ChannelAdvisor

SELL MORE Tip Video: Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber

ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo sheds some light on the recent partnership announcement between Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber in this short video. For further details and to learn how this deal will affect your comparison shopping engine strategy, join ChannelAdvisor's webinar taking place January 19, 2010 at 2:00 pm ET. If you can't make it, the webinar will be archived at www.channeladvisor.com/webinars. 

CSE Webinar next week - strategies for the controversial Pricegrabber/Y! Shopping change

We're receiving a LOT of questions from customers and retailers in general about the just announced / rapidly rolling out sunset of Y! Shopping to be replaced by PriceGrabber. 

• Y! Shopping merchants are confused by the options they now have
• PriceGrabber merchants are concerned about the impact from a bunch of Y! traffic that possibly won't convert as well as PG
• Y! Store owners are particularly confused and upset about their situation.

We decided the best way to get information out to folks both around what is happening, why and what to expect and most importantly - strategies for how to tackle this big change is a webinar.

Webinar

ChannelAdvisor is hosting a free webinar for anyone interested (Most likely Y! Shopping retailers and Y! Store users - maybe some PriceGrabber users as you will be impacted as well).  We'll dispel a lot of the misinformation out there, provide a good bit of data on what this means, and of course we have some strategy recommendations for all of the parties impacted.

The Webinar will be hosted by yours truly and David Harris, one of our resident CSE gurus.  It is Tuesday at 2pm and you can sign up here.  If you aren't able to make that time we always record the webinars and put them up for replay within 24hrs of the original.  If you have any questions before the presentation, feel free to include them in comments.

Yahoo Shopping Announces Partnership with PriceGrabber

Yahoo sent emails to their merchants today indicating that the Yahoo Product Submit program will close March 11, 2010.  Yahoo Shopping as a destination will continue to exist but will be powered by PriceGrabber. This means if you are advertising on Yahoo Shopping via the Product Submit interface right now, but not on PriceGrabber, and you want your offers to stay live on Yahoo Shopping, you should begin advertising with PriceGrabber to ensure your offers will continue to appear on Yahoo Shopping after March 11.

This is definitely big news in that Yahoo Shopping consistently sits at or near the top of the CSE ComScore rankings as the top receiver of unique visitors. Even though the rate of click through to merchant sites is much lower on Yahoo Shopping than other CSEs, this announcement is still a pretty significant win for PriceGrabber. And though their partner network already includes big names like AOL and CNET, this deal is sure to increase their traffic volume pretty significantly.

It is worth noting, however, that for many retailers, traffic from Yahoo Shopping tends to convert pretty poorly compared to other CSE engines/networks, so it is very possible that come March 11, the conversion rate for existing PriceGrabber advertisers will decline. The quality of the data delivered to Yahoo by PriceGrabber is likely to be higher than that of the data Yahoo was able to collect and organize themselves. It is also possible that the user experience will be changed in a way that could help conversion out, but the most likely root of the lower conversion rate from Yahoo Shopping is simply the intent of their users, which is unlikely to change. So though the user may benefit to some degree by this, the biggest beneficiaries are Yahoo, who no longer has to maintain the back end, and PriceGrabber, who gets the traffic through their network. Which of these two won out the most is unknown as it would depend on the terms of the deal.

From the perspective of the merchant, the complexity goes down a bit as one less feed is required, but an element of control disappears as well. As I mentioned in my last post, many engines don't like discussing their partner network members. They prefer to distribute all content to all partners and only back off when problems arise.

We work with merchants who have shut down their Yahoo Product Submit feeds specifically because of the low conversion rate, and they will now be back on Yahoo Shopping via PriceGrabber, probably facing pretty much the same conversion challenge but with no easy way to completely turn it off.

It's interesting that is happening on the heels of the Yahoo Search Submit Pro shutdown and just over a year after Yahoo sold off Kelkoo. Data feed marketing is clearly not a space in which Yahoo sees a future for themselves.

Original email:

Important: Product Submit changes coming soon. Action required.

