I talked with Michael Yang about Become.com’s new price comparison service a couple days after the service launched…I’ll add another post after I’ve had a chance to sign up as a merchant and test out the merchant center.

On design…
“In terms of design goals for the homepage, we wanted to make it simple, elegant, and functional. We wanted to get away from the first generation search engines with a directory structure and a lot of clutter. We added a ‘Shop’ button and kept the dynamic suggestions. We are helping consumers make the best decision for their buying needs. Rather than push things for people to look at, we’d rather have people tell us what they want. Traditional portals want to push something at you. They say Click Here, Click Here. We want to get away from that and give you the best information possible. Merchandising is not our core competency, UI and technology are. We think far more people will be comfortable typing in what they want.”

On functionality…
“If you type in a product and click return on the homepage, you’ll see the organic results [product guides and reviews] on the left hand side and product choices on the right hand side. If you type in a product and click on ‘Shop’ you’ll be in product search mode and be presented with a lot of different options. The user can narrow down choices by model, price, and for the first time, you can choose more than one filter and click ‘Find Products.’ This makes it easier to drill down to specific products.”

“Through product search mode, the user will find three options listed under the product titles: Compare Prices, Research, and Add to Favorites. ‘Compare Prices’ brings you to a product page. You can then enter your zip code, and we’ll calculate tax and shipping. ‘Research’ allows you to see the organic listings for a particular product while the right hand side will now list the prices for that particular product. ‘Add to Favorites’ displays a favorites window on top of the search results. This feature allows you to compare the products side-by-side. You can save products and come back to them later. You can remove one item or all of the items at any time. The real innovation here is that you can save favorites across categories. You can save a pair of jeans and a sweater and see what tie goes well with them.”

Early indication of CTR to merchants…
“We’re getting a good amount of clickthroughs on our product listings. We’ve moved the AdSense listings to the bottom of the page and put up product listings [images] on the right hand side. AdSense CTR went down, but the combined CTR is better than what we had with just AdSense listings. The product results are much more relevant. ”

On comprehensiveness…
“We’re starting with 250 merchants and 5mm SKUs. It was on a first come, first serve basis. About 70 additional merchants have contacted us since we’ve gone live.”

Note from Editor: Remember, this was only a couple days after the site launched.

On feeds vs. crawling…
“A product feed is the best first line of defense. Crawled results are a back-up. If you search for ‘electronic whiteboard’ we have no product feed, but our organic search results [product guides and reviews] offer a lot of relevant sites which can sell you the product.”

Note from Editor: It’s interesting that there is now a merchant selling electronic whiteboards on Become.com.

The pricing for the merchants is very low…
“We want to be aggressive. We’ve lowered the barriers and restrictions for merchants to sign up with us. Also, we’re offering 50% off our prices for July and August. We’ve made a conscious decision to deliver great value to the merchants. At this point, we don’t necessarily have to maximize the revenue per click.”