1. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 1 Shopping Search Bizresearch Laura Thieme Slides may update by conference date

2. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 2 Shopping Search Data Feeds oBenefits of Shopping Search oGetting Listed in Shopping Search oData feeds, automation, optimizing results oCurrent Case Study – Focus on Froogle Optimization oTracking Traffic, Sales, Conversion Rates & ROI by Category & Product Level oClick Fraud Discussion oSummary/Conclusions

3. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 3 Shopping SE Acquisitions eBay acquired Shopping.com - $625M –Recently eBay items included in MSN Shopping search results E.W. Scripps acquired Shopzilla - $525M Experian parent GUS acquired Pricegrabber - $485M

4. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 4 Data Feed Standardization Alan Rimm-Kaufman –Working to create data feed standards –Alongside Shop.org Association for Retail Technology –Testing of standard feed to start in December Source: http://xmlpronews.com/2006/0310.html

5. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 5 New Shopping Search Engines Become.com –Stays away from data feed –Uses a crawler designed to focus exclusively on shopping related information –Analyzes content of a page, not just links BrilliantShopper.com –Founded by veterans of AskJeeves, Disney and IBM –Meta-shopping search engine

6. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 6 Monthly Data – June, 2006

7. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 7 $30.1 Billion on 2005 Holiday Season Source: Goldman Sachs, Nielsen/Netratings, Harris Interactive

8. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 8 B2C Median Order Conversion Rates Souce: http://www.websidestory.com/company/news-events/press-releases/view-release.html?id=319

9. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 9 Merchants & Search Marketers Shopping Search Can’t Be Ignored

10. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 10 Benefits of Shopping Search Product title, image, description, price from various vendors displayed on each search results page Easy to shop multiple vendors from one place Merchant ratings Up-Front Price & Packaging Calculator Comparison Qualified sales channel for vendors Potential for strong ROI for retailers

11. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 11 Example Client Customer Acquisition rate: 4% Data consistently shows revenue exceeding cost of investment. Average conversion ratio: 4.58%

12. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 12 Creation of a Data Feed Excel spreadsheet or raw tab delimited data file of your existing product database which typically includes the following: –Product URL –Product Name –Description –Image URL –Product Category –Price

13. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 13 Good Feed

14. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 14 Bad Feed

15. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 15 Getting Listed Froogle relies on data feeds (Google Base) Shopping.com uses feeds or crawls –Costs $300 then $20/month after to crawl Shopzilla supplements listings by crawling Pricegrabber crawls Travel listings

16. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 16 Recommend Automation Recommend after initial data feed is created, set up automation script to run –If using any ecommerce platform, problems can occur Third party programs also can help with this however make sure they’re accurately pulling your data Updates can be submitted automatically as products/prices change Begin optimization

17. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 17 Focus on Froogle Why? Because it’s still free and can deliver a very profitable source of sales

18. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 18 New Client Optimization Project Client had never heard of Froogle Was and is bidding on CPC terms Lost organic rankings due to ecommerce platform change and inability to implement 301 redirects Great business – selling rehab products Very difficult to use NetSuite for traditional optimization So we opted for Froogle Data Feed/Optimization

19. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 19 Target Term Massage Table

20. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 20 Analyze Your Competitors Reviewed top listings in Froogle for “massage table” Reviewed product titles/descriptions/prices/images/usability

21. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 21 Competitive Review Look for comparison products

22. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 22 Competitor: Walmart

23. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 23 Massive Optimization Opportunity

24. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 24 Massive Optimization Opportunity

25. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 25 It’s Percy Again!

26. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 26

27. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 27 Back to our data feed Reviewed client feed originating from NetSuite platform –Difficult: Multiple errors with images, product URLs, headers, mapping, products erroneously removed from Netsuite automation –Easier: Titles and descriptions also needed work Added “Massage Table” where relevant Programmer working with NetSuite We are working with Froogle Tech Support

28. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 28 Submitting to Froogle Go to www.google.com/webmasters Create Froogle feed –https://base.google.com/base/help/tab_instructions.html Will want you to verify the site ownership, authenticity, but requires the ability to post a file to the root of the website – with NetSuite we could not do this

29. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 29 Making Progress Most challenging data feed we have ever worked with due to ecommerce platform Most data feeds typically take 2-10 hours to set up initially, optimize and submit After that data feeds can be automated Will blog our progress on Bizresearch’s Blog – stay tuned

30. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 30 Froogle continued Froogle striving towards 2-3 days, but could take longer to get updated data feed Recommend submitting through Google Base May change the way you submit in the future if you have incremental updates

31. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 31 Froogle Success With Other Clients Top referring keyword referrals coming from Froogle (noted using NetTracker) Often the most profitable sales Sending far more traffic volume than before, if optimized and updated as needed

32. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 32 More Froogle Tips Make sure your feed doesn’t expire Most frequent problem: Image URL is wrong –Verify your image URLs Make sure robots.txt file is not blocking Froogle Spaces in image URLs – working to resolve but currently causes problems

33. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 33 Quality Control-Tracking ROI/ROAS Track ROAS by category Track by product Pull non-performers Requires attention to detail

34. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 34 ROAS? How Can You Improve? Watch sales to expense ratios Note changing prices in some categories Get your customers to participate in shopping search surveys Consider adding your logo, or phone number One shopping search engine may outperform the other in same category Review interface, rankings and pricing – could be contributing to poor ROAS Ask sales rep for recommendations on improving conversion rates If your site has poor ROAS, don’t expect shopping search to be much better

35. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 35 Click Fraud Concerns Growing concern about click fraud What to look for: –Review clicks by traffic software –Review shopping search clicks –Talk with your vendors about difference in tracking IP addresses Bigger concern is return on ad spend (ROAS) analysis

36. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 36 Closing Recommendations Quality pictures Accurate product titles Basic product descriptions (leave out “fluff”) Monitor search term relevancy –Most search title and descriptions for keyword matches Monitor competitive pricing Monitor customer reviews Ensure rapid and accurate fulfillment Shopping search is form of customer acquisition – need to market to them to ensure you retain customer (email marketing, direct mail, stellar customer service)

37. 8/9/2006 SES San Jose 2006 www.bizresearch.com 37 For Quality Control: E-mail Traci Couts traci.couts@bizresearch.com Call 614-846-7560 Visit www.bizresearch.com