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May 17, 2005Attribute-Based Shopping Search ShootoutAttribute-Based SearchFor better or worse, we have more product choices than ever before. A recent search of a shopping comparison site returned over a thousand results for digital cameras. How do we narrow a universe of over a thousand products to one best product? At this point, we come to a fork in the road: We could use an expert review to narrow the choices, but (1) the recommendations might not meet our requirements (2) the how do we know what the reviewer knows? Sometimes, Top "X" Lists come in more than one flavor, i.e. budget conscious vs. power users, but these tools are still crude as they cannot account for our individuality. Enter attribute-based search, the powertool of the do-it-yourself online shopper.
Attribute-based search is inclusive and individual. It is also based on a better bias; that of the shopper, instead of a reviewer. It lets us make an honest evaluation of our requirements, then go searching for products, instead of retrofitting our requirements to a short list of products. In summary, attribute-based search has a hammer-to-nail relationship with the problem of product narrowing, and we can gain much from a division of labor between feature finders and product reviews. But which sites offer the most comprehensive attribute-based search? Behind The Shootout...I counted the number of attributes at six top comparison shopping engines for two types of products: tech-related and home-related. For this mini-shootout, the number of attributes was the only metric, nothing to do with which attributes were included, or how well they were covered. More in-depth measures will likely find their way into a future shootout. note: note: Example: Digital CamerasThe table below shows the differences that can exist for attribute-based search on different comparison shopping engines.
A few attributes are common to all of the sites (price, brand, megapixels). More attributes, such as optical zoom and media format, are on almost all of the sites. Yet, a fair amount of attributes, such as weight and flash type, are unique to one of these sites. No shopping comparison site in this study contains every attribute. Also, sites can cover the same attributes, but display the options in very different ways. This is especially common for numeric-based attributes, i.e. single values vs. narrow ranges vs. broad ranges vs. sorting. Tech-Related Products
Home-Related Products
Summary, by ServiceEpinions/Shopping.com Shopzilla Nextag PriceGrabber Yahoo Shopping MSN Shopping (beta) Overall * for example...when searching for a computer, why should I ever need to choose 512 or 768 or 1024 megs of RAM? If I only need 512, but would like more, the most logical solution is an option to search for greater than or equal to 512. Otherwise, I have to choose between one of two unnecessary limitations. If I choose low (512), I could miss products in the same price range, only with more RAM. If I choose high (1024), I could miss product that meet my need, yet satisfy more of my other wants. Summary, for ShoppersIf you are shopping for tech-related products, most comparison shopping engines have the basic features, and Shopzilla and Epinions look like good sites for advanced features. (Or, if available, a niche product portal, such as dpreviews.com.) If you are looking for "non-geek" products, Epinions is the most reliable starting point, and NexTag and Yahoo Shopping are also competitve. But this brings us to an important point, the integration of attribute-based search and the rest of the buying process. One of these sites is not like the other... Perhaps the most powerful one-two punch in comparison shopping is the transition from attribute-based search to sorted product reviews. After going to all the trouble to refine your results with a precise process, why settle for a list of results that is unordered or undefined? Here is a summary of shopping engines and their ability to sort by the highest-rated products: Overall, if I had to name a winner in terms of attribute-based search, it would be Epinions (Shopping.com). But no site covers every feature, so if a less popular feature is a must-have, you will need to find a shopping engine with the right attribute-based search for your needs. p.s. - if you know any niche product portals with great attribute-based search, let me know. + + + upcoming shootout: Price Comparison Week
Attribute-Based Shopping Search Shootout
CommentsYahoo! Shopping also has this "SmartSort" tool, which lets a user specify the importance of each attribute and ranks the results dynamitcally. An interesting gadget, but I wonder how many people are actually using it. Posted by Meng-You Yang at May 17, 2005 4:53 PM Hi guys Posted by Yaniv at June 7, 2005 1:44 AM Hi Yaniv, Thanks for checking up on me. You are right that they display the same information on product pages. However, what we are comparing here is the -search- of attributes, and not all of the attributes that are displayed are searchable. The non-searchable attributes are useful for checking details of products you are already interested in. But the searchable attributes are useful in the early stages of the buying process. Does that explanation make sense? -added- the non-searchable attributes can be very useful when you get far enough into the process to do a side-by-side comparison. Posted by Sean O'Rourke at June 7, 2005 8:06 AM |
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