In part 1 of my shipping cost post I discussed one of SingleFeed’s client’s concerns about how Shopping.com, and many other shopping engines, display shipping cost. That got me thinking about where, how and if each of the shopping engines display shipping information and, therefore, on which it is most important. Before getting into that, it may be helpful to take a step back and begin with some definitions. Although all of the shopping engines have different structures and layouts, they all have two similar types of result pages. The first you could call a “SERP” (search engine results page) or “pSERP” (product search engine results page). A SERP is the page that will be displayed after about 90% of searches on a shopping engine. These main result pages consist of multiple products. For example, if you search for “canon camera” you will see actual camera models and maybe some batteries, cases and other accessories. If any of these products are only available from one store, most shopping engines will have a direct click out to that store via a button saying something like “see site”, “buy now”, “shop here”, etc… If a product on the main SERP page is available from multiple stores, you will see a “compare prices”, “compare stores” or similar button. Here is an example of this type of results page on Pronto:

Pronto SERP Page

The “compare prices” button will take you to the second type of results page on the shopping engines. This is a “product page” and I’ve also heard it called a “merchant comparison table” or “compare prices page.” I mentioned that 90% of searches on a shopping engine will probably land you on a SERP page. The remainder of the time, if you perform a specific enough search like “canon sd400” (and the shopping engine can tell with certainty what product you are looking for), you may be taken directly to a product page, surpassing the SERP. The product page features just one product and a list of retailers selling it, along with their logo, price, promotional message, etc… Here is an example of a product page from Pronto:

Pronto Product Page

I believe Pricegrabber is an exception in that they always create a product page for an item, even if it is only available from one retailer (although I think that’s only in tech categories). Adding one more level before a user can click out to a merchant certainly decreases the number of leads Pricegrabber will send (and the revenue they will make) but should increase the quality of the leads they send. Good for Pricegrabber. It’s nice to see a shopping engine focus on their merchants’ bottom line and not just their own. So, the “SERP” and the “product page” are the two main types of result pages on the shopping engines. It’s important to understand the two because each requires a different strategy in order to increase your store’s visibility… the ranking system is fundamentally different on each of these pages (one is ranking products and the other stores). So there are of course different optimization techniques required for each. That will be the subject of an upcoming post. For now, with these definitions solidified, we can talk about shipping cost (part 2)….