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July 19, 2005The New Become.com Shopping Engine
Michael Yang, CEO of Become.com, explained the significance of their recent developments in terms of three main areas: 1. first significant integration of web research and comparison shopping In spite of all the new features, the first thing many people are bound to notice is the new look for the home page. Actually, the content area is unchanged, while the outer area is filled with an orange pinstripe pattern. This could come as a bit of a shock to searchers who have grown accustomed to all-white background, but it is less noticeable on the search results pages.
Become.com has also made some tweaks to the existing Research part of the site. The third-party text-link ads have been moved out of the right-side column, in favor of Become.com's sponsored product matches, which include pictures, prices and links to research or buy. I am told the text-link ads will be moved to the bottom of the pages, under the organic search results. The other new feature that is visible on the Research side, and carries over to the Shop side, is the My Favorites area. This is an area to save products for later reference or comparison.
This is the new section, labeled Shop, with product listings on the left and criteria filtering on the right. My first impression is that they manage to offer a variety of link choices in a way that does not seem overwhelming. Each product listing has the option to visit a merchant, research it, add it to favorites, and see similar results.
This is the kind of game-changing interface innovation that makes all other criteria-filter interfaces looks awkward by comparison. It has the potential to make power-users more powerful, while at the same time putting this functionality within the grasp of less-technical users. No more clicking through a half-dozen pages, or hitting a half-dozen back buttons, in order to arrive at the desired results. The downside is that shoppers will not experience the full benefit of this new interface tweak unless it is matched by a deep database of product attributes. Can a search-based system be compatible with detailed attribute-based refinement? Summary Become.com maintains an interesting position at the intersection of shopping and search. They have more flexibility to deliver shopping-flavored content than general search engines, and they have more technology to provide web-aware content than comparison shopping engines. If Become intends to compete in all aspects of the buying process, the challenge could come from avoiding middle-the-road standalone functionality, such as having less items than search-based Froogle, or less structure than labor-intensive comparison engines like Shopping.com. Thoughts? + + + related: Become.com | Help (Research, Shop, Compare) | Merchants | Feedback
The New Become.com Shopping Engine
CommentsMaybe I'm in the minority, but I don't particularly like Became's "Multi Critera Search". If there are 1,000 products and I'm looking for a rare brand, it will not be displayed in the "Multi Critera" box. Furthermore, I find the way in which they predefine price ranges annoying. As a poor penny pinching shopper, I often have a specific price range that I would like to adhere to. Listing digital cameras between the broad range of $295.00 - $490.00 doesn't help to pinpoint the cameras in my budget.
Posted by John at December 21, 2005 5:49 AM Hi John, Great point on the multi-search criteria, I'm glad you brought it up. And I agree that as it appears on Become.com, it seems anti-longtail. But I'm not sure if this is an issue with multi-criteria per se, as some of the travel sites use this functionality with much longer option lists. I agree that price is too important an attribute not to have a flexible, user-defined range, so kudos to PriceGrabber. MSN Shopping goes a step further, with an option of fixed price ranges OR a user-defined range... something for everyone. p.s. - sorry about the delay, I'm having issues tweaking the spam filter, hope to find a better balance soon. Posted by Sean O'Rourke at December 21, 2005 8:31 AM |
Without spending much time on the live site, it is difficult to get a feel for the synergy between Research and Shop, or the stickiness of My Favorites. But if there is one love-at-first-sight feature, it is the Multi-Critera Filtering. (see right)
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