The Silicon Valley American Marketing Association is hosting a discussion on Data Feed Optimization as part of an explosive e-commerce marketing plan.  If you are in the Palo Alto area and can swing it, you should not miss the Web Strategy Morning Forum.

From the SVAMA event description -

This event is open to SVAMA member and non members.

Members – $5
Non-Members – $15

When: 26 February 2010
8:00am Networking & Coffee
8:30 to 9:30 Presentation

Where: TIBCO Software Inc., 3303 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA   [Google Map]

For more information and to RSVP the event, visit http://www.svama.org/site/event_details/64

Become.com has had their Affinity Index Ranking (AIR™) technology patent approved by the US Patent Office.

That is the news out of the Sunnyvale, California headquarters.  It is big too, as Become.com is a fast growing comparison shopping engine who prides itself on this technology. This technology assigns relative rank values to links (web pages) by analyzing quality points in a nodal network.

“Rather than rank pages based on keyword saturation and position, AIR provides the most relevant pages higher positioning while avoiding vulnerability to the artificial Web that such conventional link analysis often falls prey to. ’We are extremely pleased about our patent. AIR technology provides a more intuitive ranking that isn’t spammed through keyword stuffing,’ says Become’s CEO and founder Michael Yang. ‘Our shoppers want relevant product information while comparison shopping on Become.com and AIR delivers it.’ “ - Become.com Press Release

It is a huge advance towards a spam free index, with no keyword stuffing.

What you need to know about Become.com:

Become.com is establishing itself as a player in the comparison shopping engine environment. Become is a classic model CSE that is great for consumer product research and comparison. Become accepts data feeds, FTP uploads and crawls the Web for shopping related pages to identify changes to existing pages.  They are a CPC based pricing model with free setup. Minimum bids are required, based on the category your products.

Sign up your online store with Become.com now. Visit https://www.become.com/merchant/SignUp.aspx

So all you developer types who have been keen on the Yahoo! Shopping Product Submit API… step forward and get your new permissions from Pricegrabber.  Better hurry though, as you have until March 11, 2010 to make the adjustment. Welcome to another round of Yahoo! outsourcing.

Announced earlier today,  search engine giant Yahoo!, entered into what they call a “strategic partnership” with the well known comparison shopping engine, Pricegrabber,  to power the Shopping Web Services API, including Shopping Results (the “Yahoo! Shopping Syndication Services).  It will be interesting to watch how Pricegrabber handles this task.  As Pricegrabber looks to gain heavily from this partnership, developers and merchants need to be aware that Pricegrabber is not a free Web services API.

This means merchants will only be able to get their products into Yahoo! Shopping through either Pricegrabber and Yahoo Search, which is provided by Bing.  After the move of Yahoo Search to Bing, many thought it would be an obvious choice to outsource the Shopping Web Services API to Bing as well.  Some speculate the move towards Pricegrabber for this task is based on the fact that Pricegrabber holds a larger database of products than Bing.  Others point to the existing ties between Microsoft and Yahoo, with their current search relationship, and suggest it may have been a simple business decision to not go with Microsoft.

Merchants who use Google Merchant Center must be thrilled.

The executive team at Pricegrabber must be doing a big dance on the conference room tables.  This will dramatically effect the market share of visits to comparison shopping engines.  I can’t wait to see the effects.

Like Brian Smith, I too believed this function would have fallen to Bing. Heck, we have even been preparing for it here at Vertical Rail.  Now, like Brian, I must admit I got that one wrong.  Well, kinda. We all saw it coming. We just did not think it would be Pricegrabber.

As for the developers and merchants this will effect:  At least they waited until after the holiday season.

E-commerce marketing is experiencing a welcomed re-birth, and it only stands to get better. With the combination of emerging technologies, m-commerce, social commerce and comparison shopping engine opportunities, it’s becoming hard for even the most seasoned e-tailer to know if they are doing everything they can to stay ahead of the competition.

When Google Product Search began using a relevancy algorithm (2008) to determine product-specific search results, the landscape of comparison shopping changed. This landmark change which determines how and why products rank within their comparison engine has given rise to an explosive & emerging marketing strategy – data feed optimization (DFO).

