews. A good incentive to get the community going, and add some content to their site at the same time.

Sprenzy - General Shopping

• Shopping Blog
• Recently Viewed Products
• Modularized - Ability to Show/Hide different sections

Update: Apparently I stumbled across a live “test” of a new site look.  What are the odds?  So Shopping.com does not actually have a new look yet, but perhaps they may in the future.

Shopping.com just got a facelift. Following the 2-Point-0 trend, the look of their site uses slightly more pastel colors and gradients.

Along with graphical improvements, I noticed a new feature. You can now shop by Brand across the entire site. For example, lets say I’m a huge fan of the Canon brand. I can browse just Canon products for all categories (they make binoculars?).

I wonder is this Brand search feature available via the Shopping.com API?

Another feature I noticed (did it exist before?) was that they have integrated Buyer’s Guides from eBay and other sites.

BTW, I told Brian Smith, who runs the Comparison Engines Blog, about the new look, and he beat me to posting about it! What a jerk! Brian don’t you have a company to run now?

Technorati Tags: Shopping.com, Shopping.com API, Web 2.0, CSS

Shopping.com recently released Shop Widgets (aka ShopAds) to its partner network. These are essentially product-focused banner advertisements that deliver product and pricing information to the end-user. They differ from Chitika eMinimalls in that they are non-contextual. It is up to the publisher to supply the keywords or category, whether it be input dynamically (scripting) or manually.

The benefit of using these over Chitika eMinimalls is that you will receive 100% of the revenue you generate as opposed to 65% that Chitika gives you. However, it will take some added work to show relevant ads since you lose the contextual portion.

Technorati Tags: Shopping.com, ShopAds, Shop Widgets, Chitika, eMinimalls, advertising, banner ads

Erik Kalvainen, co-founder of ProductWiki.com, dropped me an email yesterday letting me know that they have successfully integrated Shopping.com listings into their site by utilizing the Shopping.com API. I mentioned to them about a couple months back that the API would be a great fit for their site. Originally they were considering trying to work with BizRate / ShopZilla just linking to their site. I have little knowledge of BizRate offerings as far as an API, and they don’t seem to get back to me on it. From what I hear, they have something, but require you to have a very significant amount of traffic. Anyway, I feel they will find a much higher CTR and eCPM from utilizing the Shopping.com API instead of linking to a comparison engine product page since it cuts down the amount of clicking the end-user must do in half.

In the email Erik told me that my original ProductWiki “blog post helped initiate the process.” It is a great feeling to know people are finding the information I post in my blog useful, and actually taking action based on it. They even did a nicer job than my quick and dirty mockup seen in my previous ProductWiki post, check out the Apple iPod 30GB Video page (”Where to buy” section seen below):

You can read more about their affiliation with Shopping.com and some other new features added to their site in their blog post.

Technorati Tags: ProductWiki, Shopping.com, Shopping.com API, API, web services, wiki

Here are some interesting tidbits after reading the E-Consultancy Shopping Comparison Roundtable May 2006 Whitepaper. Some of the participants include: Shopping.com, Ciao!, PriceRunner, and Genie Group, amongst others.

• “According to one shopping engine representative, only 20% of consumers click on the cheapest product.”This is good information to know. My feeling here is that 4 of 5 clicks are most likely going to a slightly higher priced, but more trusted or higher rated merchant. This 20% maybe a good deal higher on a niche site like SecretPrices.com in which the target audience is mainly bargain hunters. But I wonder which shopping engine stated this fact?Update: Shopping.com stated the 20% click fact.

• There is a lack of research about the value of comparison engines (for Retailers) in terms of raising awareness and increasing purchase intent. Calling Brian Smith, comparison engines guru… Please save us!

• Retailers are NOT better off avoiding comparison engine advertisingThis is something rather obvious to me, as any price concious consumer is going to hit a price comparison site first. If you, being a retailer, aren’t listed on the engine then you aren’t going to get any traffic or leads from it. Further reading in the “Widening the Customer Base” section of this recent E-Commerce Times article.

• MPN, EAN, ISBN, and UPC are extremely important to include and be accurate.Ok, seriously, read that line again if you are a retailer using datafeeds. If you are not doing this your product may not be correctly categorized, and thus, never seen. This is the only true way for comparison engines to identify matching products with 100% accuracy. If you are a small or medium-sized retailer and need help in this area, Brian Smith’s new datafeed optimization business might be for you to keep an eye on.

Technorati Tags: shopping comparison, e-consultancy, shopping comparison roundtable, shopping.com, ciao, pricerunner, genie group, datafeed

Blog entry from the eBay Developer Conference - Day 3: The Unconference

The majority of this day was spent with the Shopping.com team. It was great to finally sit down and chat with the Shopping.com team to discuss the future of the Shopping.com associate program, the Shopping.com API, and the effects of integrating into eBay.

Previously (Day 1), I had attended a session called: “Leveraging Shopping.com to Create New Revenue Streams.” The presentation was performed by Rob Goldman, the Chief Revenue Officer. His presentation gave a very high-level overview of Shopping.com, the API, and some example websites which had integrated the API. Some interest was seen in the program, and some good high-level questions were raised.

I had a 1:1 meeting with Ryan Doughan and Kristy Troup. Kristy is in charge of organizing and keeping tabs on the all of the partnerships. Ryan seems to be one of the major people behind the API development. After some chit-chat we exchanged some ideas about the future of the API. Finally, I had a sit-down with Josh Wetzel, director of strategic business development. He’s a great guy and really gave me a sense of where Shopping.com was headed, especially in regard to the whole Shopping.com to eBay integration.

Here is a summary of things I picked up from my own questions and those of others in the session as well as my 1:1 meeting. I put them in a Q & A format, although these weren’t the exact question and answers.

• Are there plans to push the program towards a more open developer community?
  They seem fairly eager to open up the partner program and API to a more widespread developer community. Suggestions were to first start with a blog and forums to allow developers to connect with each other.

• What is the major reason for holding up opening up?
  Basically since the model is CPC click-fraud is a major issue since merchants only can afford to pay for quality clicks. My personal thought here is that also comparison companies in the past have been protective of their data.

• What about functions for the API from a seller standpoint?
  This is something Shopping.com maybe interested in doing in the future if there is interest from sellers. An example would be insertion of new products or pricing information from the Merchant.

• Ability to access Merchants’ review data?
  No immediate timeline to implement this function for various reasons.

• Are there plans to change the structure of the API?
  Yes, at some point. Consideration is for REST format, but also for SOAP format if there is interest (both would be great!).
  
  
• Shopping.com Australia just launched. Is this available to access via the API?
  All the locales (US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia) should now be available through the latest API.

Shopping.com has plans to enhance the support of their developers in the future. The main initial idea was for a blog to allow better communications for developers and the team. In the meantime, if you have other questions or suggestions in regards to the API / Partner program you can leave comments on this post.

Technorati Tags: Shopping.com, Shopping.com API, ebay, ebay devcon, ebay developers