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Where To Add Your Product Feed To Increase Your eCommerce Sales

By John E Lincoln

If your online sales are slipping or you’re not getting that surge that you’ve been expecting, chances are you’re probably not using shopping search engines to their full potential. Maybe you’re not even using them at all! Either way, we’ve got you covered.

Adding your product feed to the top shopping search engines, also known as Comparison shopping engines (CSEs), can help dramatically increase your eCommerce sales, help attract new customers to your business and go head-to-head with your competition. In fact, a recent study from Consumer Futures revealed that over half (52%) of shoppers use CSEs on a regular basis for their online shopping, and 80% use it to find better prices on goods.

Where To Add Your Product Feed To Increase Your eCommerce Sales

Where To Add Your Product Feed To Increase Your eCommerce Sales

Comparison shopping engines collect product information, including pricing and descriptions, from online sellers and display that collective information for customers searching for a particular product or category. You’ve probably already heard of the big wigs, like Google Shopping and Amazon Product Ads, but with so many other ones out there it can be hard to sort through where you should add your product feed. That’s where this guide will come in handy. Here you’ll find where to add your product feed to increase your eCommerce Sales.

  1.  Google Shopping – One of the biggest and most popular comparison shopping engines around, and it’s also one of the easiest to manage. To get started you’ll need to use Google’s Merchant Center to manage all of your products, and Adwords to manage your Product Listing Ads (PLAs), set a daily budget and adjust bids. The added bonus is that your products will appear on Google’s shopping site and in standard search results if relevant to the search. Be sure to check out Google’s data feed requirements first, and then you can upload your products manually or use an FTP to upload in bulk.
  2.  Amazon Product Ads – You likely already know that you can sell on Amazon with Amazon Marketplace, but you can also promote your products with Amazon Product Ads. While not technically a comparison shopping engine, it works in a similar way. Your ads will appear to Amazon’s over 44 million customers each month in places like the Detail Page, Search and Browse, Tower Ads and Buy Box. And unlike Amazon Marketplace, your ads will link customers to your external web store for transactions, adding retargeting and branding value. You can upload your product feed manually or with an FTP, and then Amazon will create ads using the information provided in your product file. Then you’ll set your budget, your ads will go live, and you’ll pay per click.
  3. Bing Product Ads – Unfortunately, the once free Bing Shopping is no longer available, but Bing Product Ads work on a cost per click (CPC) basis in a similar way to Google Shopping, and still offers a huge reach for retailers. Bing Product Ads appear on Bing searches and will display custom images, promotional text and your company name, all directly from your product feed without the need for creating individual product ads. The Product Ads can appear simultaneously with text ads, offering even more SERP real estate, and up to six Product Ads may show at a single time. Even better, the results will show on both Bing and Yahoo!
  4. Shopzilla – With over 40 million unique visitors per month and one of the longest lifespans of CSEs (since 1996), Shopzilla is great way to expand your reach as on online merchant. The comparison shopping engine boasts over 100+ million products listed and features one of the easier bidding tools. Shopzilla merchants have the added benefit of BizRate reviews, both on Shopzilla and Google. The third highest revenue producer among the major CSEs, Shopzilla offers a high conversion rate and easy product upload with an FTP.
  5.  Nextag – Another long-standing contender (since 1999), Nextag has over 30 million monthly visitors and is an excellent place to add your product feed. Consistently a high performer for traffic and conversions, and is also available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain. Nextag also allows merchants to sell physical goods, including tickets, real estate and travel plans. It has three traffic driving programs that you can utilize, including Display Rack, Merchant Logo, and Marketing Message, and has a mobile app available for download, further expanding your potential customer reach.
  6.  PriceGrabber – With PriceGrabber you can list our products and take advantage of their marketing research tool, Market Report, which allows you to track consumer purchases and product pricing trends. PriceGrabber also features deals, coupons and weekly specials. PriceGrabber is second only to Google for its low cost of sale and is considered one of the leading shopping search engines for traffic. Despite some recent dips in performance, the site still maintains a loyal customer base and the mobile app is very popular.
  7.  eBay Commerce Network – Formerly known as Shopping.com, the eBay Commerce Network offers merchants a huge audience of nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors for their products. The eBay Commerce Network CPC bidding model offers great flexibility with category level bids. You also have the added benefit of receiving exposure on Google Shopping as well.
  8.  Become – Become offers customers the ability to compare prices easily, read product reviews and articles, participate in discussion forums, and find some of the best deals online. The shopping search engine aggregates customer reviews, expert reviews, articles, buying guides and more, offering shoppers a host of resources, and online merchants many opportunities to build their brand. Their free ROI tracker helps you see your sales and keywords can help you gain more exposure.
  9.  Pronto – Pronto enables shoppers to easily find current sales and facilitates buying popular products with the help of shopping guides. With over 14 million unique monthly visitors, Pronto offers one main site with four niche sites for different verticals, including style, technology, home and kids. Pronto offers a remarkably high conversion rate, and allows for whole product feed processing with an FTP.
  10.  TheFind – TheFind is definitely a great place to add your product feed as it has a fairly large reach (roughly 25 million monthly visitors) and it’s free! In addition to product and price comparisons, TheFind can help shoppers discover new products with personalized results. You can also submit your products to TheFind by creating a Merchant Account, and you can increase your visibility and highlight your products more by using their Upfront Merchant Program.

While there are many other comparison shopping engines out there, and more popping up everyday, these 10 have proven to be the most effective for increasing your sales. Be sure to regularly update your product feed and take the time to optimize your feed as well.

What has your experience been with comparison shopping engines? Do you recommend one over the other? Let us know in the comment section below.

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About John E Lincoln

John Lincoln (MBA) is CEO of Ignite Visibility (a 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 Inc. 5000 company) a highly sought-after digital marketing strategist, industry speaker and author of two books, "The Forecaster Method" and "Digital Influencer." Over the course of his career, Lincoln has worked with over 1,000 online businesses ranging from small startups to amazing clients such as Office Depot, Tony Robbins, Morgan Stanley, Fox, USA Today, COX and The Knot World Wide. John Lincoln is the editor of the Ignite Visibility blog. While he is a contributor, he does not write all of the articles and in many cases he is supported to ensure timely content.