Dear Advertiser,

We have important news that will affect your product listings on Yahoo! Shopping and that will require you to take action.

As of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping is partnering with PriceGrabber. This partnership will provide you with greater access to more potential customers and to enhanced reporting. It will give you the opportunity to list your products either on Yahoo! Shopping only or on both Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber.

Because of this change, your Yahoo! Product Submit account will no longer be available on March 11, 2010. After March 11, 2010, to list your products either on Yahoo! Shopping only or on Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber, you must sign up for a new merchant account with PriceGrabber. To ensure your products are live on Yahoo! Shopping on March 11, 2010, you must sign up for a PriceGrabber merchant account from January 11, 2010, through January 19, 2010. Signing up is fast and easy.

If you sign up before March 11, 2010, any applicable set up fees will be waived!

To start, just click the link below:

Sign up now for a new merchant account with PriceGrabber.

If you do nothing and do not sign up for a new merchant account, your products will only be listed on Yahoo! Shopping through March 11, 2010. After March 11, 2010, your products will no longer be listed.

PLEASE NOTE: If you already have a merchant account with PriceGrabber, you do not need to sign up for a new account. Your products will automatically be listed on both Pricegrabber and Yahoo! Shopping on March 11, 2010.

Your Key Dates to Remember:

January 11, 2010	January 19, 2010	March 11, 2010
Sign up for your new PriceGrabber merchant account with Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber or with just Yahoo! Shopping.	Last day to sign up for a PriceGrabber merchant account to ensure your products are listed on Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber when Yahoo! Product Submit is discontinued on March 11, 2010.	The Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber partnership takes effect. If you have not signed up for a new PriceGrabber merchant account, this is the last day your products will be listed on Yahoo! Shopping.

If you have any questions about this change, a Customer Care representative will be happy to answer them.

Best regards,
The Yahoo! Product Submit team

2009 CSE Wishlist Review

This time last year, I wrote a series of posts about features and improvements that retailers would benefit from most. Let's take a look back and see to what degree my dreams were realized/crushed.

• More budgeting options: Unfortunately, there weren’t any steps forward here. I think this is something at least some engines would like to offer but it doesn’t get legs internally because (a) it’s probably not all that easy to enable this sort of throttling/removal mechanism and (b) it is probably seen as a revenue limiter. I still think that though it may be a short-term revenue limiter, it will help cultivate sustainable long term revenue by giving retailers a way to test the waters, understand how to manage their campaigns and find a way to succeed with consistency.  It may also be seen as having a negative impact on consumer experience since not all offers are displayed at all times, but if budgets run out mid way through the month, that happens anyway.

• More insight and control over affiliate partner sites: I can’t say I really expected this to go anywhere. The engines like to maintain total control over the traffic distribution across their networks. It is a “hidden” lever they can pull to adjust traffic or impact conversion, though in general they prefer not to. In fact, it seems like they prefer not to talk about it all.

• More/better ways to demonstrate value proposition: Here is one where we saw some movement. NexTag’s expanded promotional messaging is one. PriceGrabber also added feed fields to allow for more control over coupon  information. Shopzilla’s additional price field and subsequent call-out on their properties makes for a nice visual indicator. Shopping.com expanded their feed to allow for several new such features, though not all have been fully implemented on site. These are all positive steps but I think there is still room for growth here.

• Availability of impressions/CTR data:  No change here either. I’m not sure on this but I would guess the engines have this data and use it for their own purposes. I can see why they want to keep it under wraps, and though they may be able to increase CTR to some degree by changing the user experience, nothing drives CTR more than a strong offer. Since site changes aren’t that common, the most likely reaction an engine will have to poor CTR on an offer is burying it in lieu of a stronger offer. This is effective when the number of relevant offers is large, but on more specific queries, this falls apart because the remaining offers may all be weak. Even a basic indication of offers that are under-performing from a CTR perspective would be valuable to merchants, even if the definition of “under-performance” is not entirely clear. It at least gives the merchant an idea of which offers need to be reviewed.

Not a great conversion rate here but I can hardly complain since 2009 was definitely a year of change for the industry.