In a couple weeks, the ghouls and goblins will be out in full force. Actually, we’ll probably see more superheroes than forces of evil, but you get the picture. Halloween is here. And according to Shopping.com’s Consumer Demand Index (CDI), searches for ‘costumes’ showed an increase of 140% last week (Sept. 19 - Oct. 2) compared to the previous week. As a kid, my mother dressed me up as a smurf one year and a stick of gum the next…not an auspicious start. In an attempt to pick out a more appropriate halloween costume in addition to some halloween decorations and candy, I figure it’s time to check out how the shopping comparison engines are handling Halloween.

Ok, I’ll admit it. I have an alternative motive…the Holiday Season is almost here. I think the Halloween sections of the comparison shopping enignes might give us a bit of insight into what we might expect to see around the corner…

Shopzilla - Not sure of the official launch date of Shopzilla’s Halloween section, but it’s one of the first I noticed since the company is prominently displaying a black & orange tab on the top nav bar. Furthermore, the company has created a section above the fold promoting Halloween costumes and accessories. Clicking on the tab brings you to a Halloween costumes page featuring 10 departments of costumes including Children, Adult, Plus Size, Infant, Barbie, and Harry Potter. Clicking on any of the sections brings you to a comparison shopping page complete with attribute based refinements such as Price Range, Costume Type, and Costume Accessories (do you need an accessory belt to go along with that Batman costume?).

The section on the homepage has links to Disney Princess, Harry Potter, and Star Wars costumes, as well as a link to Shopzilla’s Costumes & Accessories section under Toys & Games. The Costumes & Accessories main page looks pretty basic, but clicking on ‘More’ under any of the main headings opens up an impressive list of costumes. For example, clicking on ‘More’ under ‘Classic Costumes’ opens up a list of 1000 different classic costumes - broken up by decade (Should I go for the 40s gangster suit or the 70s Big Daddy Inferno Pimp look?). This granularity of categorization blew me away, but now that I’ve got my costume, what about Halloween related goods? Where are the scary movies, candy, and decorations?

As with the rest of Shopzilla, the Halloween section is clean and clear. There are Adwords ads at the bottom of the page, but no additional promotional opportunities for merchants.

PriceGrabber - On the right hand side of the homepage, there’s a frightful pumpkin representing the Halloween Shopping Guide. The guide is also listed under the main category navigation next to the coupons. The guide has three sections: Costumes (Adult, Children, Accessories, Dogs, Hats & Masks - the link pointed to the Dogs page), Decorations & Sweets (Decor, Chocolate, Cookies, etc.), and Entertainment (Movies, Music, Books, etc.) - and is a one stop shop for all your Halloween needs. Oh, and the site was nice enough to notify me that there are only 23 shopping days left until Halloween.

I first clicked through to the ‘Adult Costumes‘ page. While PriceGrabber doesn’t have the same level of granularity in terms of costume type, one very helpful feature was being able to choose a costume by gender. Also, there are two ways to filter searches - Basic & Advanced. Basic filtering allowed me to drill down to a specific brand of costume, say Disney OR Jockey (not just any jockey, a sexy adult jockey) while Advanced filtering allowed me to choose Disney AND Jockey AND Banana Republic (which for some reason brought up a Star Wars, Adult Red Riding Hood, and Spiderman costume - who knew Banana Republic made adult halloween costumes!).

While the quantity (sheer number, type) of costumes didn’t seem to match Shopzilla, PriceGrabber’s advanced filtering as well as the ability to choose by gender, were welcome search refinements.

The Halloween Decor section featured everything from a Toilet Monster to Streamers and Fog Makers. You can search by price and brand. While the candy section is not yet live, I thought the Chocolate and Cookie sections might be good enough. There are definitely a ton of choices in both sections, but not many Halloween specific products. I guess the best bet for candy is still the neighborhood drug store.

