Amazon & Marketplaces

Top 10 Comparison Shopping Tools of 2012

Shopping comparison sites and services let online shoppers compare products’ attributes and prices in a relatively neutral environment. These services also give merchants a channel to market to some of the web’s savviest consumers.

Several companies track and analyze shopping comparison sites including CPC Strategy, Channel Advisor, comScore, and Compete.com. Based on reported revenue generation, traffic, and even ease of use as reported by these various companies, what follows is a list of the ten best comparison shopping tools in 2012.

Google Shopping

Google Shopping

Google Shopping

Google Shopping is the merger, if you will, of two earlier Google products: Google Product Search and Google Product Listing Ads. Google Product Search — which has been recently closed — was a free service that applied Google’s search algorithms to merchant supplied product data. The service had the best revenue-generating shopping comparison service according to data from CPC Strategy. Google Shopping is part of the AdWords service and provides a pay-per-click channel for product data, including product photography.

Amazon Product Ads

Amazon Product Ads

Amazon Product Ads let merchants place product-specific ads on Amazon category and product detail pages, effectively letting Amazon shoppers compare products. The service works on a pay-per-click model and can be a huge traffic driver. As with other services, Merchants upload product data, set a budget, and receive direct-to-site traffic. It is important to note that this is not part of the Amazon Marketplace. With Amazon Product Ads customers go directly to the merchant’s site and make purchases directly from the merchant, not Amazon.

Nextag

Nextag

Nextag

Nextag might be described as a shopping comparison or price comparison site. Users go to Nextag, search for a product and see results from several participating merchants. This site claims to generate more traffic, more revenue, and more gross merchandise sold than its competition, based on three separate 2010 studies from Compete.com, CPC Strategy, and Channel Advisor.

Pronto

Pronto

Pronto

The Pronto Network offers a number vertical price and product comparison sites, include Proto Style, Proto Home, Proto Tech, Proto Kids, and — believe it or not — Baby Pronto. All told, Pronto lists more than 70,000 million products from some 25,000 merchants, according to the company’s website.

PriceGrabber

PriceGrabber

PriceGrabber

PriceGrabber lets shoppers “find and compare” products from participating merchants across 25 channels, which are essentially product categories. According to CPC Strategy, the typical cost per click on PriceGrabber is just 26 cents, which makes it a relatively good value. PriceGrabber was also on comScore’s list of the top ten fastest gaining web properties in the U.S. for July 2012. The site saw total unique visitors grow 25 percent month over month to a total of nearly 8 million.

Become

Become

Become

Become bills itself as a “product research engine” and seeks to provide good product information for consumers and actionable information for merchants. The site also has a reputation for being seller friendly and easy to work with.

The Find

The Find

The Find

The Find was originally created — under the name FatLens — to provide an event ticket search service, but since October 2006, it has been focused on product search and comparison more generally. This service offers a nice integration with Magento, which could make working with The Find easier for merchants using that platform.

Shopping.com

Shopping.com

Shopping.com

Shopping.com is eBay’s shopping comparison site. It seeks to be a “one-stop shop” for consumers looking for the best deals on products. The site also has services in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Australia. According to CPC Strategy, the site is one of the best in its category at driving traffic.

Shopzilla

Shopzilla

Shopzilla

One of the oldest shopping comparison sites, Shopzilla has been serving shoppers since June 1996. The site is still a key destination for shoppers who want to know what products cost at several retailers.

Bing Shopping

Bing Shopping

Bing Shopping

Bing Shopping is now the only free-for-merchant product and price comparison solutions, since Google recently shuttered its free listing service. Bing says it gets more than 93.6 million product related searches each month. When that traffic and the free price are taken together, it may be hard for online stores to ignore Bing.

Armando Roggio
Armando Roggio
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