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July 2005Forbes Best of the Web: Shopping BlogsForbes "BOW Directory" added a category for best Shopping Blogs. Sweet Pea would surely say Ayyyyyyyy, The Manolo, he was robbed! more shopping blogs: Google Search, Yahoo Search, MSN Search
Forbes Best of the Web: Shopping Blogs
Yahoo Shopping upgrades Australia & NZ(I only missed the press release by two months.) Major upgrade, Yahoo Shopping Australia & NZ used to be a shell of a site, now it has real comparison functionality, via Kelkoo. Yahoo Australia seems excited, if the bold-red "NEW" on the home page is any indication. Not many merchants yet, but it is a start.
Yahoo Shopping upgrades Australia & NZ
PriceRunner USI guess it is now okay to post about PriceRunner US. (see: press release) They might still have a few kinks in the navigation and formatting, but overall there is some very thoughtful functionality. I do think the press release places to much emphasis on the whole "Lowest Price Always Listed First" angle. For most people, merchant selection is a multi-variable balancing act... what about reputation? But I guess when a site has "Price" or any other kind of functionality spelled out in their name, they have to run with it.
PriceRunner US
Froogle Data Feeder for osCommerce"Description: Creates and automatically sends a data feed to Froogle, monthly. This Froogle Data Feeder, handles product duplicates, specials(if available), and automatic upload." I have not used this, just stumbled across it. I figured the odds of this existing was near-certain, since Froogle is free and people love Google. So I searched, and I found. But what about the other shopping engines? If I had a shopping engine, and I was tired of getting blank looks from people at shopping-cart companies, I'd at least look into the possibility of writing plug-ins for the popular, open-source carts. For example, here is someone looking for a PriceGrabber exporter. The message ends with the original poster still asking about PriceGrabber-specific fields. Sounds like an opportunity. related link: Live Data Feed Base Class
Froogle Data Feeder for osCommerce
GoDaddy shopping cart integrates with eBay and FroogleAuctionBytes.com reports on the integration of Froogle (pic) and eBay (pic) into GoDaddy's Quick Shopping Cart. I've always wondered why we do not see more of this at the shopping-cart level.
GoDaddy shopping cart integrates with eBay and Froogle
Dvorak: no winners yet among comparison sites"While there are perhaps 10 candidates to be the premier shopping engine, nothing stands out as the clear winner." source: MarketWatch Wow, this is a very tame article for Dvorak. He says Froogle seems to be more of a lark or an experiment than a shopping engine, but everyone says that. Bambi will have to give him lessons on how to stir it up when writing about shopping engines.
Dvorak: no winners yet among comparison sites
Merchant Information for Become.comI received this information for merchants from Become.com: "Merchants can sign-up directly with Become.com (there will be a link on the homepage footer at launch, or they can e-mail our Account Management Team at merchant@become.com). We also work with many of the top-tier SEM/Aggregators such as CJ, TrafficLeader, and Performics. We accept a variety of feed formats including delimited files and XML; and support several ways for merchants to send us the files: FTP to our system (we create a folder for each merchant), download from a merchant's server via a supplied URL, and automatic retrieval of files from the merchant's ftp. Become.com supplies merchant partners with a feed specification, and can also accept feeds formatted for all other comparison shopping engines. Items such as CPC bid price, tax, and shipping can be specified in the feed on a SKU-by-SKU basis; or merchants can use our Merchant Dashboard to give us overall information (e.g. bids by category, states they charge tax in, shipping schedules, etc.)." Also, they are having a launch special, 50% off Ad Campaigns for July and August 2005. For details send an inquiry email to merchant@become.com. + + + related link: Merchant Dashboard
Merchant Information for Become.com
The 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
Interview with Rob Solomon of Yahoo ShoppingAn in-depth interview with Rob Solomon, GM & VP of Yahoo! Shopping, over at ComparisonEngines.com.
Interview with Rob Solomon of Yahoo Shopping
MSN Shopping Beta is BackBrian Smith of Comparison Engines covers the announcement of the new MSN Shopping Beta.
MSN Shopping Beta is Back
Shopzilla's Robozilla
The announcement was mentioned here and here, but I have not seen any detailed reviews of Shopzilla vs. Robozilla. I recently spoke with Farhad Mohit, chief product officer of Shopzilla, to try and find out what this is all about. The technology showcase zLabs, besides tapping into a larger audience of beta testers, has the added benefits of rewarding employees internally, and attracting new employees externally. As for Robozilla, it is all about leveraging technology to scale beyond what can be done with human intervention. This has the potential to bring about more product offers with more structure than would otherwise be possible. Currently, Shopzilla features 29,684,145 products. (The number is available near the top of their home page.) By comparison, Shopzilla throws the entire catalog at Robozilla, for a grand total of 50,981,674 products. At the same time, Robozilla has the potential to bring structure to areas that have never had much structure. Take the example of the Luggage category, refined by the Samsonite brand at Shopzilla and Robozilla.
< The first picture is an example of a click-option at Shopzilla.