Movies…because PriceGrabber lists products by popularity (as opposed to by bid), I was able to see that It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown from 1966 is still a hit although Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie from 2005 is one honey jar ahead. I was impressed with the Halloween music section. I would have totally forgotten to pick up a scary CD for my party.

In all, PriceGrabber’s Halloween Shopping Guide is really well done. I’d definitely return to see what they have in store for the Holidays.

Shopping.com - No Halloween section, but you can obviously do a search.

NexTag - No Halloween section, but you can obviously do a search.

Yahoo! Shopping - Great call out for Goughlish Halloween Shopping at the top of the page which brings you to the Halloween Gift Center. The three main sections are Kids Costumes, Adult Costumes, and Treats. Also, the right hand side of the page allows you to shop by Gender (and they go a step beyond PriceGrabber in that they split out Adult from Children) and costume type.

As I’m on a fairly low carb diet, I went right for the treats, and found my favorite: candy corn. While both Shopzilla and PriceGrabber have listings for candy, only Yahoo! Shopping made it easily accessible (no searching necessary) and had a separate section for Halloween candy.

Back on the main Halloween Gift Center page, I was able to find a Halloween Decorations section, but it was a little hidden (below the fold). Also hidden was the Halloween invitation section - a smart addition to the Gift Center, but I’m surprised they’re not also linking to Upcoming.org (a recent acquisition).

Yahoo! Shopping provided a very complete Halloween Shopping experience…although I’m surprised they didn’t have a section for music, movies, and books as seen on PriceGrabber. The outrageously long URL strings were the only real problem I had with the site…not very easy to pass along to a friend.

MSN Shopping - MSN Shopping has a Seasonal Shopping section featuring Halloween 2005. As I’ve said before, I’m easily drawn into this glossy catalog experience… “Was that just the rustle of dry leaves or is something lurking in the shadows? It’s the season to celebrate the eerie and macabre, but never fear — we’ve rounded up everything you need, from costumes to candy, to help make this Halloween the most delightfully chilling yet.”

I originally thought MSN Shopping had four main categories (Costumes, Candy, Decorations, and Toys & Novelties) as listed on the right hand side, but soon realized that I was looking at a 160×463 skyscraper ad from Oriental Trading Company with a call out for Free Shipping on orders of $60 or more (you might get a different ad, but keep refreshing the page to see what I’m talking about). This ad demonstrates one major difference between MSN Shopping and the other shopping comparison engines - MSN Shopping offers merchants many unique merchandising opportunities beyond the basic PPC listings.

The costume sections (Women Plus Size, Movie Favorites, etc. are on par with all the other shopping comparison engines. MSN Shopping, though, seems to be the most thorough of the engines in terms of ancillary products: the site has a section for Accessories & Makeup, Entertaining (complete with movies, books, movies, etc.), and Treats. Additionally, well below the fold are top 10 lists (costumes) and a great set of Editor’s Picks.

AOL inStore - Performing sketch comedy or stand up, I always worried about who was on stage before me…if that person stole the show, I knew I had little chance of really wowing the audience. Sadly for inStore, I just visited the cream of the pumpkin patch crop at MSN.

Just above the fold on inStore’s main page are five links to inStore’s costume offerings. That’s the extent of the Halloween experience. Again, maybe I’m biased after my expereince at MSN Shopping, but the AOL inStore costume listings seemed sparse which is odd considering that they are just taken from Shopzilla where my choice of costumes went on and on and on.

On the homepage is also an ad for costumes from Toys R Us on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, that ad doesn’t even go to the proper section for costumes (it goes here instead of to the Halloween Bootique).

In terms of completeness of expereince, here’s how I’d rank the Halloween shopping sections of the main comparison engines:
1. MSN Shopping - Happy Halloween
2. Yahoo! Shopping - Halloween Gift Center
3. PriceGrabber - Halloween Shopping Guide
4. Shopzilla - Halloween Costumes
5. AOL inStore, NexTag, Shopping.com