Recently here at Conchango we were discussing the top price comparison engines - and decided to let rip a bit of a rant on these "comparison" engines and with the statement:
I assume everyone knows that ALL of these current engines are not TRUE price comparison sites!!
As a retailer or service provider – you are bombarded with sales people from Kelkoo, Confused.com etc.. to join their network – these of course are based on number of SKUs or items that you want to promote, how far up you want to be on the list (i.e. sponsored areas) and have an available XML feed that will allow them to pull the data that they require – normally has to have similar codes such as ISBN, EAN, Cat No. – if your items fails to match on any of these – then as a default they may use specific items description codes – but this will be lower down on the list.
Then someone like Kelkoo will ask for more cash to aggregate further across their networks – base package may allow you some coverage but go for a full “Platinum” package and you will ride the internet wave of MSN, Yahoo etc...
Consumers still like to find a bargain – but now see Kelkoo and other price comparison sites – for what they are – a marketing tool! – conversions are low as well compared to other forms of online marketing- so what happens next take a look at what Direct Line are doing – “we are not on any price comparison sites – only direct at Direct Line” – or the fact that AXA Insurance actually owns Confused.com, surely some kind of conflict of interest there??
But to other consumers they are blissfully unaware that say a Moby CD, is available at Play, HMV & 101 CD – so they will look there – not realising that Amazon or Woolworths may have the best price and availability – but have not signed up to that price comparison engine if at all.
A true price comparison site – would be able to take and compare all online retailers and rank these based on price – and let the user decide – this really heads towards the Virtual High Street – sites will pop up to be part of the online high street, but again this will be bought and paid for slots that whoever wants to pay top dollar will indeed be the top shop and not a true representation of the real high street. My good friend and Conchango colleague Dan Wilkinson informed that Affiliate Window have just entered this field with their ShopWindow product, which combines all of the product catalogues across their affiliate network into one (currently around 3.5m lines), and provides a comparison across the lot. Sounds good, will it form an extension of the retailers affiliate scheme hard to say – what is the benefit of retailers allowing a 3rd party a feed of their entire catalogue with prices so that this can be matched against your competitors – where you could easily get the Price Comparison site to always drop your item price point by £1 to beat the completion each time – but does this build confidence in a brand name?
An exapmle of this may be an internet novice who compares the above mentioned Moby CD – may have a choice of Play, HMV or 101CD – they’ve heard of Play (seen adverts in the paper), never heard of 101CD- knows of and has seen HMV on the high street – so that extra £1 for peace of mind and trust in a brand is worth more than taking a risk and ending up with say a CD that doesn’t quite have the same tracks, and maybe sourced from abroad – and what if something goes wrong!!!
So was that worth the extra money for the site that decided to pay the big money to rank up against the other retailers and undercut their margin to gain that customer – well do the math and work out what the cost per acquisition (CPA) is for that single customer? Especially in a world of cut price CDs with tight margins at the best of times…
I avoid them after being in retail and hunted down to "join" a selection of networks - I understand exactly what their business model is - and when you ask them about what teh conversion is and page impressions - same old answer - "well if you subscribe to the platinum package and display 250,000 priducts that will give you a much better chance of the user finding that product that they are looking for and you have for sale..."
Yes but isn't that what my SEO is all about... {phone clicks..}