SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com

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Shopping Search

• BizresearchLaura Thieme

Slides may update by conference date
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Shopping Search Data Feeds

• Benefits of Shopping Search
• Getting Listed in Shopping Search
• Data feeds, automation, optimizing results
• Current Case Study Focus on Froogle
  Optimization
• Tracking Traffic, Sales, Conversion Rates ROI
  by Category Product Level
• Click Fraud Discussion
• Summary/Conclusions

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Shopping SE Acquisitions

• eBay acquired Shopping.com - 625M
• Recently eBay items included in MSN Shopping
  search results
• E.W. Scripps acquired Shopzilla - 525M
• Experian parent GUS acquired Pricegrabber - 485M

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Data Feed Standardization

• Alan Rimm-Kaufman
• Working to create data feed standards
• Alongside Shop.org
• Association for Retail Technology
• Testing of standard feed to start in December

Source http//xmlpronews.com/2006/0310.html
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New Shopping Search Engines

• Become.com
• Stays away from data feed
• Uses a crawler designed to focus exclusively on
  shopping related information
• Analyzes content of a page, not just links
• BrilliantShopper.com
• Founded by veterans of AskJeeves, Disney and IBM
• Meta-shopping search engine

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Monthly Data June, 2006
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30.1 Billion on 2005 Holiday Season
Source Goldman Sachs, Nielsen/Netratings, Harris
Interactive
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B2C Median Order Conversion Rates
Souce http//www.websidestory.com/company/news-ev
ents/press-releases/view-release.html?id319
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Merchants Search Marketers

• Shopping Search Cant Be Ignored

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Benefits of Shopping Search

• Product title, image, description, price from
  various vendors displayed on each search results
  page
• Easy to shop multiple vendors from one place
• Merchant ratings
• Up-Front Price Packaging Calculator Comparison
• Qualified sales channel for vendors
• Potential for strong ROI for retailers

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Example Client

• Customer Acquisition rate 4
• Data consistently shows revenue exceeding cost of
  investment.
• Average conversion ratio 4.58

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Creation of a Data Feed

• Excel spreadsheet or raw tab delimited data file
  of your existing product database which typically
  includes the following
• Product URL
• Product Name
• Description
• Image URL
• Product Category
• Price

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Good Feed
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Bad Feed
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Getting Listed

• Froogle relies on data feeds (Google Base)
• Shopping.com uses feeds or crawls
• Costs 300 then 20/month after to crawl
• Shopzilla supplements listings by crawling
• Pricegrabber crawls Travel listings

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Recommend Automation

• Recommend after initial data feed is created, set
  up automation script to run
• If using any ecommerce platform, problems can
  occur
• Third party programs also can help with this
  however make sure theyre accurately pulling your
  data
• Updates can be submitted automatically as
  products/prices change
• Begin optimization

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Focus on Froogle

• Why? Because its still free and can deliver a
  very profitable source of sales

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New Client Optimization Project

• Client had never heard of Froogle
• Was and is bidding on CPC terms
• Lost organic rankings due to ecommerce platform
  change and inability to implement 301 redirects
• Great business selling rehab products
• Very difficult to use NetSuite for traditional
  optimization
• So we opted for Froogle Data Feed/Optimization

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Target Term

• Massage Table

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Analyze Your Competitors

• Reviewed top listings in Froogle for massage
  table
• Reviewed product titles/descriptions/prices/images
  /usability

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Competitive Review

• Look for comparison products

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Competitor Walmart
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Massive Optimization Opportunity
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Massive Optimization Opportunity
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Its Percy Again!
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(No Transcript)
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Back to our data feed

• Reviewed client feed originating from NetSuite
  platform
• Difficult Multiple errors with images, product
  URLs, headers, mapping, products erroneously
  removed from Netsuite automation
• Easier Titles and descriptions also needed work
• Added Massage Table where relevant
• Programmer working with NetSuite
• We are working with Froogle Tech Support

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Submitting to Froogle

• Go to www.google.com/webmasters
• Create Froogle feed
• https//base.google.com/base/help/tab_instructions
  .html
• Will want you to verify the site ownership,
  authenticity, but requires the ability to post a
  file to the root of the website with NetSuite
  we could not do this

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Making Progress

• Most challenging data feed we have ever worked
  with due to ecommerce platform
• Most data feeds typically take 2-10 hours to set
  up initially, optimize and submit
• After that data feeds can be automated
• Will blog our progress on Bizresearchs Blog
  stay tuned

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Froogle continued

• Froogle striving towards 2-3 days, but could take
  longer to get updated data feed
• Recommend submitting through Google Base
• May change the way you submit in the future if
  you have incremental updates

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Froogle Success With Other Clients

• Top referring keyword referrals coming from
  Froogle (noted using NetTracker)
• Often the most profitable sales
• Sending far more traffic volume than before, if
  optimized and updated as needed

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More Froogle Tips

• Make sure your feed doesnt expire
• Most frequent problem Image URL is wrong
• Verify your image URLs
• Make sure robots.txt file is not blocking Froogle
  
• Spaces in image URLs working to resolve but
  currently causes problems

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Quality Control-Tracking ROI/ROAS

• Track ROAS by category
• Track by product
• Pull non-performers
• Requires attention to detail

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ROAS? How Can You Improve?

• Watch sales to expense ratios
• Note changing prices in some categories
• Get your customers to participate in shopping
  search surveys
• Consider adding your logo, or phone number
• One shopping search engine may outperform the
  other in same category
• Review interface, rankings and pricing could be
  contributing to poor ROAS
• Ask sales rep for recommendations on improving
  conversion rates
• If your site has poor ROAS, dont expect shopping
  search to be much better

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Click Fraud Concerns

• Growing concern about click fraud
• What to look for
• Review clicks by traffic software
• Review shopping search clicks
• Talk with your vendors about difference in
  tracking IP addresses
• Bigger concern is return on ad spend (ROAS)
  analysis

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Closing Recommendations

• Quality pictures
• Accurate product titles
• Basic product descriptions (leave out fluff)
• Monitor search term relevancy
• Most search title and descriptions for keyword
  matches
• Monitor competitive pricing
• Monitor customer reviews
• Ensure rapid and accurate fulfillment
• Shopping search is form of customer acquisition
  need to market to them to ensure you retain
  customer (email marketing, direct mail, stellar
  customer service)

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For Quality Control

• E-mail Traci Couts traci.couts_at_bizresearch.com
• Call 614-846-7560
• Visit www.bizresearch.com