Online Window Shopping
As a self-proclaimed shopaholic, it seems only natural for me to pursue shopping engines as an online marketing channel for my clients. Shopping search engines are a great tool for tapping into a widely visited outlet that is generally less expensive than paid advertising on the main search engines. They are also wonderful for consumers looking for the best online deals, buying guides and consumer reviews.
Shopping search engines are sometimes overlooked by search marketers, because it’s easy for consumers to compare prices among retailers; however, they also deliver prospective clients to you who are ready to buy. Searchers using shopping engines have already researched products and are in the market to purchase. Therefore, they are much more likely to convert than general searchers.
According to a recent study, the top shopping engines each had more than 20 million unique visitors in December 2006. CNET and Yahoo Shopping each topped 30 million unique visitors, followed closely with PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and ShopZilla. NexTag and MSN Shopping added 24 million. The top seven shopping engines had a combined total of 163 million unique visits in December alone. Granted, December is a busy shopping month, but even by December standards, 163 million is a lot.
It takes quite a bit of work to create and maintain accounts such as these, however, but when optimized correctly they can yield high returns. The shopping engines don’t make it easy; each data feed requires different fields and it can take a significant amount of time to manage and optimize these feeds. That’s why I suggest hiring Oneupweb, we’ve developed tools to manage and optimize data feeds. With our marketing expertise and knowledge, we can quickly produce high returns for your advertising dollar.
By showing up in the many places that your customers are looking, you can increase your online visibility. From my experience window shopping from the comfort of my couch, many e-tailers are not taking advantage of these listings, which means visibility in the shopping engines could give your e-commerce site a competitive advantage.
