Maximising retail revenue opportunities with comparison shopping searches

Any online retail business is heavily dependent upon effective search results; that is, search results that deliver prospective buyers to an online store and its product offering. Due to the growth in online shopping, around 30% of visitors to online retail sites are now known to come directly from comparison shopping engines-websites that present products and prices from a variety of stores allowing shoppers to compare the offers.

The rate of visitor growth at MyShopping.com.au is more than 50% in the past year. No online merchant can afford to ignore these numbers. What's more, visitors to comparison shopping sites are in a high state of buyer readiness. Their aim is to compare the different brands, specifications, prices and availability of products, and they will very likely click through to an online store's business centre.

Visiting a comparison shopping site is like going to the local shopping centre, only the shopper saves on petrol and time. Sites like MyShopping.com.au list products according to their category, offering images and specifications and category-wide 'sales-like' advice. The visitor can quickly compare offerings from the different vendors who are listed and choose to make a purchase from any of them. The vendor pays on the basis of each visitor who 'clicks through' to their site.

Below are number of important tips to online retailers who want to maximise the opportunities for sales revenue by adding comparison shopping search engines to their search campaign.

A product feed file is a computer file that is housed on the vendor's site containing product information such as brand, model, name, description, price, links to images and other product data. This is how comparison shopping sites obtain your shop's records. The more accurate your product feed data is, the better your store and products are represented on the comparison site. The best product feed files contain such important but often overlooked information as shipping fees and information, and out-of-stock indicator.

Dedicating a single page for each product makes it much easier to manage your inventory. It also helps the shopping engine to scan your catalogue and to send traffic to your store in a standard fashion.

Comparison shopping sites link directly to your store's product pages. It is important to maintain the URLs of your product pages. Changing the links in your product pages could cause loss of sales. Millions of comparison shopping site pages are cached (stored) at different levels. Sometimes users access a cached page months after they have been stored. If the cached page contains links to decommissioned pages on your site, you will lose customers who won't be able to click through to your products and therefore won't be able to buy them.

Often in addition to product feeds, shopping and search engines collect your site's information automatically via robots. A robot is simply a program that browses your site following links available on the pages. Robots are also known as "spiders" or "bots". In contrast with a human visitor, a robot does not use complex design elements; all it can do is "to click" on a link and proceed to the linked page. Embedding direct links to each product page in every product page in your catalogue is how you ensure the search engines can locate your products.

Unlike a conventional store where visitors come through the entrance, a good on-line store should be designed to deal consistently with visitors arriving at any part of the store. Any product page can receive a visitor from a shopping engine.

As a rule of thumb, a visitor should need no more than 3 clicks to reach any of your product pages. Online stores with several levels of product hierarchy risk losing conversions. A prospective customer can simply drop out on the way to the product page. Prospective customers sent to your site by a comparison shopping engine come to buy a particular product. Some of them may also consider buying additional products if they can clearly see what other products are available. Make it easy for shoppers to find your full catalogue and locate any product you carry within three clicks.

Knowing your return on investment in advertising via a variety of channels can save you a lot of money. The simplest way to track your sales by source is to include a sales tracking code (sometimes called conversion tracking code). A tracking code is a small script that runs within your payment confirmation page letting you know the source of the transaction: that is, whether it has come from advertising you are running on sympathetic sites or the MyShopping.com.au search engine. Surprisingly few Australian online merchants' sites feature a sales tracking code.

The best comparison shopping sites help users in making buying decisions by publishing store reviews written by other customers. Many shoppers are happy to pay a little bit more for a product if they know the store is trustworthy, has been in business for some time and other shoppers give it mostly positive reviews. On completion of their purchase, encourage your customers to link back to the comparison shopping site and write a short review of their shopping experience with you.

MyShopping.com.au is the pioneer of comparison shopping in Australia. While the preceding tips may appear technical, they are basically an application of common sense and easily implemented by any competent web developer. If you need more information about optimising your website for comparison shopping search engines, you can contact MyShopping.com.au