November 18th, 2007 by Brian Smith | 2 Comments »
No, I’m not talking about dollars, I’m talking about saving the environment.
Yahoo Shopping now has a Green Shopping section (to complement the incredible Yahoo! Green). PriceGrabber has Shop Green. TheFind has TheFind Green. MSN Shopping has Shop Green.
While I’ll let these companies quibble about the size of their carbon footprints, what’s important is that these ‘mini-sites’ can be extremely effective merchandising efforts. The other shopping engines all have green products in their databases. I’d expect to see additional ‘green’ launches in the near future.
P.S. Joe, Yahoo! Green has a link to a Green Gift Guide. You’ve gotta get a more prominent link in there back to Yahoo Green Shopping. Pristine Planet might be a good site, but that should be your link!
October 20th, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
From the MSN Shopping Insider Blog:
“MSN Shopping is very pleased and excited to announce the launch of the new Shopping site on ninemsn in Australia! The new site is built upon the same application platform recently released in the United States, and demonstrates the MSN Shopping team’s commitment to providing high quality tools and services to our partners and customers worldwide.”
More information on MSN Shopping Australia and screen shots on the blog.
On another note, Chris Jolley is no longer Group Program Manager at MSN Shopping. He has joined the MSN marketing team to run merhcandising across the network.
October 8th, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
Found on Start.com News via The Laurence Timms State Machine, there’s a new shopping gadget for Start.com powered by MSN Shopping. It’s a sleek little application.
Here’s a bit more about the gadget from Laurence: “The MSN Shopping gadget accepts search terms and then returns a short list of matching products. You can view product info within the gadget or opt to pop open a new window to see the details within the MSN Shopping site. The gadget also remembers the three most recent searches, and has a ‘featured items’ style line along the bottom. This looks like another elegantly simple consumption of an RSS feed. ”
As I have a feeling that most of you don’t know about Start.com, it’s MSN’s answer to MyYahoo and Google’s Personalized homepage. While MyYahoo is still my homepage of choice, since Start.com opened up to external developers, I find myself more and more drawn to the site.
September 30th, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
From MSN Shopping Insider via the SEW Blog…
“Attribute extraction was one of the biggest investment areas we made for our new site, and we’ve now grown our selection so significantly, the next step is to give our users more and more tools to help them narrow down the list of items to the things that they’re really looking for. To help them do that, we now have category-specific refinements in over 300 categories. ” - Chris Jolley, Group Programming Manager MSN Shopping
Read more at MSN Shopping Insider.
August 2nd, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
Here’s the summary of my quick call with Chris Jolley at MSN Shopping…
Background…
The consumer wants to see a broad selection of products from a wide variety of merchants. Partnering with PriceGrabber and Shopping.com allows us to provide this service. Oftentimes it doesn’t really matter to the consumer if the product is from PriceGrabber, Shopping.com or direct (MSN Shopping partnership).
The consumer will not be able to tell the difference between the data feeds. We believe that Shopping.com and PriceGrabber are both leaders in the online shopping space. We’re all about hooking up the right customers with the right merchants. It’s a huge benefit to consumers to connect both of their merchant bases and partners and it adds a lot to the overall MSN Shopping experience. Read the rest of this entry »
August 2nd, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
Ok, I go to a conference without great internet connectivity (eTail2005 in Philly) and all of a sudden there’s tons of news about the comparison engines. I have lots of catch up work to do, but here’s the gist…
-MSN Shopping announced this morning that it’s working with Shopping.com in addition to working with PriceGrabber. The key here is in addition to. I just talked with Chris Jolley and will post his comments very soon.
-Yahoo! Shopping announces APIs. This is really cool news and a big step forward for comparison engines. I will try to talk with someone at Yahoo! later today. Here’s a link to the Developer Network
August 2nd, 2005 by Brian Smith | 2 Comments »
Shopping.com just announced a partnership with MSN Shopping. Here’s the release. I’m not sure how this effects MSN Shopping’s relationship with PriceGrabber. I’ll talk with Chris Jolley at MSN Shopping a bit later today and try to talk with Shopping.com and PriceGrabber as well. Looking at some of the results on MSN Shopping, it seems that Shopping.com’s merchants are fully integrated into MSN Shopping.
