Lots of changes in the Comparison Shopping Engine World...
There's more changing in the world of Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs for short) this year than I can remember since back to the 99/00 timeframe.
The short-list:
- Amazon Product Ads are doing really well and have come out of nowhere to be a top CSE for many of our retailers. We have more details over at sister-site Amazon Strategies.
- Biztrate (shopzilla's sister site) - has an entire new UI (details at siter-site CSE Strategies) that highlights coupons.
- Shopping.com has announced tons of new things - tiered pricing, a new feed specification and more. I bet coupons are coming (in the feed spec).
- Microsoft/MSN/Live - MSFT has no fewer than 3-4 CSEs now and they seem to be combining them into one platform.
- PriceGrabber - Coupons and some AOL changes coming
- AOL - Rolling out their own (used to be Pricegrabber partnership) CSE
- NextTag - lots of changes similar to above
- Become.com - actually increasing rates (!?)
- Smarter - feature store and logo opportunities
We have a large team of business folks and engineers at ChannelAdvisor staying on top of these changes from a product perspective and they also have put the details into a white paper that you can download for free here.
There are lots of changes in pricing models with CSE's such as onewayshopping.com now charging a flat rate per month.
Posted by: Sylvia | December 03, 2009 at 02:11 PM