While DFO is often confused with search engine optimization, SEO refers specifically to the modification and enhancement of website coding and content to increase rankings in major search engines such like Google, Bing, and Yahoo;  crawler – based systems.
Data Feed Optimization on the other hand refers exclusively to enhancing website placement within e-commerce driven comparison shopping engines (CSE) like Google Products, NexTag, SortPrice and Shopzilla – non crawler-based systems. Where SEO covers the realm of content search, DFO covers the realm of product search.

The art of data feed optimization relies on the enhancement of the actual CSV, TXT or XML product files, an output file. Each comparison shopping engine (Google Products, Shopzilla) has specific product mapping and formatting requirements to ensure that a participating company’s products are listed and functioning properly. Entry to these CSE systems is done through an API call or via manual submission through FTP. Each time there are changes to a company’s products, the process starts again.

The product data feed file can be extracted from a shopping cart in a multitude of ways yet its extracted form is never optimized, at that point it is simply a feed. It is neither formatted nor optimized. Once extracted the feed must be properly formatted to align the company’s product attributes with the required CSE mapping system. Optimization occurs once the feed is properly formatted, and before it is sent up to the shopping engine or engines.
The true act of DFO optimization goes beyond formatting and deep into the factors that promote keyword relevancy. DFO is the modification of properly formatted product attributes to reach an enhanced level of keyword and product relevancy. Similar to SEO, the byproduct of DFO is higher product placements that yield increased impressions, click-throughs and sales. In addition to basic DFO factors, there are nearly unlimited opportunities to optimize individual and groups of products to increase results. 

 Data Feed Optimization, similar to its SEO cousin, is never a one-time action. There is no such thing as set and forget when it comes to e-commerce data feed optimization and marketing because the majority of popular items sold online are also available by dozens if not hundreds of other retailers simultaneously. As more retailers enter the data feed marketing realm, competition for those keywords increases in real-time.

The dramatic growth of comparison shopping engine use by both e-tailer and consumer, translates to a continuously shifting market where any new business can develop rankings and relevancy in any category, for nearly any commercial keyword – categorical or long-tail.
One thing is for certain, higher product placement equates to heightened results in any search engine scenario.

So the question is – is your product data feed formatted, optimized… or both?

We graciously invite your comments and questions. I’m Drew and I’m here to help!

Sounds like the title to a children’s book.  The potential ramifications certainly point to thousands of Facebook users suddenly giddy with child-like excitement upon receiving notification that the special item they have had on their wishlist is now available at the price they are willing to pay. And it is a simple Facebook Application.  So right there in my toolbar, I now see every application that can get me through any day: Farmville, Mafia Wars, Bejeweled Blitz, Foodfight and now… Wishlist.

Wishlist. Brought to you by the clever people at SortPrice.com.  http://apps.facebook.com/shopping_wishlist/ (of course you must be logged in to see anything at this link)

But what does it do?  How does it wrangle potential shopping masses from Facebook status additions and virtual farming into a comparison shopping realm?

It’s not that complicated.  This application allows you to shop for things, find them, COMPARE them to others, read and write reviews and then place your wanted items in a wishlist.  Sounds like Amazon.com, right?  The difference is with Facebook  the items in your wishlist are broadcast for all to see, either on your profile or on the live feed to your friends.  You can also elect to not have those products posted and visible.  If a friend clicks the product you have posted, they are taken directly to the merchant’s site that is selling the product, presumably after dropping a tracer through SortPrice.

This is a HUGE advantage to merchants advertising in SortPrice.  It brings e-commerce to the fingertips of an incredibly diverse audience, who already spend a large amount of time on Facebook.

But wait! There’s more!

It wouldn’t be your standard issue Facebook application without some sort of competition with others on Facebook.  Monthly,  SortPrice and Wishlist hold a points gathering competition to earn  $100.00, usable towards items on your own wishlist.  So there is the strategic motivation that Facebook game players seek: who can get the most points?  Doing different things within the Wishlist application earn you points. Simply adding items to your wishlist can get you points.  It’s a shoppers Facebook dream!

Could this be the hook we’ve all needed to bring e-commerce to the masses virally through social media?

I am eager to hear how this worked for SortPrice and their merchants following the holiday season.

‘Tis the season!

For e-commerce stores, that simply means being aware of the annual tradition of comparison shopping engines hiking up their costs per click. In an effort to capture a bit of their own holiday glee, CSE’s like Pricegrabber, NexTag and Shopzilla raise their rates by as much as 25%.

