Which shopping comparison site do you get the best results from?

Miscellaneous Off-Topic/General Chat
#1

2011 was our first year trying out more of the shopping comparison sites for one of our sites. We were really surprised at how low the click through results were from most of them. The ROI was even worse. We tried our top 125 items at the following comparison sites:

  1. Nextag
  2. Pronto
  3. Sort Price
  4. Become
  5. Pricegrabber
  6. The Find
  7. Shopping.com

    10 ) Amazon Datafeed
  8. We were NOT able to list on Shopzilla because it could not read the feed from CS.
  9. Google

    All of them were set up using the default “data feed” from CS-Cart with additional “features” added to each item so we could easily submit products.



    So I am wondering how others have done with advertising on these comparison sites. Have you had good results? For us the only good site was really just “Nextag”. Some of them like “Sort Price” and “The Find” allowed us to list all of our products but we still got more click thrus that we could see from Nextag. Amazon ended up being a TOTAL loss as they push hard to put you in to categories that your products that do not belong in which cost you more money and then you can not verify any of the so called “clicks” they claim.



    If we were to rate the comparison sites here is what we would say:
  10. Nextag - the best overall results. We will continue to use them.
  11. Pronto - not to bad, we will probably try to tweak a little.
  12. Sort Price - totally awful! Could not track one click, nor could they give me one other site their products were published on. Their Facebook shopping cart was cool, but it didn't do squat for us for the 4 months it was up.
  13. Become - Decent, we will probably tweak and try to see if we can get better results.
  14. Pricegrabber - Next to Nextag, this was pretty good for us. Still not close to Nextag.
  15. The Find - Not bad, but since it is free, I would vote it awesome.
  16. Shopping.com - Average to poor. They had a tendency to change your category so they could charge you more for each click.

    10 ) Amazon Datafeed - another VERY bad one. Not only would they change your category to something they could charge you more for, but they claimed then send you a ton of traffic while none of it can be verified.
  17. Shopzilla - feed did not work
  18. Google - again, it's free so it's hard to complain. We do get click thrus.



    So how about any of you? Are there other shopping comparison sites that you use and have had better results from? Are there any shopping comparison sites that are flops for you?
#2

Well, I'm guessing most others have not had good luck with most of the comparison sites either.

#3

Jim,



I've used a couple of them and found that they were a great place to spend my hard earned money. I never got any kind of return on my investment, but they were sure happy to take my money from me.



Personally, I'll stay away from these sites. I'm not saying that you can't make them work, but I just feel there are better things to do with my money than just waste it with these sites.



Thanks,



Brandon

#4

I dont like em, they seem to be bandits… all of em. ROI if your lucky I dont think so, more like TIA, throw it away.



John

#5

I'm actually very glad to hear that at least some others have not had the best results! We did have good results from Nextag, so we will continue that. The next best ones were Become and Pronto so we may turn them on during various holiday or peek times.



I wonder how the heck these comparison places stay in business? They must be relying on new customers coming along all the time that have never tried them. In my mind there must be someone out there that is having success with these places.



Sometimes these remind me of when I was trying various search engines like alta vista, ask, lycos, etc. All I did was give them money, they would claim to send me a ton of traffic and no sales would take place. The only search engines that have ever done any good are Yahoo and Google. Since MSN took over Yahoo search that has pretty much a joke now too.

#6

I had to register to comment on this topic and turn from a lurker into an active member.



This is why I don't think it's a good idea to use paid shopping comparison sites. Any site asking you to pay without proving itself first is a potential scam. That's why at http://idealchooser.com a new and fast growing shopping comparison and price drop alerts site, you can list your products for free and see how your links are performing.



I'm the owner of this site and seeing how the other sites work made me decide to create a better one. As I said, it's free to advertise your products there, so you have nothing to loose and traffic and conversion to gain.