Using Google Base and the other UK Price Comparison Websites
As an online retailer all of us must grab all opportunities to provide more exposure for the distributed goods. As the the usage of the different price and product comparison portals increases day by day you must consider the participation as you may loose profit if you miss them.
At present, online retailers occupy an enviable position among the British retail industry, at present, over all sales figures on the high street and disappointing, brands that has been established for decades on the UK high street are going out of business but online sales are booming as more consumers us online shopping site more than a trip to the high street.
There are many tools on the Internet that helps online retailer give more exposure to their businesses hence increasing sales. If you are not already using this tools namely price comparison sites, you really want to review your online marketing.
After a short research, there appears to be four major price comparison portals, they all charge using clickthroughs (PPC) cost to advertisers. The four sites are:
The aforementioned websites allow merchants who has enrolled with them to list their products. When visitors search for the products, your listings appear in their search results. If a shopper clicks on your listing, the shopperr is tranferred to your website.
Using free statistic service like Google Trends we can give you some estimation about the potential traffic which may arrive from the listed comparison services filtering to the British Internet browsers.
Using free statistic tool like Google Trends, you can see and estimate of potential new customer that could be arriving on your website if you list your products or service in the said comparison engines.
Kelkoo
Has a different minimum cost for different product category. How highly your product is listed depends on what you are willing to pay, the more you pay, the higher your site is listed in your chosen category.
For product submission Kelkoo offers two option:
- Product feed upload
For a certain free they help you produce a file, in a specific format, that can be updated and uploaded on daily basis. - Kelkoo Spider
For a fee they scan your site and collect your offers, but this method is not as accurate as the first method.
For more information about Kelkoo, visit their website: http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/
PriceRunner
Collects relevant product information, both from online and off line stores. The service allows consumers to compare different models as well as prices, side by side. PriceRunner claimed that 50% of their users are returning customers.
The graph below shows the average-stay at PriceRunner, it seems to suggests that PreceRunner offers outstanding value which in turn suggest quality contents.
For retailers they offer more pricing options than most any other engine.
Find out more information at about PriceRunner at their website: http://www.pricerunner.co.uk
Shopzilla
At Shopzilla there are no set up fee, hence it is one the most most cost effective way to reach targeted shoppers while giving you the control over the price you pay for traffic.
Find more information about ShopZilla at http://www.shopzilla.co.uk/
Ciao
At their website I found a 5 steps guide which introduce you to their comparison service.
- 1. Register in the Ciao merchant area by filling a form.
- 2. Upload your company logo.
- 3. Upload the product file (feed)
- 4. Send the data
- 5. Ciao integrates your data and puts on the web
You can find out more information about Ciao at their website: http://www.ciao.co.uk/
Exploit comparison shopping marketing opportunities with Boss Cart Premium
According to my personal experience most of the price comparison systems requires some of the data uploading. It can be a csv file or a regularly updated xml feed.
When we designed Boss Cart Premium we put the Retailer’s success into the focus, and we extended our ecommerce software with the product feed feature. Beside helping your subscribed shoppers keep informed about your new products, this feed is an excellent way of sending real-time information to the comparison websites about your supply.
With smaller modifications we can transform the product feed our even the exported csv product list to become compatible with any chosen price comparison system.
Google Base also known as Froogle
Google released its own price comparison portal in 2004. The graph below shows why Google Base is a powerful marketing tools for your online shop.
For lack of something better I used Google Trends again to demonstrate the traffic of Google Base concluding from the searching trend of their brand names in the UK region.
As a merchant you may upload and promote your website for free. Yes, absolutely free there are no charges for uploading your items or charges for the traffic you receive. Ranking in search results is based solely on the quality and relevance of your product listings.
Similarly to other services after signing up you may decide if you want to upload your product successive or use a bulk upload option which can be an xml feed or a spreadsheet or the most comfortable solution, the API.
This means that as a Boss Cart Premium Shopkeeper all you need to do is to request an API key, and you may upload all your products with a single clicks without doing anything else after.
Become a Boss Cart Premium Shopkeeper
Conclusion
Remember that the conversion rate which is represented by those visitors who were brought to you by the price comparison services are usually much higher than visitors who are referred by generic searching terms clicked on Google result pages.
You may learn more about price comparison websites:
- http://www.ecommerceoptimization.com/comparison-shopping-listing-guide/
- http://paler.com/price_comparison.html