How does that work?

Cost Per Click – Bid Model:

If you list products in NexTag, under the TOYS category, your normal minimum bid is 25 cents per click.  During the holiday shopping season, NexTag increases their pricing by 25%.  So the new minimum cost per click is 32 cents per click.  Now, you may not be affected by this at all.  If the bids you set on your products already start higher than that minimum bid, you may not feel any difference in spent budget.  However, the increase in minimum cost per click does bring lower positioned competitors higher on the results page.  Be aware and adjust accordingly.

Cost Per Click Flat Rate Model:

With this model, your total cost will go up.  If you are utilizing Pricegrabber, you pay a flat fee per click, based on the category your products are in.  With the application of the 25% holiday rate increase, you will see your costs rise.  For example, if you have products in the TOYS category and your normal price per click is 75 cents per click, you will be paying 94 cents per click for each click.  So your budget will be depleted quicker and your products could go offline earlier.

Some Good News:

There are several comparison shopping engines that are breaking with tradition and NOT increasing prices this holiday season.  They may have other specials to note though.

Here is a breakdown of the rate increases by major engine:

• Runs from 11/4/2009 through 1/06/2010
• 25% increase.  All categories

• Runs from 11/1/2009 through 1/15/2010
• 25% increase. All subcategories

• Runs from 11/02/2009 through 12/29/2009
• 25% increase. All categories.

• Runs from 11/16/2009 through 12/27/2009
• 0% to 25% increase, based on category.

• Runs from 11/15/2009 through 12/31/2009
• 0% to 20% increase, based on category.

• Runs from 11/01/2009 through 1/01/2010
• 20% increase, All categories.

• NO INCREASE
• Add a Logo 1/2 off – Entire month of November.

• NO INCREASE
• Contact for special placement pricing.

• NO INCREASE
• (Hard to beat FREE)

Some of these have already kicked in.  There are two watch points for you, if you have products listed in the comparison shopping engines.  First is that you will spend your budget quicker and should monitor your spend closely to ensure your products do not experience down time as a result.  Second is that rate changes cause a scramble for bid placement.  Keep your eye on the listings to ensure your are in the position you want to be in.

Have a great season!

I’m Linda Bateman and I’m here to help.

The holiday shopping season is already underway.  Long gone is the time that  holiday shopping kicked off the day after Thanksgiving.  Retail shelves are already full of holiday offerings.  What is amazing is that shopping carts are already full of holiday products.

I ventured into the local Walmart on Halloween fully expecting aisles full of families gathering that last bag of candy in preparation for evening festivities. I was truly shocked. The gardening section of the store had already been transformed into the North Pole, complete with fully decorated Christmas trees.  I shrugged it off and finished my own last minute Halloween shopping. Flabbergasted was I,  when it came time to check out.  The family just ahead in line had a full cart, mostly of  Christmas tree and trimmings.  Being the inquisitive type I am,  I asked the matriarch of the family if she thought it was too early for holiday shopping.  I got an answer that may be the perspective of the whole country,  ”It is early, but we have the cash now.  Who knows about December.”

So insert your favorite cliche here.  Mine seems to be:  ”It is what it is.”

Are stores on the right track?  Where does that leave e-commerce stores and comparison shopping engines? How will perceptions of the economy and family cash position effect calendar buying trends?  Should the average e-commerce proprietor have products well positioned in shopping engines all year or concentrate efforts to just the traditional holiday shopping season?

E-Commerce stores who use comparison shopping engines (Google Products, NexTag, Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, etc.) are used to the annual holiday ramp up by these shopping engines.  In years past, these engines provided a substantial amount of visitors during the holiday season. If shoppers are purchasing now, will that change the overall effectiveness of shopping engines?

I believe there is enough doubt in consumer trends this year to warrant concern over the traditional advertising model that places a ton more eggs in one holiday basket than the rest of the year.

With that in mind, savvy e-commerce stores should re-evaluate their use of comparison shopping engines.  This does not mean NOT using them, but it is time to look at your products and simply list those that are good sellers or have a high margin.  To save some budget, try cutting out your non-selling products or those which are not competitive at price point.  Try listing your products in shopping portals that do not charge for clicks, like Google Product Search.  Try listing your products in shopping engines that are not raising their rates for the holiday season, like Become.com.  Lastly, but critically important,  spend some dedicated time and energy optimizing your data feeds.

