Historically, comparison shopping engines (CSEs) have been a headache to set-up and manage. If you’re not careful, they can easily become time-suckers.
The issue is – from which comparison shopping engines do you get an acceptable return, on which products, during what season?
To answer that question takes time. And patience.
Some Experiences We’ve Had With CSEs
Below are some experiences – both positive and negative – we’ve had with comparison shopping engines on behalf of our clients. The morale of most of these stories is that testing is required to be able to determine which engines to use and which products.
* A client whose point of differentiation is service, not lowest price, does well on 3 shopping engines for a couple of specific brands and not well at all with other engines. The ones that work great generate orders at a lower than average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). The other engines generated unacceptably high CPAs for this particular merchant.
* It was learned that just one shopping site had an audience that was even close to an apparel retailer’s. However, that one shopping engine produces generates a good amount of 1st-time orders at s lower than average CPA.
* One client’s CPA through comparison shopping sites was a little high. The CPA potentially could have been reduced by implementing merchandising techniques to increase the Average Order Value (AOV). However, the client wasn’t interested in increasing the AOV. So, the feed had to be stopped.
* One retailer’s sales process was heavily dependent on getting samples in peoples’ hands for evaluation prior to placing a full order. Those buyers who subsequently placed a full order could not easily be tracked back to a shopping engine without a lot of manual labor. So, there is really no way of knowing exactly how well the shopping engines perform in terms of full order sales. But, as far as samples, the program administered by DMG works great.
* One client who had never previously used CSEs began to after DMGs recommendation. Sales skyrocketed, nearly doubling.
Making money via comparison shopping engines isn’t always easy. Contact DiPietro Marketing Group LLC to learn more. Use the contact method on the right of this page that is most convenient for you.
