Shopping around

“You should be able to dip a toe in the water without long-term onerous costs or time constraints,” says Rimm-Kaufman, who encourages catalogers to dig into the reports issued by the comparison sites to see what's really going on. High-ticket items may not be selling well, for instance, but lower-ticket items with add-ons and upsells can easily make up for the difference. Rimm-Kaufman's best advice: Evaluate the data often, and don't be afraid to “slice and dice” the information to take out underperforming products.

Make a point of visiting the shopping sites yourself, suggests Lloyd-Martin, paying attention to the categories you click on, and looking at listings in categories you're interested in entering. From those findings, you'll know what you need when you're ready to start working with the shopping engine to maximize the reach of your listings.

Lloyd-Martin also recommends talking with other companies who use comparison shopping engines to gain a better understanding of how to streamline submitting data feeds and pictures and how to analyze ROI. “Get a hint of what you're up against and dealing with,” she says.

As to whether to go with free listings with comparison shopping sites like Froogle or paid sites like PriceGrabber.com, “everyone digs the free stuff,” notes Lloyd-Martin. Although free listings may not generate as many purchases as paid listings, the added revenue is money that cost you virtually nothing to earn.

Lloyd-Martin doesn't recommend using only free listings, however, because they may not provide a significant lift in sales. Instead, she advocates supplementing free listings with paid listings on other sites such as Shopping.com and Yahoo! Shopping.

And even if you don't offer the lowest price on a comparison engine, most experts recommend getting in on the game. About 70% of click-throughs on comparison sites are not on the merchant with the lowest price, says Jupiter's Evans. More online shoppers are seeking a quality experience. “Yes, people care about price, but it's not necessarily all about price,” she says. “It's about the customer getting the best deal and getting the best product at the right price from the right retailer at the right time.”

And before you take the plunge, be sure that your Website is ready to handle the increased traffic that will be sent its way, says Rimm-Kaufman. If your site has a poor transaction mechanism, think carefully before hooking up with a comparison shopping engine. These customers are ready to buy, so your site must be ready to handle the transaction quickly.

	Making it work

Just because your company is listed on a comparison site doesn't mean shoppers will click the link to your site. “Realize that on that search results page you have little opportunity to make an impact,” Lloyd-Martin says.

Which means you need to make the most of what opportunity you have. Most experts agree that consumer interest increases with each additional bit of information you can provide them. So to encourage shoppers to click on your link as opposed to the link above or below yours, try including a logo with your listing and citing the total costs including shipping and tax; you might also add consumer reviews.

On your own site, it's crucial to pack each product page with your company's basic information. Visitors directed to your site from a comparison shopping engine will be bypassing your home page and parachuting directly onto the product page.

“Product pages need to be mini home pages,” says Rimm-Kaufman. “You not only need to make the case of why they should buy a widget, but why they should buy a widget from you.”

Kent, WA-based outdoor-gear merchant Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) struggles with how best to greet customers arriving directly on a product page. “That puts a burden upon us to tell our story on that product page and put our value proposition on that page,” says REI spokesperson Mike Foley.

To make a strong impression on its product pages, REI includes detailed information about the product, how to use it, and its benefits. The pages also feature links to REI's contact and guarantee information and to the FAQs page. While he won't share details, Foley says that comparison shopping engines have indeed helped increase sales and traffic to the REI Website.

Once you're up and running on a comparison shopping engine you need to constantly review the information you're providing the shopping site and the information it's providing you.

Relegating the data feed for products to your IT department is a “huge mistake” according to Rimm-Kaufman, because feeds are marketing documents in that the choice of words, offers, and structures is vital to success.

Retail Brand Alliance, which owns apparel merchants Brooks Brothers and Casual Corner, has been working with direct response marketing firm SendTec to improve its data feeds. On Shopping.com recently, for instance, only five Brooks Brothers listings appeared in the men's clothing category, says Angie McCloskey, vice president of business development for St. Petersburg, FL-based SendTec. In the same category, outdoor products marketer Bass Pro Shop had 6,252 products listed.

“What that's telling you is that products are not pulled correctly through data feeds,” McCloskey says. But by fine-tuning the feeds with better-written copy and an understanding of how the comparison engine categorizes products, she adds, you can increase a company's visibility on a comparison site.

For Kristen Pollock, search and affiliate manager for Brooks Brothers and Casual Corner, improving the brands' visibility on Froogle and Shopping.com is a priority. “We have extensive product catalogs for Brooks Brothers and Casual Corner, and obviously these are places we want to be,” she says.