One thing is for certain… a person can’t buy your product if they don’t know it is there.

Another thing is for certain… the time to do all that was yesterday.

It may be that the economy has consumers thinking differently about this holiday season. It may be that Walmart is doing their part to rid Americans of the procrastination habit one holiday at a time.  Whatever the case, people are shopping now.  They are in the comparison shopping engines and in the search engines.  If your products aren’t, well… GET MOVING!  It’s November.  Do you know where your products are?

I’d love some feedback from you.  Let’s get the conversation started.

I’m Linda Bateman and I am here to help.

When a person, such as I, researches comparison shopping engines like Google Product Search as much as I do, one is bound to come upon those special products that makes you scratch your head in consumer wonderment.

Over the next few months, I will bring you prime examples of just those types of products.  Please… (and I really mean this) subscribe to our Side Tracked section here and offer up your findings as well so we can all share in a moment of hmmm.

That being said, the product I offer up, in this the inaugural edition of Side Tracked, was found using Google Product Search.  The keyword was Mahogany Wood Tribute. What made this a stand alone front runner for the first edition of Side Tracked was not the keyword, though the result was a surprise. It was not the merchant or even the product itself.  It was the whole package.  It was the simple fact that Overstock.com really DOES sell just about everything.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Majestic Mahogany Wood Casket by Star Legacy Funeral Network , as featured at Overstock.com.  Overstock.com, where merchants are invited to liquidate excess inventory through the Internet.

In case you were wondering, this product DOES qualify for free shipping and can be at your doorstep in 5 to 10 business days.

Now you may not find this as amusing as I did and you are certainly entitled to your opinion.  I am no way poking fun at the merchant, the product or those who might use this product.  I also have to say, these are simply opinions of the author and does not come from the owners/operators of Vertical Rail or Writing the Rail.  It is intended to make the reader go hmmm.

Until next time,

@Lynbat

Product data feed optimization is simple.  All you have to do is figure out if you can generate a feed from within your e-commerce platform that will perfectly map your product’s attributes to accepted and required attribute fields of each comparison shopping engine.  If that can’t be done, you need to find a way to gather the required information and set up a feed on your own.  The majority of CSE’s will accept a data feed in one of three major formats, a CSV file, TXT Tab delimited file or XML format.  The most common is a CSV file, though Google Products does not accept CSV files.  Automated solutions that pull needed information from your e-commerce site are a plus, so you don’t end up spending hours redoing files when you update simple things like pricing. Generating files and getting the correct file types can be a hassle. XML requires a lot of understanding of versions and schemas and RSS versus ATOM.  It is also difficult and time consuming to update without the proper software and know-how.

If your site offers more than a hundred products, you may have already experienced the frustration of trying to create a usable feed by hand.  The required attribute fields and mapping of information is a task, even if you have a template to work with… even if you know what you are doing.  Try that with 3000 products or even 300,000 products.  It’s too much.  There has to be a better way.

So you may look at ways to give this task to someone else.  Surely there are people and services that do this data feed stuff all the time.  Well, there is.

Frustrated users may start to see shopping engine dashboards through not-so-rose colored glasses.

Here is my take on it.

You can spend a little money on feed generation software and plug-ins for your e-commerce platform.  There are some good ones available, but many times you will be limited by the fields that are required by different comparison shopping engines.  Frankly, you still have to have a pretty good idea of what you are doing within those programs to be able to work your way through the process of creating a data feed.  These software programs do not help you with statistical data, however.

You can spend a bunch of money on online services that will format a feed for individual comparison shopping engines and manage those channels for you.  But you still need to provide a current feed of your products to make it work and you still don’t receive a quality feed optimization, geared towards relevancy by keyword. Often, you can get a little bit of statistical data that will help you determine your CSE ROI.

Maybe you bite the bullet, mortgage your home and spend tons of money with professional services geared towards high volume and high profile e-commerce merchants.  Those services will provide you total solutions.  They can create a feed for you.  They can mildly optimize your feeds with minor adjustments.  These services will send your feed to every CSE you can sign up for and manage that channel completely.  The statistical data you will receive from them is incredible.  You will be able to calculate your ROI, predict the trends for the future, discern which products need to be removed from feeds and help you manage the bottom line.