The second picture is an example of a click-option at Robozilla. > A search for the related pages at Shopping.com, NexTag and PriceGrabber showed some grouping, but not as much as Robozilla. (And for an example of how thin these types of categories can be, see Yahoo Shopping.) Also interesting is the first result for one dozen red roses at Robozilla. The search for one dozen red roses is already a pretty good one at Shopzilla. I think much of the improvement here comes to people who drill-down from Gifts, Flowers & Food > Flowers & Plants. In this sub-category at Shopzilla, the right-side content is less likely to be ripe for the clicking and probably requires more attribute-refinement from the left-side links. Yet in this same sub-category at Robozilla, the right-side content offers ready-made groups that could make additional attribute-refinement unncessary, in some cases. "For the most easily structured data, everyone does this reasonably well," said Mohit. "What brings loyalty? The 'tail' searches." (reference: The Long Tail) In other words, if Shopzilla does a good job on searches like luggage, people will be more likely to use them to compare offers on common categories like digital cameras, too. The automated structuring of offers could have additional benefits for shoppers. As Mohit explained, "once you free your people from normalizing, you have more time for better attribution, better sub-categories, clustering the stuff in Misc." But for all its usefulness, Robozilla is still a demo site. Rebuilds are expected to occur twice weekly, to allow for algorithm tweaking. (The current version, 1.3.9.4, represents an algorithm upgrade that went live last Thursday.) The timing and the extent that Robozilla goes live on Shopzilla depends on how much progress can be made. + + + related links: http://robozilla.shopzilla.com | view all categories at Robozilla
Shopzilla's Robozilla
Why the lack of attribute-based refinement at Amazon.com?I find this puzzling. Amazon.com does a decent job of breaking its products into sub-categories, but they rarely refine by attributes, and when they do it tends to be haphazard. Take a category that almost everyone does well, digital cameras. Amazon allows us to refine using a narrow (grrr!) range of megapixels, but where are the other attributes, even ones as basic as price? Actually, price-refinement is available on the advanced search page, but this is divorced from the ability to select by megapixels. Right hand, left hand, you know the rest... Perhaps Amazon does not mind letting other sites take the lead in the early stages of the buying process, because many people will have to go through them eventually for things like reviews and fulfillment? Yet, if they are not into attributes, why do it at all, why do it so half-heartedly? Maybe since their early products (books, music, videos) relied on recommendations more than attribute refinement, it is not in their DNA?
Why the lack of attribute-based refinement at Amazon.com?
Should all User Ratings be Weighted Equally?We've had "Was this review helpful?" functionality for some time now. Yet, as far as I can tell, no matter how helpful or unhelpful the review, the ratings are weighted exactly the same. In other words, if there are two reviews, a 5-start review that is 100/100 helpful, and a 1-star review that is 0/100 helpful, they will everage out to 3 stars. Hmmm. I suppose an argument could be made that, unlike reviews, all ratings are equally valid, because although there is Wisdom in Crowds, not everyone in the crowd is equally gifted at written communication. Then again, maybe all the "Was this review helpful?" votes are another form of crowd-wisdom that could be given consideration, in the form of weigthed ratings? Ehhh... just thinking out loud today...
Should all User Ratings be Weighted Equally?
How Would You Shop For a Digital Camera?Awhile back, David Beach had a post about how he shopped for a digital camera. Good stuff, because rarely do you see anyone document their shopping process in that kind of detail on the Web. I've seen some posts that promise to detail the process, but they start with price comparison, leaving out all of the good stuff. How would you shop for a digital camera? Can I this question in the shark tank of industry insiders? I would love to see more perspectives on this issue. What is the step-by-step process you would use to find what to buy and where to buy? What online sites or offline stores would you use, and why? The format could be free-flowing paragraphs or a bulleted list, whichever is easiest. How would you shop for a digital camera?
How Would You Shop For a Digital Camera?
What If... Popular Products had 1000+ User Reviews?I am in the mood to ask questions. No answers. Not yet. Let your imagination go wherever it wants to go... Okay, to the topic, what if popular products had 1000+ user reviews? I picked that number because it seemed like a bit of a stretch. In many areas, popular products are doing well to get dozens of reviews. Yet, I am reminded of the saying that goes, "we all experience the future at different times" or something like that. In other words, the Star Wars Trilogy at Amazon.com already has 1,985 reviews. Are we getting all we can out of these reviews? + + + Currently, much of the functionality revolves around sort. Here are the options for sorting reviews at Amazon.com: * Newest First What other opportunities exist within sort? What opportunities exist outside of sort?
What If... Popular Products had 1000+ User Reviews?
Pop Quiz #1Question: which site lets you do a search for apartments that allow large dogs > 25 pounds? (not just a generic "allows pets" or "allows dogs" which might or might not include big dogs) A: Apartment Guide Answer: Apartments.com (see: apartments) I've heard the question, "who uses all of these search attributes?" The answer, of course, if nobody uses every product search attribute. But how many people have at least one critical product search attribute? Factor in individual differences, and pretty soon we are talking about a lot of potentially important attributes.
