Get More Bang For Your Buck With Shopping Search Engines
by Leeia Ladipoh on December 17th, 2007
Small businesses that specialize in retail items will be interested to know about one of the biggest phenomenons of the holiday season – the shopping search engine.
Online retailers are increasingly using these sites to promote and sell their products to targeted buyers, so let’s take a look at how you can make these sites work for you.
What Shopping Search Engines Are
If you have been on the planet for more than a decade, it is a sure bet that you have heard the term search engine. Google is the best example of a search engine although there are many others. Basically, a person seeking information on pretty much anything under the sun will type in a query and a list of pages will be brought up.
The same kind of theory is behind a shopping search engine, but sites like Yahoo! Shopping, Shopzilla, Froogle, and so on get a little more specific. These sites break down all the goods a person might be shopping for into categories; for example, someone might be looking for kids’ gloves. They would go to the category “clothing“, then to “kids’ clothing”, then to “gloves“.
Usually, categories like these are broken down even further; in this case, to boys’ and girls’ gloves. Then, the searcher gets to look through and compare the prices on all of the merchandise listed by retailers who have subscribed to the site.
Using the Shopping Search Engine for Your Business
So using a shopping search engine means that you will have access to customers that are already highly targeted and often will make a purchase on your site after finding you. The tradeoff is that in order to get a spot, you have to follow rules – similar to a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign.
It’s pretty easy to get started on a shopping search engine. You just register your store and your goods, fund your account, and then bid on the products that you want to sell. When a customer clicks on your link, if they feel you are offering the best deal, you pay for the lead. This is actually quite a bit better than the standard PPC campaign, where customers may or may not buy once arriving at your site; in this case, they already know you are offering the best deals and are probably going to make a purchase.
That means that you can plan your budget for the different item bids accordingly. Unfortunately, it also means that the average bid price is quite steep, the more popular the item the higher the price.
So shopping search engines are definitely an option for those looking to get word of their store out to the public, but it can be a pricey campaign. It’s between you and your bottom line how much you think this endeavor will benefit your business.