Here’s a copy of the e-mail:

But the Shopping.com link connects the users to this page with the URL shopbabycrib.com:

Stay alert and don’t let scammers compromise your information. Check strange hyperlinks before you click them, and make sure when you’re entering account information you’re doing it through a secure URL. Shopping.com will always make you log in through https://merchant.shopping.com/mac/app.

Yesterday Paul Lee announced on the the Google Merchant Blog that Google wants merchants to submit their information to Google Local Shopping in a push to expand a local network of search results for it’s users.

Please note that excellent Product Search data quality is a prerequisite for participation, so make sure that you are submitting an accurate and complete data feed, including unique product identifiers. Additionally, to take part you’ll need to have your stores listed on Google Places, so make sure you have submittedand verified your store listings.

It will be interesting to see the impact this program has on shoppers.

This week Shopzilla unveiled a new reporting tool that sports a user-friendly interface and faster response time for merchants trying to assess the health of their CSE campaigns. You can check out Travis, account manager at Shopzilla, detailing the specs of the new tool here.

Cashback Flashback

It’s been just over 30 days now since Microsoft shut down its Bing Cashback program which encouraged consumers to purchase items from participating merchants, who in turn would provide them with rebates of varying percentages anywhere from 2% to as high as 40%.

Fast forward to today and Bing Cashback has returned as Bing Shopping. This time they’ve come back as a free comparison shopping engine similar to Google Product Search. Currently they allow  all merchants who qualify to list their products without having to pay a commission to users.

For this post we have gathered data from our own merchants comparing their Bing Cashback performances 30-days prior to the Cashback program shutting down, and comparing them to how the post 30-days have fared for them.

The data we used was provided via our internal tracking systems, comparing the period of July 1 – July 30 to Aug 1 – Aug 30.

July 31st was skipped since that was the final day of Bing Cashback and served as a transition period. Here’s what we found:

When we summed up the traffic totals for all clients in this study, the aggregate numbers saw a drop off of 5.58%.

A drop off was to be expected for two main reasons:

• the new Bing Shopping campaign opened the doors for more merchants to sign up, so current merchants on Bing had to begin competing with more merchants with similar inventory than them, thus shrinking the size of the pie that a merchant previously had.
• without the benefit of receiving a percentage of their order back, consumers may have shied away from using Bing Shopping, since for them the incentive of using Bing Shopping as opposed to Google Product Search or any other CSE was non-existent–they’d have to go back to paying “full” price for goods either way.

The aggregate numbers don’t tell the entire story though–we found that while nearly 2/3s of the merchants we looked at lost traffic, the other 1/3 surprisingly gained traffic.

Breaking down each merchants traffic differences ranging from drops of 68% to gains of 60%. The median drop off was nearly identical to the overall at 5.54%.

Here’s a further breakdown with quartiles (1st quartile = 25th percentile, 3rd = 75th percentile):

So certainly things were skewed in the direction of a traffic drop off, while a good number of merchants have seen traffic gains with the new Bing.

Here is the part merchants should be most concerned with. Traffic spikes don’t amount to much if none of those convert into orders, and traffic drops are irrelevant if somehow the aggregate number of orders remained constant.

Whereas we saw traffic numbers increase for nearly 1/3 of our merchants, less than 20% saw a gain in total orders. Again, here’s our breakdown:

Overall, total sales fell 58.6% when combining all sales generated by Bing.

The story gets uglier here too, as conversion rates (orders / clicks) fell across the board for every merchant whose data we gathered:

Our best merchant saw a drop off of just 3.15%–but a typical merchant saw conversion rates decrease by over 50%.

We had one outlier of a merchant who saw a decent spike in revenue, but again we see a major drop off in total revenue, given the traffic decreases, and the lower conversion rates:

The numbers above were largely to be expected once Microsoft decided to pull the plug on its program.

The minor drops in traffic along with the huge drop offs in conversions and total revenue are the direct result of additional merchants diluting the inventory on Bing Shopping, along with the lower incentive levels in using Bing as compared to any of the dozens of other CSE’s out there.

Bing’s new Shopping platform is mainly a positive for merchants who were unable to get on there previously–much like a swank private nightclub finally opening its doors to the general public. Those used to being among elite crowds are now surrounded by anyone who wants to join.

Still, the positive news for merchants who’ve been on Bing all long is that Bing as a search portal is constantly growing, which should increase the number of users that go to its Shopping platform.

Also, merchants don’t have to worry about losing access to the exclusive club anymore due to a malfunctioning pixel (which was all too common) or due to a balance left unpaid.

