Shopping Comparison Roundtable Notes

Posted July 3, 2006 * Comments(3)

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.

[tags]shopping comparison, e-consultancy, shopping comparison roundtable, shopping.com, ciao, pricerunner, genie group, datafeed[/tags]


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3 Comments so far

  1. MikeD on July 4th, 2006

    “This is the only true way for comparison engines to identify matching products with 100% accuracy.” Although UPC/EAN/etc. are super critical, they don’t provide 100% accuracy. UPCs are re-used, there are typos, and some product types use the same UPC for different models (toys often do this – the different characters in a line of toys may all have the same UPC).

  2. Marc Mezzacca on July 5th, 2006

    I was wondering if anyone was going to comment on that line.

    Thanks for the informative feedback Mike, it’s noted.

  3. Ja on July 9th, 2006

    Is that 20% just the first click data (including people that hit back and click on another merchant) or does it account for all clicks?

    It’s completely logical to look at a site with a higher price first and then go back and click on the lowest priced one if it’s a trusted merchant. Different merchants offer different amounts of information.

    For example I might find that one merchant I trust has the lowest price, but Newegg is on the list and they usually have good site-specific reviews as well as detailed specs so I might click on them first, return and click on the lowest priced one to actually purchase.

    Until the customer is provided with all the information possible about the product right at their fingertips along with the price-comparisons, they’re likely to do a bit of browsing via the merchant links before choosing which to buy from.

    Consider also that there are merchant preferences for various reasons. I, for example, like to try to buy from places that have reliable stock indications and a tendency for fast shipping. Also if I’m ordering a bunch of things at once, I’ll usually try to order as many of the items I can from one place even if they’re a little bit more expensive on some of those items. It would be really nice to be able to organize this sort of stuff on a price comparison shopping site but the guarantees on in stock status and such may cause problems.

    Basically, there’s a plethora of possible reasons for the 20% statement making it rather trivial on it’s own. Was there more to that part or at least a broader scope of analysis there?

    Ja

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