Shopping comparison engines (besides Yahoo! and Google)…a lot of you are addicted to the pay per click engines (both for traffic and for revenue)…you’ve gotta start thinking differently about how to build your business. The PPC engines can always be a part of your marketing, but look at the bigger picture of shopping online. If you don’t, someone else will, and potentially kick your collective asses.

Come on, yYou’re about to freeze development for the holiday shopping season. Put a crack team of 8 of your best and brightest from various departments together to test out something completely different.
-Look at what Yahoo! Shopping did with Yahoo! Tech.
-Look at how local inventory information is integrated into CNET Shopper.
-Look at what Lucky Magazine is doing with txt 2 buy.
-Look at YouTube.
-Look at MySpace (where’s your style widget/plug in?).
-Look at what Stylehive is doing.
-Get some pop culture on your sites! Look at what celebrities are wearing. NYTimes Style section knows that the Cea Swim bikini is IN b/c Linsey Lohan wore it - twice! I can’t even find ‘cea swim’ on most of the shopping engines…although the bikinis are already on Stylehive.
-Talk to the hottest SOHO boutiques about a down ‘n dirty collaboration.
-Talk to some of your most progressive merchants - maybe they really wanted to test something out this holiday season but didn’t have the resources.

Another option:
-Hire 10 college interns - a mix of creative, cool, geek, hip - and have them come up with something for you.
-Run a ‘Future of Shopping Online’ contest. $25,000 shopping spree to the person/team that comes up with the most innovative shopping prototype using (or not using) your API.

And don’t be afraid to fall flat on your face. I think AOL Shopping’s attempt to create a different Back to School experience is horrible (fashion/music videos that don’t tell the viewer the brands/styles seen in the video, a mix & match section that doesn’t allow you to mix or match, a tie in with AOL’s RED that makes no sense, etc.), but I’m sure they’ll learn a lot from the experience.