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Is it a CSE or a marketplace? Shop.com - the CSE with a unified cart, continued its path towards more of a marketplace than a comparison shopping engine by announcing a money-back guarantee program called OneCart Trusted merchants.
If you were able to catch the webinar last week you may have noticed that shop.com was ranked number 48 in the retail segment with over 5m uniques in December!
Wed-Fri I'll be down at shop.org's FirstLook conference with a crew of folks from ChannelAdvisor.
Thursday at 11:30, I'm hosting a "Ask the Expert" roundtable on "Advanced CSE Strategies". Here's the blurb:
Forrester reports that Comparison Shopping Engines influence 60% of purchases. Over 35% of the online audience in Q4 of 2006 visited a CSE. This class starts with the basics (top engines, datafeeds, CPC, bidding), and then reveals several advanced strategies that have significantly improved the ROI of CSEs for the web's largest retailers. Think what they can do for you!
I hope you are able to make it and if you're at shop.org stop by our booth (#319) and say hello!
Tomorrow (Jan 24th at 2pm EST), I'll be hosting a webinar
- 2006 online retail review with predictions for 2007. Our special
guest will be Shoaib Makani, Product Marketing Manager for Google.
Shoaib will be discussing some of the ways you can leverage Google in
your business for 2007 and I'll be detailing some of the interesting
trends we saw in 06/Q4 and how you can leverage those trends to move
your business forward in 2007. You can expect I'll spend a fair amount of time on CSEs because we have seen some really interesting trends there in 2006.
I hope you're able to make it - register here. This is provided to the ecommerce community at no cost.
Every year the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) recognizes excellence in software via an award program they call the //CODiE// awards. We just learned today that ChannelAdvisor Merchant was chosen as a finalist in both the Best Business Software Solution and Best eCommerce Solution categories!
You can read all of the details on the program here.
This is admittedly a super-geeky accomplishment, but, heck, as a guy that still sleeps in his Star Wars underoos, this is pretty dang exciting. I wanted to thank the entire ChannelAdvisor team for all of the hard work that has gone into making Merchant a huge success and most importantly our customers. Without you, there would be no ChannelAdvisor and of course, no opportunity to be a //CODiE// finalist!
Wow, what a holiday selling season. The dust is settling and ComScore is calling it a 26% y/y increase for the holiday shopping season. We definitely saw that and more at ChannelAdvisor.
As we look back at the data, one of the big shining spots AND surprises for us was the performance of Comparison Shopping Engines. CSEs have always been an important element for a retailer in our mind, so we typically advise customers to a) make sure you are there and b) look for them to be 5-10% of your online channel sales. Well this holiday season we're seeing CSEs achieve that range and more. In fact, we have some mid-tier (IR200-500ish) customers where CSEs (carefully managed for strong ROI) are in the 30-40% range with better economics in many cases than any other channel.
This graph really tells the story - it shows our y/y growth in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) driven by CSEs for our customers.
Throughout the holiday season we saw CSE contribute 2-3X compared to last year. Why was this? Stay tuned for a series of posts I'll be doing in January, I call "Why CSE?" Many retailers we talk to don't see value with the CSE channel, so I want to tackle that issue head on in early 07 using the substantial growth we saw from CSE as a kick-off.
Finally, in related ecommerce news, I thought you may be interested in a post at sister site, eBay Strategies, about a new Google Checkout $10 off promo. Also, eBay raised their fees (again) and is holding a big shin-dig in two weeks for top sellers. I'm sure some Shopping.com news will come out of that so stay tuned for that plus more details on "Why CSE?"
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