Interesting article about Shopping Comparison Sites & Buying Computer Hardware from the Ecommerce Times: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/56623.html.
To sum up the article, the author was describing instances of trying to purchase hi-tech equipment from the standard shopping comparison sites and had very little luck doing so. Shopper.com (cNet) came out #1 for their price comparison functionality during this test. Also, Shopzilla.com had an offering that no one else did (from Circuit City!).
Give it a read, it's pretty interesting.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Shopzilla Optimization
Shopzilla.com is a very large shopping comparison website with 100's of sellers. The competition for most products (even specific ones) can be very tough so when you're creating your feed, make sure to properly optimize each product listing so it can actually drive targeted traffic to your website.
I know this isn't extremely insightful, but here are some strategies that may work. You need to treat each product in your feed as a new 'listing' almost as if you were creating it for eBay. Some websites' feeds allow for extensive optimization such as Amazon Seller Central's product feed. Shopzilla only has a few ways that you can seriously optimize your feed.
Obviously, you can optimize your biding strategy.
SIDENOTE: In order to make good decisions about bidding, just like any PPC program, you need tracking. Depending on the size of your website you can check out analytics tracking such as Google Analytics which is very useful and best of all FREE. If you need a larger analytics program, you can check out Coremetrics which may be a bit expensive but is a great tool for this sort of analysis.
Back to the optimization. Utilize your analytics to check out which products are getting traction and how well they are converting. If they aren't converting, then you need to make a change. First, you can lower your bid to get less exposure and less clicks. You need to look at the page that you're sending traffic to - is it too long winded? Are there enough product pictures? Is the ad to cart button in full view? Is your website slow and hard to navigate? Keep all of these in mind when running any PPC campaign, and it works the same with Shopzilla.
In Shopzilla, you cannot specify a separate bid for each product so make sure that products with clicks and low or zero conversions are taken out of the feed category promptly.
Optimize your Ad Text
If you're not getting a bunch of clicks on your products in Shopzilla, maybe it's because your title isn't descriptive enough or has the best keywords. Go and check out the competition for this type of product and do something different; stand out of the crowd. If your listing looks exactly like everyone else's, why should someone click on yours?
Optimize your Photo
If you're selling a product that another 40+ sellers are also listing but with the same photo, try a unique product photo that could attract more clicks with a lower bid.
Utilize Promo-Text
Shopzilla has a field called Promo-Text that can be used for product promotions, website promotions or any sort of deals & savings that you can use to get more clicks on your products. If everyone in a certain category charges inflated flat rate shipping, make promo text saying that your website offers free shipping.
For this sort of optimization, you need a tool. Just as always, I personally rely on Laris to help me manage my feeds. You can tell the system which products to put into Shopzilla, choose your category (searchable), and specify promo-text. It's definitely better then starting with a blank feed file and filling in the blanks.
I know this isn't extremely insightful, but here are some strategies that may work. You need to treat each product in your feed as a new 'listing' almost as if you were creating it for eBay. Some websites' feeds allow for extensive optimization such as Amazon Seller Central's product feed. Shopzilla only has a few ways that you can seriously optimize your feed.
Obviously, you can optimize your biding strategy.
SIDENOTE: In order to make good decisions about bidding, just like any PPC program, you need tracking. Depending on the size of your website you can check out analytics tracking such as Google Analytics which is very useful and best of all FREE. If you need a larger analytics program, you can check out Coremetrics which may be a bit expensive but is a great tool for this sort of analysis.
Back to the optimization. Utilize your analytics to check out which products are getting traction and how well they are converting. If they aren't converting, then you need to make a change. First, you can lower your bid to get less exposure and less clicks. You need to look at the page that you're sending traffic to - is it too long winded? Are there enough product pictures? Is the ad to cart button in full view? Is your website slow and hard to navigate? Keep all of these in mind when running any PPC campaign, and it works the same with Shopzilla.
In Shopzilla, you cannot specify a separate bid for each product so make sure that products with clicks and low or zero conversions are taken out of the feed category promptly.
Optimize your Ad Text
If you're not getting a bunch of clicks on your products in Shopzilla, maybe it's because your title isn't descriptive enough or has the best keywords. Go and check out the competition for this type of product and do something different; stand out of the crowd. If your listing looks exactly like everyone else's, why should someone click on yours?
Optimize your Photo
If you're selling a product that another 40+ sellers are also listing but with the same photo, try a unique product photo that could attract more clicks with a lower bid.
Utilize Promo-Text
Shopzilla has a field called Promo-Text that can be used for product promotions, website promotions or any sort of deals & savings that you can use to get more clicks on your products. If everyone in a certain category charges inflated flat rate shipping, make promo text saying that your website offers free shipping.
For this sort of optimization, you need a tool. Just as always, I personally rely on Laris to help me manage my feeds. You can tell the system which products to put into Shopzilla, choose your category (searchable), and specify promo-text. It's definitely better then starting with a blank feed file and filling in the blanks.
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