January 4, 2007

Double Counting

Posted by — Brian A. Smith @ 11:09 pm

2 Comments »

1. As the founder of a comparison shopping engine, I have faced this question repeatedly. However, we have found that two stores with the same inventory may have dramatically different sales rates. According to the retailers who participate and CSE’s that accept them, re-branding stores helps them reach a wider audience. This may be true and the data seems to indicate that. Since the look and feel of a store plays a pivotal role in the purchase decision process, I’d tend to agree that it might be OK.

   On the other hand, if the experience isn’t any different than a unique domain name and label, I’d say it might clutter the search results and confuse consumers.

   Our engine is the first to rank retailers by their sales rate for each product. Retailers who are brand under many identities actually do themselves a disservice as their sales data is split between their different persona’s. The technique of ranking retailers by current purchase rates helps consumers find the store most people identify with. For Apple products, MacMall might be chosen more than PCMall. Our goal is to provide an objective platform for a community of buyers to indicate where they like to purchase a particular product without limiting options or confusing the consumer.

   I believe traditional CSEs will have to weigh how much each additional merchant adds to the consumer experience.

   Comment by Michael — January 15, 2007 @ 11:28 pm

2. We run several sites for several industries, but only one of them has a “mirror” with the same product line. The graphic layout was entirely different, and the shipping was a little lower while the prices were a little higher (in general).

   Froogle was the first red tape. I read in their policy that they do not allow mirror sites (this was last summer, it may have changed).

   To this day the two sites are also “related links” in Google.

   As far as double-listing through SCE sites, most seemed fine with it. Our Pricegrabber account manager required a new account (new activation fee, etc), and Shopzilla said nothing at all, nor took any action.

   To sum up my experience, I’d say it isn’t worth it. We definitely don’t plan on doing this again. More offers definitely mean more sales, but in most cases we found that we were competing with ourselves and cheating ourselves out of higher margins.

   What worse, maintaining one entity is tough enough, and adding this extra dimension can really slow down progress at times (every change you make, you have to consider it on both sites, etc).

   We found it wasn’t worth it.

   Comment by Kirk — January 24, 2007 @ 10:30 am

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