Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/447632
30 FEDA News & Views moment, include PriceGrabber.com, Pronto.com, Become. com, Bizrate.com, Shopzilla.com, Shopping.com. Product feeds are very customizable and allow merchants to supply a vast number of product attributes including, price, sale price, availability, product image, tax amount and rate, shipping, and product combinations such as multipack or bundle. Submitting this information to the search engine is a complex and technical endeavor, so most merchants will hire a company to handle the technical details. The following list includes a few of the many companies that will format, organize and maintain your data feeds: FusePump, AvantLink, DataFeedWatch and Single Feed. Comparison shopping has been getting a lot of attention over the past few years. Consumers are looking for the best deals and sites like Google, Nextag and Shopzilla offer a great shopping experience by collecting product information from a large group of merchants, and then displaying it on a single page, depending on the customer's search. This is a very effec- tive type of advertising that many retailers are already using. Visit Shopzilla, for example, and you will find several E&S deal- ers that are already taking advantage of the service. Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) are also called shop- ping feeds. By using the product feed capabilities we discussed earlier, CSEs sort items based on attributes (i.e., price, shipping fees and ratings) to make it easier for consumers to compari- son shop in one place. For example, if a consumer is searching for a Waring blender, CSEs will show pages featuring different merchants carrying the blender, along with pricing and other pertinent information provided by the product feed. When a consumer clicks on one of the listings, they will go directly to that site and that merchant will be charged by the click. Because CSEs are able to increase ecommerce, they are expe- riencing exponential growth. In 2012, CSE traffic increased by 56 percent and generated revenues of over $1 trillion. This ability to increase ecommerce is very important to retailers because it increases their traffic dramatically. Some merchants have seen up to 20 percent increase in traffic due to compari- son shopping engines. It also has been noted that the majority of shoppers spend at least 15 minutes comparing products online, finding the best pricing before they purchase the prod- uct. They also are twice as likely to make a purchase when compared to customers shopping at your website alone. Getting started with comparison shopping engines can be as easy as contacting one of the product feed companies listed above and sending them a file of your product data. Different engines will have different requirements, and these middle- man companies are very good at working with each CSE to display the required specifications. Once the data feed is in place, you or the company you selected will upload the infor- mation to the CSE and you're in business. Bidding Strategy Bidding strategy is a very important part of your marketing plan to ensure your product stands out among the others. Provide detailed product descriptions and information, high- light promotions that you're currently running, and review your bidding plan often to ensure that you are staying in line with and ahead of your competition. In addition, track the performance of your product feed and CSE strategy, tag the ads with tracking parameters that are provided by the CSE compa- nies. This will ensure that you are not wasting time and money. Here are some important key points to keep in mind so that your CSE experience is profitable and useful to your business. • Product feeds must be regularly optimized. Names and descriptions must be specifically tailored to each prod- uct. • Images should be of great quality to ensure that the consumer can identify the product and has the best possible experience. • Submit your product feeds regularly, daily if possible. • Bidding, based on the pricing from other merchants is very important and your CSE middleman will be able to help with this. Review this strategy often. • Keep an eye on your competitors and revise strategies according to the market. • You can become a trusted store with the CSE in order to promote your business further. And here, in the opinion of Search Engine Watch, are the 10 best Comparison Shopping Engines: Google Shopping, Shopzilla, Price Grabber, Amazon Product Ads, eBay Commerce Network, Become, Nextag, Bing Product Ads, Pronto and Amazon.com. Improving the visibility of your product in both search engine rankings and in how your product is displayed on the page, is very important to the long-term success of your online business. Use the suggested strategies and methods wisely to gain a leg up on your competitors. Tech Talk continued Getting Started For more information on data feeds, visit the links below. http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-google-rich-snippets http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/sitemap https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188478?hl=en