Another shopping comparison engine!?! Yes, I understand your lack of
enthusiasm, but more than a decade after the industry was born, there’s
still a lot of room for improvement.
ShopWiki, a new shopping search engine founded by former DoubleClick
executives, takes a different approach than the current breed of
comparison engines to address some issues.
What issues? When I discuss the challenges shopping comparison engines
face, these surface again and again:
- Comprehensiveness – If only 10,000 merchants are
submitting data feeds, the shopping comparison engines are missing out
on at least 90,000 merchants. - Price floors – This also plays into the
comprehensiveness issue. By implementing artificial price floors, the
shopping comparison engines restrict the number of products listed as
low margin goods will not be listed. - Lack of loyalty/Poor user experience – Because many
shopping comparison engines depend on paid traffic, they are set up to
optimize revenue per user. Get ’em in. Get ’em out through a paid link.
ShopWiki is far from perfect and the service has a long long way to go,
but it?s on the right path and is a long term threat to the established
players who are not thinking seriously about crawling. More about this is
covered in
my Q&A with the founders of ShopWiki. See also ShopWiki Aims to Redefine Shopping Search from ClickZ.