Does anyone have any notes or comments from the Shopping Search sessions at SES? I was unable to attend and would like to hear how it went.

I did cover those sessions in the San Jose SES conference.

There were two:
(1) Meet the Shopping Search Engines (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000731.html)
(2) Shopping Search Tactics (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000729.html)

Hope that helps...

Thanks a bunch. There's some good information in there.

It seems as if those sessions are typically under-attended. Was that the case this time as well?

Shopping Search Tactics

Chris Bowler, iTraffic
Craig Snyder, Marchex
Matthew Ledford, ydesigns.com

Powerpoints:

The overall theme is that shopping search campaigns do not manage themselves. Chris Bowler said a four-to-five shopping engine program requires 1-2 hours per day, ongoing (feed management, review management, tracking of sales/fulfillment/returns). Craig Snyder had a nice feed matrix that showed which features were required/recommended/optional across a half-dozen of the top shopping comparison engines.

Tips from Q&A:

Chris: contact every negative feedback customer and address their issues.

Craig: considerable pricing differences between categories across engines, as much as $.30-$.40 per click.

Miscellaneous:

iTraffic: uses Atlas/GoToast to track ROI at product level, low converters are pulled from feeds.

Yahoo Shopping Top100 list was mentioned, but I could not find the URL. Anyone?

Sean (the guy asking everyone how they would shop for a digital camera)

disclaimer: i am no rustybrick...

Meet The Shopping Search Engines

Mark Bradley - NexTag
Trent Scoffield - Shopping.com
Bill Rowley - Yahoo Shopping
David Weinrot - Shopzilla (Bizrate)

Presentations:

NexTag
- Added a travel meta-search. Expanding categories in 2005.

Shopping.com
- Bid plays smaller part in the equation today, with more emphasis on trust factors.
- Featured Store = 40-80% more leads than non-featured, 50% higher conversion.
- Smart Buy = 110% more leads, 3x conversion.

Q&A

re: authorized dealers?
David - merchants specify this on the datafeed
Trent - we go back and check with the manufacturer

re: category trends?
Trent - biggest growing category is home/garden
Bill - agreed, home/garden and apparel

re: price vs. loyalty?
Bill - the % of people who sort by price is actually quite low.

re: datafeed standardization?
The general consensus is there are no plans on the horizon.
Someone mentioned that savvy merchants might not want it.
Nextag said they will import feeds from any major competitors.

miscellaneous:

Mark - crossover between visitors of shopping search engines is low.
Trent - if you do anything in 2005, invest in your datafeed!

Thanks a bunch. There's some good information in there.

It seems as if those sessions are typically under-attended. Was that the case this time as well?

What makes you think they are under attended?

Great notes sean!

Thanks for the notes, Sean. Nice recap.

As for the "underattended" comment, I attended the corresponding session back in NYC, and it seemed to me that very few were there. I guess I am comparing it to some of the other sessions I attended on topics such as link building and local search. Perhaps it is to be expected.

To me, it seems as if shopping search engines are providing a great ROI. I'm really surprised that there is not more interest in it. For example, if you look at the number of posts in this section of the forum, it is much lower than other areas. It's like this in other forums as well, not just SEW.

I guess it is to be expected that only eCommerce sites would be interested in the subject (obviously). I just wonder how few of them are taking advantage of this.

It's my opinion that Shopping Search is the PPC of two or three years ago. Remember the good old days when you could bid on just about any keyword for 50 cents or less. We barely tracked our PPC ROI back then because we knew we were making money. That's the kind of ROI that we have seen (and heard of) with some clients in Shopping Search.

Is it just me, or is Shopping Search a pretty good bargain still?

We first did shopping search back in 2001, and it was incredibly under attended then. I think I put it on hold for a half-a-year after that to give the audience some catch up time. It was just too far in advance for many of them.

I think the attendance is continuing to grow, however. Now we offer it every time, because there's enough core interest and it keeps growing. But you can also get other things that might impact a low attendance in NY versus Chicago. The audience make-up might be different. The timing of other sessions can have an impact. That's why I tend to move the sessions around. Shopping search might be on the fourth day at once confernence against something like Meet The Search engines which is always a big draw. If so, I look to make it move to a third day outing the next time and not be against perhaps some other tough panel competition.

Hi Danny:

Yes, I seem to remember that in NYC last year the session ended up toward the end of the four days and on the same day as the Paid Inclusion session. That week was the same week that Overture/Yahoo announced the new "Paid Inclusion" model. I'm sure that had a lot to do with it.

I have noticed that you have gone to two sessions since then. There must be interest.

However, Danny makes another good point. Are audiences (and marketers in general) up to the task of Shopping Search? Is it too complicated for the average person? Why is everyone in the world jumping on Overture, causing all our bids to go through the roof, yet I can get a more qualified bid from Shopping.com for almost nothing. In fact, at Froogle it IS nothing.

(I guess I should just keep my mouth shut and appreciate the situation the way it is, eh?)