Update:
PriceGrabber obviously can’t comment on MSN’s relationship with Shopping.com, but according to PriceGrabber, this news does not change or impact PriceGrabber’s relationship with MSN Shopping in any way.
July 31st, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
Since the new MSN Shopping is now live, here’s are some thoughts on MSN’s entry into the comparison shopping arena…
This post is long, so in a nutshell:
1. I don’t currently see MSN fully behind the new MSN Shopping. There is no shopping/product tab on MSN Search and MSN Shopping is below the fold on MSN.com.
2. In a lot of ways, MSN Shopping resembles a glossy catalog or offline shopping experience, not a traditional comparison shopping engine.
3. Look for interesting opportunities around personalization. The ‘Recently Viewed’ feature is probably just the beginning.
4. There’s a lot more that MSN Shopping could do in terms of RSS feeds.
Now if you’re interested in learning more…
1. Why isn’t MSN Shopping integrated into MSN Search? All of the other top search engines have a ‘tab’ for shopping/products. Furthermore, if a user just performs a general search (not clicking on the shopping/products tab) on the top search engines, he is still presented with product results – Google lists the products at the top of the page between the Sponsored Links and the first organic results, Yahoo! does the same although it’s not very well presented, AOL lists the products at the top or bottom of the page through a module powered by Shopzilla, and Ask Read the rest of this entry »
July 18th, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
I’m working on a review of MSN Shopping Beta, but it’s going to take a couple days to write anything comprehensive. In the meantime, Chris Jolley has listed some of the features of the site over at MSN Shopping Insder. Also, expect to see some analysis soon from Sean @ Organized Shopping.
July 15th, 2005 by Brian Smith | 5 Comments »
MSN Shopping BETA officially launched today increasing the number of stores by 60x, the number of items by 5x, and the number of offers by millions and millions. You can access the site here. The full rollout will take place over the weekend.
I talked with Chris Jolley, Group Programming Manager of MSN Shopping about the launch.
“Today is the day Microsoft has entered the comparison shopping space. We’ve put a ton of investment into building a better shopping comparison tool. [The site] is our recognition that this is how consumers want to shop. Microsoft has always been good at building great technology. A great selection without a good way to find a product is bad. A great tool with no selection doesn’t help either. We’ve coupled technology with a broad selection of products and merchants. This is a case where 1 + 1 = 3.’
“Right now we are using Pricegrabber, but we have also increased the number of merchants we’re working with directly. The long term strategy is to explore and investigate ways to bring in relevant offers to consumers. We are launching with Pricegrabber because of the number of merchants they have and the ratings they have. Our relationship gives us a jumpstart in terms of ratings and reviews so we aren’t starting from scratch. We are also taking feeds directly from our own merchants.”
What makes MSN Shopping different…
“The combination of great technology with a new comparison shopping engine coupled with expanded selection. [The ‘great technology’ refers to PriceGrabber as well as the comparison shopping tool that MSN Shopping built internally, which brings in the various data feeds]. Search refinements are also a huge feature. Consumers can refine the searches by relevant criteria and details and are able to sort by price, rating, popularity, names, etc. This enables them to find what they are looking for quickly and easily with confidence.”
“Another thing that sets us apart is the time and effort we put into merchandising some of the key categories of the site. Great examples of this is are our Seasonal Guides & Shops and our Gift Center. These are especially helpful for people who know that they want to buy something but don’t know exactly what. ”
Chris ended by saying “we are very committed to the space and we’ve done a lot of consumer research. Take a look at the site and send your feedback.
June 14th, 2005 by Brian Smith | No Comments »
MSN Shopping has launched MSN Shopping Insider. While MSN Shopping isn’t the first comparison engine to launch a blog (PriceSCAN’s Blog has been around since November, 2004), this one (thankfully) seems to be focused on the development front. Thank you Organized Shopping for scooping me on this one!
From Scott Austin, Director of Consumer Programming on the MSN Shopping Team:
“MSN Shopping Insider gives us the opportunity to share our upcoming changes with you. A sneak-peak so to speak, at what is in store from us. Having a blog will allow us to interact with you about any questions you have.”
The other news out of MSN Shopping on Monday was the alliance with PriceGrabber. I’ll learn more about the relationship tomorrow when I speak with Ron La Pierre, VP of Business Development at PriceGrabber.
