Report: Shopping engines pushing quality traffic

The report found that jewelry, apparel/clothing and sporting goods categories saw a definite lift in revenue thanks to comparison shopping engines from Q1 to Q2. The jewelry category saw an increase of 78% while apparel/clothing increased 32% and sporting goods saw an increase of 49% after placing information with shopping engines such as Shopzilla, Nextag and Google Product Search.

"We're very excited that on average our customers achieved positive quarter-over-quarter growth in key performance metrics such as sales, conversion rates and return on ad spend," Says Lanny Tucker, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CI. "While our economy is trying to recover, we continue to monitor industry trends to make sure we are providing the best possible management and support for our clients' shopping channel campaigns. We are optimistic that the online shopping environment will continue to offer growth opportunities for retailers."

The increases can also be attributed to an overall increased ad spend for marketers in the above categories. Although the increased ad spend surely didn't hurt the marketers, it is almost certain that a good portion of their increased revenues is because of the shopping engine.

Because of the troubled economy, consumers are cutting back, clipping coupons and searching for better deals. By listing products on a comparison shopping engine, marketers send a dual message: first, the right product/right price message but second, the message that they know price and quality are important to today's consumer.

Tags: Channel Intelligence, comparison shopping engine, comparison sites, ecommerce, online shopping