All they want in return is a portion of your business.

These programs operate on a fee + % basis.  The more sales you generate from CSE channels, the more you pay them.  Often, these programs begin at 10% of your sales from CSE channels and a monthly management cost.  These fees are in addition to the operating clicks of the comparison shopping engines you have active accounts with. You will get the readership as they are very good at spending your money. I don’t know about your business, but I cannot afford 10 + margin points right off the top of my sales.

Where is the middle ground?  How does an e-commerce company get the formatted feed to represent themselves properly and predominantly in competitive comparison search engines without breaking the bank?

I think it is this:

Invest some time into understanding what you really need.  Figure out how your e-commerce platform can export a product data feed, if it can at all.  There may be a plug-in available for your platform.  Next, talk to a company providing real data feed optimization.  They can assist you with any questions you may have regarding your feed and the way to best deploy one on most of the comparison shopping engines. Ask lots and lots of questions, until you fully understand the task at hand. Employ the company with a focus on and background in optimization.  Optimization is what gets qualified readers to your site. Qualified readers place orders.  One last thing to never forget.  The best ROI is going to come from Google Product Search. There is outrageous readership potential (if you are optimized for your keywords properly). No listing fees. No click fees.  No brainer.

That’s my take.

I’m Linda Bateman and I’m here to help.

I find it curious that there are many “experts” of social media marketing and social networking that never seem to make the connection between the two.  It makes me wonder if I am missing something.  

I have read posts by the very knowledgeable Chris Brogan who have likened the development of your social network to a secret fight club (see post at http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-secret-fight-club/) and pointed out a successful network is one made of real people, with real connections. There is never a mention of how to apply these networks of people to a social media marketing endeavor.

I have also read Erik Qualman’s post, Be Stubborn With Your Social Media Vision, but Flexible With Your Plan on SearchEngineWatch.com, who speaks to the process of developing a vision of social media marketing that is not wavering and allowing the social media plan to be flexible.  There is never a mention of the development of a social network.

Now, I understand that developing a social network is part of a social media marketing plan. I also understand that the reasons for developing a social network are not dependant on continuation to execution of a social media marketing plan. Since a social media marketing plan is dependent on a robust social network, why do we consistently see people explaining  the importance of the social media marketing vision and plan, but never any reference to the acquisition of a robust social network for business?

Sure, we have the tools.  Sure, we have the bloggers.  Sure, we have the “experts”.  Sure, we have opinions galore.

But in the spirit of  ”which came first, the chicken or the egg,” the question for practical application remains: 

Which comes first:  The network or the plan?  

As I stated in a comment to Erik’s post, “For a company who is embarking on social media marketing for the first time, which comes first… the network or the plan? If you do not have an already recognizable brand, like Pepsi, it seems as if the establishment of the network may be a bigger key than the initial plan, since one should develop a network of individuals. “ 

Every social media marketer would love to start out with a pre-established list of devoted followers and subscribers.  That would make the job easy.  But we don’t.  We have the business owners who are sold on the concept of social media marketing.  They already know their vision:  Brand Awareness or Increase Sales or the popular Increase Readership To Our Main Site.  When it comes to the application of a plan to meet those visions, we are returned to the base level of a hierarchy of social media, which is the network.  A network requires participation from individuals.  A network requires interaction from people.  A social network is people… helping people.  It requires a fostering of relationships on a one to one basis.  Only after you have established a strong network of connections you can trust and rely on can you then successfully convey messages that will spread virally.

With all of this in mind, I invite others to speak up and tell me your thoughts and experiences.  I am not looking for the wrong way of doing things, like some sort of program that will get me 2000 Twitter followers in a day.  I want to go about building my social network the correct way, rich with people I can call my friends and vice versa.  Then I want to apply that knowledge to help others get connected and build their own social network of people.  

In the end, the people are the thing.  People make a network happen.  Without them, no social media marketing plan can be effective. So can we please start talking about how to create and foster a social network and stop trying to monetize everything?

In regards to the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg…  current social media thought seems to be that it does not matter, as long as it is a Trending Topic on Twitter.  But that get us no closer to answering the question.

C’mon folks…  It’s about PEOPLE.