Sortprice - Same Shopping Search, Different User Experience

by Brian Smith, on August 9th, 2006

Yesterday Sortprice put out a press release about being a ‘next generation’ shopping comparison engine. While I’m not so sure I’d agree with that, the larger players in the industry should pay attention to this little operation.

The press release was partly about a rollover feature allowing consumers to “scan though countless products and view their favorite denim as an enlarged thumbnail without even a click of a button.” This is nothing special on its own. And truthfully, I wasn’t even going to write a post about it. Become.com launched something similar at the end of May and Smarter.com launched their rollover feature a couple weeks ago.

What’s important is that Sortprice and the newer shopping comparison engines are thinking about improving the user experience.

Another example on Sortprice is ‘Shop, Drag, and Drop’; the ability to create a non category specific comparison list. For example, a shopper can match a tie, shoes and a jacket. These lists can then be shared with friends. Danny covered this feature in May. Again, nothing revolutionary, but as far as I know, Windows Live Shopping is the only other shopping engine to offer this functionality. Here’s another one…at the bottom of each Sortprice shopping search page, there are XML feeds available. And Sortprice didn’t just put up an RSS button which most users don’t know what to do with, they “chickletized” their site with ‘Add to Google’, ‘Add to My Yahoo!’, and ‘Add to My MSN’ buttons.

Ok, I’ll be the first to admit that Sortprice has a long way to go in terms of overall design and user experience, comprehensiveness, etc., but what’s important is that the company is testing things out. Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and NexTag should can learn from Sortprice.

And then there’s Sortprice’s product listing model. Most of the feed based shopping comparison engines work on a CPC model; every time a shopper clicks on a product listing, a merchant is charged. Sortprice has a completely different model. The company will list a small subset of your products for free and then, as opposed to charging on a click basis, Sortprice has an Enhanced Listing Program in which merchants pay a flat monthly rate. This can be a very attractive alternative to the more established CPC model.

ShareThis | Tags: Comparison Engines

yasmena said

I just came across your post and I have to say, from a small vendor perspective, Sortprice gives personalized attention and “human” attention - something that is definitely lacking from the other competitors you mention. I have tried dealing with “those sites” but frankly my product seems to get lost in their mix. I know this is a standard issue for all small merchants but on Sortprice, I know at least my product is treated and gets the results that mirror a larger merchant. If they are bought out by a major player, I certainly hope the essence of what makes their site so good doesn’t change.

August 9th, 2006 at 5:28 pm |

TMudd said

Their flat price is an interesting concept.

I am sure someone has done the analysis to make sure their costs to serve a query/click doesn’t exceed their fee. It wouldn’t take too many clicks from a large user to potentially make them unprofitable on the margin.

It also seems to allow the merchant off to be undisciplined and lack responsibility for the ROI of their campaigns (which is good for the merchant in some ways obviously).

Call me old fashioned, but it seems to deflate any idea that the comparison shopping engine is adding any real value. Treats it more like a fancy bill board..”Rent this space for all your products”

I am not sure if I like the concept or not. Time will tell if the industry moves towards something like that. But with more and more companies competing in a finite space, it is bound to drive innovation in not only consumer facing areas, but pricing and merchant facing areas as well.

August 9th, 2006 at 6:15 pm |

Jon said

To TMudd’s point about lack of merchant focus on ROI; I did a search for “ipod” (my std. test query) and found that UBid had the first 3 pages of results (I didn’t go past page 3). I assume SortPrice has many merchants that sell ipods and hopefully they’ll add some diversity and ranking improvements (make the top results ipods instead of accessories).

Web ads started as CPM, and after the bubble most shopping engines were forced to CPAs. CPC seems to be a good balance between these two extremes since both the merchant and the engine have a stake in providing relevant results and qulaity leads. Always interesting to see folks trying a new model though.

August 10th, 2006 at 2:06 pm |

ComparisonEngines.com » Blog Archive » Sprenzy Launches said

[...] le the functionality at Windows Live Shopping (you can just drag the product to the list), SortPrice (shop, drag, and drop) are a litt [...]

August 31st, 2006 at 10:01 am |