Does anyone use promotional messages in their feed? What are they for? Where are they displayed? Do all the shopping engines support the same ones? Will they increase my conversions? Yes, no, maybe so? That’s what this post is meant to explore: this oft forgotten field.
A promotional message (or marketing message, as Nextag calls it) can be associated with individual products and, in theory, allows the merchant to differentiate their product listing and compete on something other than just brand, price, etc… For example, you might want to say “buy one get one free” or “free gift card with every purchase” or “15% off all electronics!” or “free shipping”… Whatever the message, the shopping engines that support this field display it somewhere alongside your product listings, typically only on a product (or “compare prices”) page.
Can you find the promotional messages below?
Some engines (Pricegrabber, Nextag, Yahoo! Shopping & Shopping.com) let you enter any message you want within certain character limits. I think this makes the most sense. Other engines (Smarter & Shopzilla) limit you to a pick-list of predetermined messages. I understand that they are trying to create uniformity, but I don’t like this limited implementation as much. Some engines (TheFind & Pronto) don’t support promotional messages at all. Become.com has a field in their feed for promotional messages but doesn’t display them on their site. For Google Base, you can enter it as a custom attribute. Dealing with the different requirements for each engine can be a pain for merchants and so that’s one of the issues we try to help with over at SingleFeed.
Most of the engines offer this differentiator for free, with the exception of Nextag, which tacks on 5 cents to your CPC for the applicable products.
No one really talks about this field and it doesn’t appear that many merchants are even taking advantage of it. I’ve noticed that the adoption rate varies by both product category and shopping engine. A greater percentage of electronics retailers seem to use this field and particularly on Shopping.com. Not only have I noticed more adoption in tech goods than other categories, but a lot of the same retailers are using this field across all the engines… The likes of Beach Camera, Abt Electronics, & TigerDirect almost always seem to be using a promotional message. Is there something they know that everyone else doesn’t? Is it simply that more differentiation is needed in a fiercely competitive, low margin category like consumer electronics? I’d be interested to hear some feedback from merchants out there who have experimented with this field and what they’ve found. Does it increase your click-thrus? Does it increase your conversions? Is it a complete waste of time?
[edit/addition: Pricegrabber does not accept promotional messages in the feed. Contact your account rep and they can manually activate it for you].
Excellent Post Colin! Admitedly, I’m new to optimizing feeds for shopping portals and have had some trouble finding information on the web to help this effort. This piece was of great help. Thanks!
Comment by Laura Mandzok — October 11, 2007 @ 7:36 am
Promotional messages are the best way to add that little extra bit of differentiation in a fierce and competitive market…
When comparison engines list up your products on the product search page this small line of text can actually make a difference.
Many retailers I know of use this space to promote coupons, drive consumers to an alternate product.
However, many retailers I work with have made use of this space to send messages like “Free Shipping”, “No Tax”, “$5 Rebate”, etc… This information is vital to the visitor’s decision; however it can be made as a part of the company logo… And this space can actually be optimized for very brief, clear message ads…
Comment by Ojas Kulkarni — October 15, 2007 @ 9:51 am
Hi Ojas, thanks for commenting! One word of warning regarding adding promotional text, shipping information, or a phone number into your logo: Most comparison engines frown upon this and will have you remove it if they catch it. They prefer that you include this type of information in the appropriate areas so that they can display it uniformly across the site. They also don’t want one merchant to have an advantage over another… at least not without paying for it
Just an FYI.
Comment by Colin Murphy — October 18, 2007 @ 5:19 pm
Out of curiousity, where in the Pricegrabber feed does the promo column sit? And is it only available for certain product types?
I asked our rep about it and she seemed confused, and there was no mention of it in the feed documentation, as well as a request to not include promos like “Free Shipping” in the product description.
Comment by Nate Griffin — October 22, 2007 @ 12:34 pm
Nate, thanks for your comment and great question. I should probably revise my original post a bit. Pricegrabber is the only engine that supports promo messages but that doesn’t accept them in the feed. So, you are correct in that you won’t find this information in their feed spec document. In order to activate promo messages on PG, you need to speak with your account rep and they can manually activate the functionality. I believe that you can associate a promo message with up to 25 individual products or an entire category. When you do so for a given product listing, a red “promo” link will appear under the item price (as in the first image in my original post). The link opens a pop-up containing your custom message. I also believe that implementing this will get your listings included in the “Merchant Coupons” section of PG (found here: http://www.pricegrabber.com/home_coupons.php)
I would image that PriceGrabber operates this way to maintain a certain level of editorial control over the content on their site… after all, they are known for their clean interface. Still, it’d be nice to have some way to include this information in the feed.
Best of luck Nate. Let us know if you get your promo messages included on PG and, if so, share some insight on how it works out.
Comment by Colin Murphy — October 26, 2007 @ 4:55 pm