Next Generation Shopping

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

Yesterday ShopWiki announced a mobile version of their site. Right from their press release:

“ShopWiki, the complete shopping search engine and buying guide, today announced the launch of its mobile service, available on Web-enabled mobile devices at http://m.shopwiki.com/. ShopWiki Mobile Search (beta) allows shoppers to quickly compare online product pricing or research product information before making an in-store purchase.”

This continues with the trend of online e-commerce engines realizing the potential needs of in-store shoppers. As a side note, I couldn’t get the site to load on my new Razor phone… Not sure if it was my phone or the site, oh well!

ProductWiki

“ProductWiki provides a new kind of online shopping experience: one that is both individual and collaborative. A place to not only research products, but a place to share with others what you’ve found. The best thing about ProductWiki is that we are an independent website that does not sell any products. What this means for the consumer is that we provide information that isn’t influenced by advertisers or sellers, and is instead based on what our users and the community feels is best.”

The Good - Nice Features
They have some neat Web 2.0ish features implemented. One of the things I really like was their tap board (seen to the left) which allows the users to tap the product. A tap related to the product can be that you love it, hate it, have it, or a tag. You can then connect with other users by seeing a list of who has tapped the item. Furthermore, on each product page they have a section for community. A member can participate by starting a discussion, writing an article, sharing an image, adding a relevent link, or writing a review.

The Bad - Where To Buy? Google Ads Aren’t The Answer
My last post mentioned having a viable business model using Google AdSense… I’m in pain with how ProductWiki has used Google Ads on their site! Such a nice looking site and then they pop Google Ads at the most critical point of revenue generation, eeek! Forget being told “Where to Buy”, some of the Google Ads are not even close to being relevant to the product itself! Looking at a JVC camera, Google is telling me where I can get a Palm Pilot case… Ugh.

Here is an example of one that at least is relevant to the manufacturer. The product is the
Sharp AQUOS LC-32D6U, but as you can see it does not tell you where to buy the correct model.

However, a few products do have Shopzilla implemented (not sure how that works, first I’ve seen of it).

That is good, but it is still two clicks to a merchant. Thus potentially losing revenue on the extra effort of another click. Optimally, what should it look like? Something like this:

Summary
Overall, as it is now, the site layout is very clean (love it!), and has a lot of community features. I haven’t heard too much buzz about this company so I think the company needs to do some serious PR to compete with ShopWiki… But could definitely be a contender in the long-run because of the innovative collaboration features. However, without pricing information, the site definitely loses out in the comparison shopping aspect! Note: They state that they are working on that section with merchant affiliates, so that is a plus.

Technorati Tags: ProductWiki, Web 2.0, Wiki, Shopping Comparison, ShopWiki

“ShopWiki is a shopping search engine that indexes retail products from thousands of online merchants. ShopWiki is not a store and does not sell anything. The purpose of the site is to help consumers find the products they are looking for online with ease.”

Buying Guides
Unique content. Shop Wiki adds, like any Wiki, the ability to edit for the community to edit the content. It has some nice buying guides already in place, they say more then 1,000 actually. Many of which have been edited several times already by community members.

Finding a Product
They have an intelligent search engine setup. You can type more complex queries such as price ranges. They have also implemented a sliding bar allowing the user to narrow your price range.

Product Page

• Offers - They generally have a wide variety of merchant offers, but details are often lacking.  Also, like Froogle, crawling is not always accurate. For Example, the first two offers for the Western Digital WD740GD 74GB Hard Drive are from stores.tomshardware.com. Well, last I checked TomsHardware didn’t sell anything… In actuality it is a co-brand of PriceGrabber.

• Reviews - Interestingly enough, they have in place some review data from Amazon and Epinions, but do allow users to write their own reviews.

Summary
Pros: Crawling gives them access to more merchants, unbiased. Smarter search capability. eg. ” 5 megapixel digital camera with 10x optical zoom” returns highly qualified results. While some comparison engines like Shopping.com are also fairly smart, many do not have the ability to determine the language.

Cons: Since information is crawled, Shipping and handling and tax is not often found. Also, errors in pricing data or even relevant merchants can occur.

Overall, I’d say the site has high potential to become a quality shopping resource as the unique content grows as well as the community. We will continue to see with these type sites as they mature, if the community will be able to filter out unrelated content. Or if it becomes a linking game.

For more information you can read the NY Times article, or a detailed discussion can be found at ComparisonEngines.com in Brian Smith’s interview with the ShopWiki founders. My favorite comment by a user on Brian’s blog post is “When did Google Adsense and YPN become a legitimate business model?” I wonder how long companies will try to survive on Google Ads.

Thus far ShopWiki has taken the route of PR to gain exposure in the e-commerce market. However, they aren’t the first to take a Wiki approach to online shopping. A competitor lurks, ProductWiki, which is much more Web 2.0ish in my opinion. But that will be another blog post.

Technorati Tags: ShopWiki, shopping comparison, web 2.0, wiki