Dare to compare. Will listing your products on comparison-shopping sites boost business?
Author: Entrepreneur

WILL LISTING YOUR PRODUCTS ON COMPARISON-SHOPPING SITES BOOST BUSINESS?

COMPARISON-SHOPPING WEBSITES ARE a great marketing vehicle for online merchants who want to grow their businesses. These sites let e-tailers display product information in a simple format, allowing web buyers to make comparisons and choose the best product from a list of products from different retailers.

The stakes, though, have changed now that an increasing number of large e-tailers have entered the fray, making it more difficult for the smaller players to get noticed and driving up the placement fees that companies pay for better spots in search results. "Over the past 12 to 15 months, we have definitely seen a flow of larger retailers into the comparison-shopping site space," says Sean Behr, director of program sales at Shopping.com in Brisbane, California. Large retailers are realizing they need to be where the buyers are, he says, "and most shoppers start out at [comparison sites] like Shopping.com or other search engines when they are starting their shopping process."

Only about 18 percent of America's online consumers use comparison-shopping sites, but those who do spend 24 percent more than the average online consumer, according to a December 2003 report from tech research firm Forrester Research. In addition, 62 percent bought a product after using a comparison-shopping site. "With comparison sites, you get a relatively directed shopper or somebody who is in the mode to buy, so it's an effective ad buy," says Patti Freeman Evans, a retail industry analyst at Jupitermedia in New York City. Whatever your budget, you can afford to list your products on one of the leading comparison-shopping sites, including: AOL's InStore (www.in-store.com), BizRate.com, CNET Network's mySimon (www.mysimon.com), Google's Froogle (http://froogle.google.com), MSN Shopping (www.shopping.msn. com), NexTag (www.nextag.com), PriceGrabber.com, Shopping.com, Shoptoday.us and Yahoo! Shopping (www.shopping.yahoo.com). Listing is generally free, although some sites charge a nominal sign-up fee. Merchants are also charged a "referral fee" whenever comparison-site shoppers click over to their websites, whether or not those shoppers buy anything. The market average for referral fees is about 15 to 30 cents per customer, although they can run between 5 cents and $1. The variance depends on the product being sold, how popular it is, and what the market will bear.