8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 1 Shopping Search Bizresearch Laura Thieme Slides may update by...

8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 1

Shopping Search

BizresearchLaura Thieme

Slides may update by conference date


Shopping Search Data Feeds

o Benefits of Shopping Searcho Getting Listed in Shopping Search

o Data feeds, automation, optimizing results

o Current Case Study – Focus on Froogle Optimizationo Tracking Traffic, Sales, Conversion Rates & ROI by

Category & Product Level o Click Fraud Discussiono Summary/Conclusions


Shopping SE Acquisitions

• eBay acquired Shopping.com - $625M– Recently eBay items included in MSN

Shopping search results

• E.W. Scripps acquired Shopzilla - $525M

• Experian parent GUS acquired Pricegrabber - $485M


Data Feed Standardization

• Alan Rimm-Kaufman– Working to create data feed standards– Alongside Shop.org

• Association for Retail Technology – Testing of standard feed to start in December

Source: http://xmlpronews.com/2006/0310.html


New Shopping Search Engines

• Become.com– Stays away from data feed

– Uses a crawler designed to focus exclusively on shopping related information

– Analyzes content of a page, not just links

• BrilliantShopper.com– Founded by veterans of AskJeeves, Disney and IBM

– Meta-shopping search engine


Monthly Data – June, 2006


$30.1 Billion on 2005 Holiday Season

30.1

5.3 4.8 4.3 3 2.3

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

2005

Online Shopping

Clothing

ComputerHardwareConsumerElectronicsBooks

Toys/video games

Source: Goldman Sachs, Nielsen/Netratings, Harris Interactive


B2C Median Order Conversion Rates

Souce: http://www.websidestory.com/company/news-events/press-releases/view-release.html?id=319


Merchants & Search Marketers

Shopping Search Can’t Be Ignored


Benefits of Shopping Search• Product title, image,

description, price from various vendors displayed on each search results page

• Easy to shop multiple vendors from one place

• Merchant ratings• Up-Front Price & Packaging

Calculator Comparison • Qualified sales channel for

vendors• Potential for strong ROI for

retailers


Example Client

• Customer Acquisition rate: 4%

• Data consistently shows revenue exceeding cost of investment.

• Average conversion ratio: 4.58%


Creation of a Data Feed

• Excel spreadsheet or raw tab delimited data file of your existing product database which typically includes the following:– Product URL

– Product Name

– Description

– Image URL

– Product Category

– Price


Good Feed


Bad Feed


Getting Listed• Froogle relies on data

feeds (Google Base)• Shopping.com uses

feeds or crawls– Costs $300 then

$20/month after to crawl• Shopzilla supplements

listings by crawling• Pricegrabber crawls

Travel listings


Recommend Automation

• Recommend after initial data feed is created, set up automation script to run– If using any ecommerce platform, problems can occur

• Third party programs also can help with this however make sure they’re accurately pulling your data

• Updates can be submitted automatically as products/prices change

• Begin optimization


Focus on Froogle

Why? Because it’s still free and can deliver a very profitable source of

sales


New Client Optimization Project

• Client had never heard of Froogle• Was and is bidding on CPC terms• Lost organic rankings due to ecommerce platform

change and inability to implement 301 redirects• Great business – selling rehab products• Very difficult to use NetSuite for traditional

optimization• So we opted for Froogle Data Feed/Optimization


Target Term

Massage Table


Analyze Your Competitors

• Reviewed top listings in Froogle for “massage table”

• Reviewed product titles/descriptions/prices/images/usability


Competitive Review

• Look for comparison products


Competitor: Walmart


Massive Optimization Opportunity


It’s

Percy

Again!


Back to our data feed

• Reviewed client feed originating from NetSuite platform– Difficult: Multiple errors with images, product URLs,

headers, mapping, products erroneously removed from Netsuite automation

– Easier: Titles and descriptions also needed work

• Added “Massage Table” where relevant• Programmer working with NetSuite• We are working with Froogle Tech Support


Submitting to Froogle

• Go to www.google.com/webmasters

• Create Froogle feed– https://base.google.com/base/help/tab_instructions.html

• Will want you to verify the site ownership, authenticity, but requires the ability to post a file to the root of the website – with NetSuite we could not do this


Making Progress

• Most challenging data feed we have ever worked with due to ecommerce platform

• Most data feeds typically take 2-10 hours to set up initially, optimize and submit

• After that data feeds can be automated

• Will blog our progress on Bizresearch’s Blog – stay tuned


Froogle continued

• Froogle striving towards 2-3 days, but could take longer to get updated data feed

• Recommend submitting through Google Base

• May change the way you submit in the future if you have incremental updates


Froogle Success With Other Clients

• Top referring keyword referrals coming from Froogle (noted using NetTracker)

• Often the most profitable sales

• Sending far more traffic volume than before, if optimized and updated as needed


More Froogle Tips

• Make sure your feed doesn’t expire• Most frequent problem: Image URL is

wrong– Verify your image URLs

• Make sure robots.txt file is not blocking Froogle

• Spaces in image URLs – working to resolve but currently causes problems


Quality Control-Tracking ROI/ROAS

• Track ROAS by category

• Track by product

• Pull non-performers

• Requires attention to detail


ROAS? How Can You Improve?• Watch sales to expense ratios• Note changing prices in some categories• Get your customers to participate in shopping search surveys• Consider adding your logo, or phone number• One shopping search engine may outperform the other in same category• Review interface, rankings and pricing – could be contributing to poor

ROAS • Ask sales rep for recommendations on improving conversion rates• If your site has poor ROAS, don’t expect shopping search to be much

better


Click Fraud Concerns

• Growing concern about click fraud• What to look for:

– Review clicks by traffic software– Review shopping search clicks– Talk with your vendors about difference in

tracking IP addresses

• Bigger concern is return on ad spend (ROAS) analysis


Closing Recommendations• Quality pictures• Accurate product titles• Basic product descriptions (leave out “fluff”)• Monitor search term relevancy

– Most search title and descriptions for keyword matches• Monitor competitive pricing• Monitor customer reviews • Ensure rapid and accurate fulfillment• Shopping search is form of customer acquisition – need to

market to them to ensure you retain customer (email marketing, direct mail, stellar customer service)


For Quality Control:

• E-mail Traci Couts [email protected]

• Call 614-846-7560

• Visit www.bizresearch.com

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