I consider NexTag the quiet and conservative member of the shopping comparison space. While Shopping.com gets coverage as the public company and Froogle hits the headlines because, well, it’s part of Google, NexTag has quietly built a powerful offering for consumers and has plans to expand into every category which you spend money on…well, almost!

I sat down with Rafael Ortiz, NexTag co-founder and VP of Marketing last Friday afternoon. Here’s what he had to say:

On NexTag’s Strengths:
“We enable consumers to comparison shop and save money on anything they spend money on. We have the True Price system which calculates the total price of a product including shipping and taxes. We have fast, accurate, and relevant search results, and we provide results for a broader array of categories than anyone else.”

“From the merchant perspective, it’s all about the volume we send and how efficiently the leads convert. We provide a high volume of extremely qualified leads.”

On opportunities for improvement:
“From the consumer perspective, there’s still a tremendous amount we can do to provide more accurate search results. We have to continue to work on normalization and grouping [products like electronics have unique identifiers while 'softer' products like apparel don't]. This is messy, unglamourous work, but it will enable us to provide more relevant results for consumers and more qualified leads for merchants. The consumer electronics category was very easy, clothing is not. Retailers have to provide all the same type of information, but they usually don’t. It’s NexTag’s technology expertise which can make up the gap.”

“We’d like to be a worldwide comparison engine, but this takes time. We’ll most likely expand into the Pan-European area next.” [NexTag already is operational in the UK]

On Click Fraud:
“Click fraud hasn’t really been an issue for NexTag. We had an advantage over the PPC engines from the start as we developed an ROI tracker early on. If merchants can see this problem, the loop is already closed. It’s something that we have to be careful about, but retailers are managing their distribution channels on an ongoing basis. We can’t let the issue linger. We have to be aggressive which translates into higher quality leads.”

On Marketing
“We don’t break out our media spend for the public, but we are always looking at different media. [NexTag currently has an opening for a Director of Offline Marketing (read: direct response TV) as well as an Internet Media Buyer] NexTag is building a better product and service. Users will reward us by coming back to the site. This marketing is “free” but you pay for it in terms of engineering resources.”

On Retention/Loyalty:
“We want to provide a better quality experience in all categories and enable consumers to use more and more categories. If you can get the best experience, you’ll come back. As opposed to building out a loyalty product [such as Shopping.com's Cash Back program], we think there’s a greater opportunity to solve the fundamental problem that effects everyone - helping people find the products and services they’re interested in and doing this for more products and services than on any other site.”

On general search engines:
“The portals have had their comparison engines for years. Have they gained market share? No, they’ve lost it. Why? Because very focused companies [like NexTag] tend to be able to carve out differentiable value. Do the large sites have the resources to wipe us out? Yes, but that’s not their focus.”

On the future of comparison engines:
“At NexTag, you’ll comparison shop for almost anything you spend money on. It used to be all about books, music, movies, and electronics. Two years ago, products like home furnishings and jewelry were added. Today, we have services like hotels, flights, auto insurance, financial services, real estate. We want the consumer to be able to save time and money shopping for everything. Well, not absolutely everything, but there are many possibilities. How about groceries?”

On financing and the future:
“We’ve been profitable since 2001 and have year over year revenue growth in the triple digits. In terms of financing, you have to ask, does the company need the money. No. Not today. But at some point that could change. We’ve been gaining market share, but the question is how do we take it beyond that. We need to build a better service for every user that visits the site.”