What Is A Comparison Shopping Engine?
A comparison shopping engine tool is a website used by consumers to research and learn more about multiple retailers offering the same line of products. Typically, consumers visit such a website to compare prices, customer reviews, or even complimentary services, such as shipping before making a buying decision.
Comparison Shopping Engine Examples
There are various examples of these tools, including:
- Google Shopping: This is Google’s service platform that allows users to search, view, and compare different retailer products on one tab. It also allows retailers to run various shopping ads for attracting customers.
- Pricegrabber: The website promotes smart shopping by allowing shoppers to search, access deals, and save on a wide range of products across electronics, jewelry, cosmetics, office supplies, auto parts, clothing, and music.
- Shopping.com: This website allows customers to search and compare over a million products across various categories, such as automotive, electronics, computer & software, home & garden, as well as clothing & accessories.
- Nextag: Nextag is an independent price comparison website that allows customers to research and read buying guides on various products as well as consumer reviews, across travel, electronics, and education categories.
- Shopzilla: Shopzilla is another popular comparison shopping engine that focuses on trending products around fashion, such as jewelry and clothing. It also features a home improvement category that extends to electronic and appliance products.
How Does It Work?
A typical comparison shopping engine tool works like any other search engine, where consumers can type and search specific products sold on the internet. A user’s search request will display similar products sold by different retailers side-by-side, where buyers can compare various features, such as prices, color, or even images.
Alternatively, a user can visit a comparison engine tool to browse various product categories offered by the platform, especially if they want to discover new items. Some tools usually include buyer guides and user reviews to help in this buyer research approach.
Benefits Of Comparison Shopping Engines
Unlike traditional marketplaces, comparison shopping engines (CSEs) come with various business benefits, such as:
- Greater customer services: users can find the lowest pricing conveniently and also learn from other customers who use the same product.
- Keep track of market pricing: all other retailers display their prices, allowing businesses to get an accurate picture of the foregoing market pricing model.
- Better conversion rates: customers who resort to shopping comparison engines will likely end up buying your product because they only click after assessing its image, features, price, as well as other buyer ratings.
Why CSEs Are Important To Online Retailers
CSEs are increasingly becoming popular among online retailers who want to drive organic traffic to their websites and increase conversion rates. These tools are important because they:
- Give access to a larger target audience, especially since they are among the top-ranking websites recommended to everyday internet users;
- Offer greater advertising opportunities for small businesses to compete alongside established eCommerce giants;
- Position your brand for greater visibility in global consumer target audiences.
Tools To Monitor Comparison Shopping Engines
Sellers usually monitor CSEs to ensure that their target audiences don’t face any pain points when getting familiar with their products or services. Some of the comparison shopping engine search monitoring tools that can help you achieve this include The Search Monitor, which helps you compare:
- Brand visibility among different engines helps sellers determine where to allocate more marketing resources;
- Cross-channel data insights from multiple comparison shopping engines for keyword visibility.