Pop Quiz #1
Feedback EnginesRecently, I got a reminder that no matter how efficient shopping engines get at comparing all products and services that are available, much of the potential for shopping satisfication comes earlier in the process. What if, in addition to great shopping comparison engines, we also had better feedback engines? I am not thinking about product reviews, which are after the fact, but product planning. After all, what good does it do to compare products in great detail, if all of them miss the mark? My reminder came from the local symphony. Not the most applicable to current shopping comparison engines, but bear with me. The other day, they sent me an email about their new season. Nice, professional... but I have to think they are being brand wise and feedback foolish. Do they know what I want? (No.) Have they ever asked me? (No.) Have I bought season series passes and costly box seats in the past? (Yes.) Have I bought any tickets in the last few years? (No.) Are there musical selection that would 100% guarantee I buy tickets? (Yes.) Do they want to know which items demand my dollar votes and, if so, how? Logically, in areas where I have a good idea of what I want to buy, companies should have no need for guessing games. Ask me. Please. Otherwise, we risk doing no better than the proverbial monkey at the dart board. New Persuasion has a nice post about blended user-centric companies, but we have been hearing about this for what seems like forever. Both of their examples involve software source code. But how can we start incorporating the concept of Open Source to companies that have nothing to do with software? Of course, the first issue involves changing corporate cultures. That would take this post too far off-topic. For simplicity's sake, let's assume the threat of catostrophic financial failure gets even the crustiest companies moving in the right direction. But even with the best of intentions, how can they ensure execution? I suspect many industries would benefit from better feedback engines. Now, I would expect companies of a certain size already have ways of discovering the desires of their customers. Yet, in my experience as a customer, I rarely see anything that resembles participation in the planning process... In the case of the symphony, they could try to make intelligent assumptions based on my prior purchases, but this is a sure recipe for leaving money on the table. What if I have not made enough transactions from which to make intelligent assumptions? What if the relationships between my choices are not at all obvious? Even under ideal conditionas, I think the odds of guessing exactly what I want is about the same as exactly picking the right numbers in a lottery. Here is how I see symphonies and their sites in the "bizarro world": * I would be logged-in to the site for more than just transactions. Recommendation engines are not uncommon to entertainment-related sites like NetFlix. But these help individuals choose from a universe of nearly limitless resources. What about utilitarian applications that help groups of customers effeciently allocate limited resources? i.e. there are only so many concerts in a symphony season, how can we bring about the greatest good for the greatest number of people? How many industries are ideal candidates for collaborative planning? How much of the planning process could be assisted with software? How much is industry-specific? How much could be generalized? Could the shopping comparison engines play any part in this?
Feedback Engines
Catching UpStill trying to catch my breath after Vertical LEAP. Was not at all prepared to have someone at the event mention, "you have not posted for the last couple days?" As tiring as it can be to try and keep up, I was reminded of the difference between daily posts and... anything other than daily posts. Another great thing about events is having long-time lurkers come out of the shadows. Amazing people doing amazing things. It is all very humbling, yet also very inspiring. Every person who reads this blog increases the incentive for me to share more thoughts, perform more research, generate new ideas, come up with more questions. And rants, can't forget about those, although I would do them even if I was still writing for the 5 readers who were here back in January. :-) Speaking of the good old days, I was not really celebrating the first six months per se, but I don't mind celebrating a nice link from Threadwatch. That was the place where I initially heard about Vertical LEAP, so if you have not found your way to that site yet, ahem!, http://www.threadwatch.org. The language can get a bit salty, but it is all part of the charm.
Catching Up
Ask Slashdot: Shopping OnlineAsk Slashdot: Shopping Online. Kind of a weird topic for Slashdot. A glimpse into the current mindset of long-time tech/geek shoppers. Might also unearth some of the smaller, specialty shopping tools.
Ask Slashdot: Shopping Online
Six Months of Organized Shopping BlogSix months, nearly two hundred posts, and I'm hardly scratching the surface of comparison shopping. (We need more vertical search bloggers.) Looking forward to the hectic holiday shopping season, I'm also looking back at old posts for perspective. This list might also be useful for first-time site visitors: First Post (after the "hello world" post...) Shopping Comparison Jobs: Q1, Q2, Q3 First Looks: MSN Shopping Engine Beta, Usability: More Context for Feature Finders, Interviews: Michael Yang, Rafael Ortiz, Phillip Lan Stirring It: Arbitrageurs vs. Prequalifiers, Travel: Hotel Shootout, Flexible Date Travel As the post count grows, categorization will become more valuable, so I am doing category cleanup this weekend. If you follow this blog via RSS, please ignore any false positives for not-new posts.
Six Months of Organized Shopping Blog
Non-Shopping Non-Comparison Non-EnginesNo need to get too specific, but not every site that claims to be a shopping comparison engine is one. Heh... press release spam for a single-source PPC search feed... shopping comparison has officially arrived. :-)
Non-Shopping Non-Comparison Non-Engines
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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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Back on June 22, Shopzilla 
Robozilla