And finally, as a free platform there’s no need to worry about fraudulent orders from users trying to game the system (also a common issue), or do much work at all other than regularly sending out a fresh data feed to Bing.

Almost exactly a year ago Microsoft’s  double cashback program (where Microsoft matched whatever % a merchant would give) was so popular that it had to shut it down prematurely, but merchants benefited greatly from it.

We doubt we’ll see much of the same craze again this year, instead the Bing Shopping program should be a more reliable and consistent source of traffic and revenue for its merchants, without any of the headaches that Bing Cashback provided.

Google introduced a new standalone search page today with the launch of Google realtime. It lets you view entire Twitter conversations and filter results by location. If you’re an e-commerce merchant this provides a tool you can use to track how customers talk about your company.

Want to know what people are saying right now? We’re excited to introduce a new home and new tools for Realtime Search. Now you can filter results by location, see full conversations from Twitter, and get Alerts for Realtime Updates via email. Learn more and try it out at http://www.google.com/landing/realtime/ – what will you search for?

Three things you can do with Google realtime:

1. Track down and befriend disgruntled customers.
2. Provide on-the-fly customer support.
3. See what people are saying about your competitors.

Yesterday the recently launced Shopzilla Merchant Services Blog (which we must note contains some great information) released an interview with our very own account manager/blogger Andrew.

In it our resident CSE aficionado describes the best practices of data feed submission, including the importance of having proper titles, descriptions, and categories which applies not only to Shopzilla, but to the overall comparison shopping space as well:

I don’t recommend stuffing your titles and descriptions with keywords, as this can decrease the relevancy of the words that you want to be promoting first and foremost. You want to provide shoppers with a brief, clear synopsis about what the product is in order to make an informed purchasing decision.

It’s short and concise, but contains plenty of great information on CSE habits that all merchants should be practicing.

And as they say, practice makes perfect.

Check out the full interview here: http://merchantblog.shopzilla.com/?p=230

In anticipation of the Halloween shopping season Shopzilla announced that it will be increasing the minimum bid in the Costumes & Accessories category to $0.25.  Effective September 7^th through October 28^th, this 10 cent rate increase is Shopzilla’s response to the expected increase in traffic and consumer activity during the 2010 Halloween season.

Merchants who are currently bidding below $0.25 in the Costumes & Accessories category will see their bids automatically raised to the new minimum rate on September 7^th.  Bids at or above $0.25 will remain unchanged, but product search rankings could potentially be affected by the more competitive default bids.  On October 29^th, minimum bids will return to $0.15 and all bids that were automatically raised will return to their previous levels.

Optimizing your bidding strategy during Q4 can be tricky, but with seasonal rate increases such as this one it’s important to be aware of them and manage your bids accordingly.  No merchant wants to miss out on traffic in Q4 just because their bids were defaulted to the minimums by the CSEs… So merchants remain watchful of your CSE campaigns during this bustling holiday season!

2. Find Discount Codes

3. Look for Free Shipping

4. Unite and Save

5. Auction

6. Print Coupons

For the full article, click here.

The media has been releasing tips to shop frugally online more and more leading up to Q4. As a merchant, how can you take this information and profit from it?

Do you list coupons or discount codes in your comparison shopping campaigns?

Can you offer free shipping on some or all orders?

Yesterday NexTag announced the hire of three senior executives and a global P&L team to leverage opportunities for future growth. This news comes weeks after NexTag made the move to acquire the product recommendation engine, Wize.

“We’re moving aggressively to fulfill NexTag’s mission to be an indispensible shopping resource for consumers as well as a value-added marketing partner for merchants and manufacturers,” said Jeffrey G. Katz, Chief Executive Officer of NexTag.  “Our strategy for meeting these goals includes international growth, new service features and top-tier talent to execute our vision.  These new hires provide energy and fresh perspective necessary to help us seize the major opportunities we see ahead for the comparison shopping category; equally importantly, our existing senior managers provide stability and deep domain expertise to ensure that we continue to maximize the core strengths which have been integral to our success and profitability for more than a decade.”

For the complete story, click here.

It’s good to hear that NexTag continues to expand. Broadening their customer base and reaching out globally is a trend we’ve been seeing with a number of e-commerce companies. Internet Retailer just recently released an article that compliments NexTag‘s move, which reports the global online population will increase by 43% by 2014.

Google’s recent acquisition of Like.com has us here wondering what effect the move will have on Google Product Search. Like.com specializes in visual search, which could mean upgrades to how we view images on Google Product Search in the near future. Steve Monfort reports from NASDAQ.