What have you done behind the scenes (tech or otherwise) to prepare for the holiday season?
“We have amazing availability time – the redundancy of hardware down to reliability of software - there’s a lot of work to make sure everything is running. That’s one of the things that we always do going into Q4 – a lot of time goes into predicting load on the machines.”

Are you going to create a special holiday section? Does a special section like that really make a difference, or is it just a nice thing to have?
“Yes, we always do it. Part of it is that people don’t always know what to buy – we have top products throughout the site, but the holiday section gives you some ideas of what’s hot, if you have to buy something for your nephew or niece, for instance. In the end, though, we’re helping people make the decisions. It’s not meant to induce people to buy, it’s meant as a guide.” [Editor's Note: Check out PriceGrabber's holiday shopping guide made up of Featured Products, Shopping Ideas, Editor's Picks, and How-to-Buy Guides]

How many merchants do you have? How many Storefronts?
“9000 total sellers on our site; 6500 storefronts and 2500 merchants.”

What expectations have you set for your team in terms of traffic or revenue growth?
“We’re a private company, so we don’t have to make numbers. As a company, we’re about customer service – it starts with the consumers, merchants, and manufacturers that work with us. The outcome [of this approach] will be better numbers in terms of unique users and revenue and profit – the goal is to build a business that’s sustainable. Today, I can go to Google and double my traffic, but a lot of [PriceGrabber’s] traffic is organic and from distribution partners. One of the problems with the business (and the internet) is that people are still talking about unique visitors. Unique visitors are great, but there’s a difference between unique visitors and valuable visitors. Imagine you have a coffee shop. If you have 1m people coming through and none of them buy a cup of coffee, it’s great for wearing down the carpet, but not good for business. The quality of the traffic matters and people are getting smarter in this respect. Some of the measuring companies, too – look at Alexa [which looks at] reach and the quality of the visitor (page views, etc.) - they are not just counting the number of visitors. Over time, whoever has dominance in terms of organic traffic will do well.”

“The question is who is walking the walk. We’ve never had a pop up ad on our site. We don’t advertise through spyware/adware. If an ink cartridge is generic, we call it generic. ”

“I believe that we’re the only company that loses money on the PPC engines as we take you to a product page; we’re saying here’s a digital camera, there are no Google results. This is our investment to bring more people to understand what comparison shopping is. And if that’s what you’re doing, why have the ads at all? A preponderance of people will click on the Google ads, and we’re trying to get people to what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. PriceGrabber is taking people through a complete shopping comparison experience. Let’s build brand equity as opposed to see how I can monetize the click as quickly as possible.”

“In 2004 our revenue from Google was 2% of total revenue. We don’t do arbitrage.”

[Editor's Note: Kamran and I discussed this point for probably 20minutes. Shopping.com makes 40%+ of it's revenue through Google Adwords and the argument that Kamran makes is that this is not a quality shopping comparison engine experience. Here's an examples of what he's talking about:

Searching for 'Playstation 2' on Google Adwords returns results for PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, and Shopzilla.

PriceGrabber's ad links to product result page with no AdSense ads. Click on the image to see the full page.

Shopping.com's ad links to a much more general page with Adsense ads on the right and on the bottom of the page. Click on the image to see the full page.

Shopzilla's ad links to a much more general page with Adsense ads making up half the page. Click on the image to see the full page.

Landing pages are meant to evoke an action out of a user. PriceGrabber's landing page clearly pushes someone into comparison shopping mode. It's a little less clear what Shopping.com and Shopzilla are trying to do.]

How important are RSS feeds or SMS shopping? PriceGrabber is available through WAP phones. Do you get usage? Are these types of services important?
“We’ve had the mobile solution, not just SMS shopping, for a number of years. We think it’s a great idea to have a full mobile service available for the user and a certain segment of the population, the tech savvy, will use it. People don’t want to just know who has the lowest price, people want the full picture. Comparison shopping is about being well informed so you can make the right decision.”

Did you have a seasonal increase in CPC prices?
“No. Our value proposition to the merchants is that we are a good source of buyers all year round. In Q4, there’s more traffic, but does it make the volume more valuable? At the end of the day, businesses should be valuing what they put into their campaigns and looking at the payback. A lot of these [merchants] have left other comparison engines because of increased PPC costs. Our value proposition with the merchants, who are our partners, is that we deliver value all year round. A lot of the sites have a bid for placement philosophy. Why do [PPC floors] need to be increased artificially?”

Why have you expanded into Autos, Travel, etc.? Is general shopping all done?
“We’re not doing it at the expense of anything else. [Autos and Travel], why are they different than another area? What’s the catalyst? We have to come up with an innovative way to comparison shop. For autos [and travel and cell phones], we did just that.”

“And we’re just scratching the surface. As more businesses come online, we’ll be there to sort it all out for consumers. Its part of what we do, it’s not an extension. What makes a car different than a consumer electronic product – it’s just the way people shop.”

“We’re not trying to be Google, we’re trying to help people with their shopping. We’re also not a product search company. That’s just a subset of what we do.”

What’s happening with International expansion?
“We’re expanding in the UK quite rapidly and it’s resonating nicely. We intend to expand into other parts of Europe.”

I personally think there’s room for 3 major shopping comparison engines? What’s going to make PriceGrabber one of those 3 when Yahoo! and Google are throwing resources at this, Shopzilla has a $7-8b company behind them, etc.?
“The internet is an amazing leveling of power for businesses. We’ve been fighting deep pockets all along, and we’re one of the most successful in a lot of different aspects. We’re the site of choice for distribution partners. We’re already very well positioned. Is it an issue of money? No. It’s about being innovative and providing what people need.”

“For example, long before eBay was eBay, Yahoo! had Yahoo! Auctions and everyone said eBay is done. No, they continue to thrive. Google is another example. Who were they 5 yrs ago? There was Yahoo!, AltaVista, and a lot of big companies involved in search, but word got around.”

“It’s the same with PriceGrabber. This is the place to go for comparison shopping. We have the voice of the people behind us and that will propel us. At the end of the day, I’m looking at top line revenue, but I’m also looking at which company has amassed its own relationship with consumer and has not bought traffic. Yes, a Google/Froogle is there, and they are a strong contender. They have a good service in terms of product search, but is it the best? In the last 2 yrs, we’ve continued to grow very well. In the end, you have to ask who has the best service and who has built the relationship with consumers?”

More on PriceGrabber: Interview with Ron LaPierre (June 27, 2005)