Like Nextag’s redesign, gone are the days of lengthy lists of text which are now replaced with big images which attempt to funnel users directly into their most popular pages.

Similar to Nextag, the top header has a link promoting their Facebook page, attempting to get users to register one their site; and right below that is a large clear search bar.

Immediately below that there are four tabs, breaking down results from their popular departments, brands, and a timely “Back to School” section which we assume will be updated according to the season.

Below is a comparison of their current page [right] compared to one from a previous generation [left]:

A quick scientific poll around our office shows people in favor of the redesign, which modernizes the site into the 2nd decade of the 21st century and makes for a cleaner, less clunky/text-heavy shopping experience.

Old Shopping.com image courtesy of: Smartlifeblog

This morning I noticed that the box which contain’s an individuals most important profile information had changed.

It’s more spacious and includes more grey than previous versions. I’m not the biggest fan of the redesign, but I am a big fan of LinkedIn.

But for whatever reason the engagement factor on LinkedIn is not as comprehensive or consuming as Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

And maybe that’s how they planned it to be.

Certainly the value I get from LinkedIn is immense, but I think there could be more. There’s not enough conversations that go on there. Not enough real connections formed.

What you can do:

• Link up with individuals in your industry
• Connect with old co-workers
• Meet new people in groups related to your interests
• Update your status and profile

But there’s no engagement. Not enough, at least.

What Google+ is doing with circles is what LinkedIn should have been doing years ago.

What’s your opinion on LinkedIn and do you see it as part of your social media portfolio in 2015?

Related Anecdote

A few weeks ago a CPC Strategy colleague went into Office Max to try to take a look at the then unreleased Toshiba Thrive tablet; he played around with it for a while and decided that he wanted to purchase it.

However when a cashier tried to ring it up there was a message that said that it was” not to be sold.”

Confused, the cashier brought in a manager, and 20 frustrating minutes later our colleague was told he couldn’t purchase it as it wasn’t authorized to be sold at the time.

He then left the store frustrated, tablet-less and his heart sunken.

The Problem

In the online world the equivalency of such an experience is to find a product through a CSE at the right price, only to click through and find the product advertised at a completely different price, or worse yet, out-of-stock.

This is an issue for many merchants have while listing on the CSE’s–they don’t update their price/inventory levels enough to reflect their actual levels.

One Solution

And while Shopping.com doesn’t completely solve the problem with merchants not updating their feeds often enough, they’ve taken a big leap in helping out diligent merchants keep their listings as up-to-date as possible:

Shopping.com is pleased to announce a significant enhancement to our feed processing technology where feed updates made to price and stock availability will now be reflected on site within 30 minutes.

Expedited feed processing displays the most price accurate in-stock offers, creating an optimal consumer experience while improving conversion to sale.

Unfortunately like our misleading headline, the promise is not an actual guarantee, but more of a guideline that should apply to most merchants who try to update their feeds.

So if you’re a merchant with constantly changing inventory or prices, this acts as great news, particularly if you’re capable of keeping up feed-wise, thereby avoiding wasted clicks.

Hopefully this is one trend that other CSE’s can get onboard with as well.

On that note, to see how Shopping.com fared against other CSE’s in the past quarter, check out our newly released comparison shopping engine rankings.

*guarantee does not actually exist

Google has announced a new service for website owners in order to increase page speed.

A team at Google will actually re-write your pages with best practices to increase your website’s speed. The impact of site speed increases conversions site wide, and would definitely help increase conversions from your comparison shopping campaigns.

Definitely worth checking out!

Today I was able to score free tickets to Word Camp San Diego thanks to BinaryM.com.

It’s been a blast with sessions all day about everything Word Press for beginners and advanced users. If you’re an online retailer and want to jump into blogging and SEO for your website, I’d highly encourage you to attend a Word Camp. The price is right and the information is fabulous.

Here’s a copy of yesterday’s schedule:

Here’s the highlights and most important takeaways from my first Word Camp:

WordPress for Photographers – William Bay

Reading Settings > Front Page Display > Make a static page your home page. Make your post page your blog page. With a static home page you have more flexibility to adjust the design and present a more visually heavy first impression.

“My slideshows are javascript that I put into the page – can’t find a reliable WordPress plugin.” – William Bay

JPEG compress your pictures before uploading. No 1, 2 mb pics!

Alt-Text all of your photos for SEO.

Treat Your Blog Like a Business – Lucy Beer

Build subscribers. Build a library of great content. In the beginning, don’t worry about the traffic. “Dance like no one is watching us, write like no one is reading us.”

Look at the different stages of the buying cycle that your customers have. Create blog content for each type of customer and lead them down a funnel to complete a conversion.

Create very specific pages that are optimized for each type of client. Focus on their intent.

WP store cart – WordPress ecommerce plugin - http://wpstorecart.com/category/shop/

If you want to make money with your blog go straight to a self-hosted website.

Hidden Gems: Little Known Facts about Publishing with WordPress – Sheri Bigalow

Zen Mode in WordPress 3.2 – Gives you a blank canvas that nearly covers your computer screen to focus on writing.

The Kitchen Sink with WP 3.2 – Change the color of your fonts and use symbols.

Kitchen Sink > Help Button > Keyboard Shortcuts for WordPress.

More Keyboard Shortcuts – User profile > Settings > User Shortcuts.

Auto Embeds – Embed videos through WordPress without the embed code. Flickr slideshows, PollDaddy, Youtube, etc.

Screen options at very right of your post page > adjust the format of your WP post page to customize the interface for your liking.

Use the Bookmarklet in your Tools page. With the Bookmarklet you can Highlight Text > click a button and it copies that text into a new post page to add onto / edit.

Pagination – Put a Nextpage tag instead of a More tag into text to paginate each section of a post. Great way to breakup content.

Old Slug Redirects – Make a typo in page title > Chage slug to redirect from title to fixed page. Can someone clarify this point for me?

There are hidden “Easter Eggs” in WordPress that if you find, you can use!

Add a featured image for a custom header. It will be the header for that specific post. Good for Word Press 2010 and 2011

wp101.com has a great series on learning WordPress basics.

WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) – Matt McInvale (Special thanks to Chris Daley and Matt McInvale for sponsoring my ticket to Word Camp)

PageMash – Great plugin for page order on WordPress.

“Gravity Forms. Best contact form in WP. Period. Just do it. Seriously. No really.” – Matt McInvale

Slide show plugin > Pods > Mini CMS within WordPress that lets you do SlideShow. Add JQuery Library to make it pretty.

Comments Are King – Matt Browne

Matt works with SD Bloggers, www.sdbloggers.com.

Are you a King or are you a Kingdom? In regards to your blog – how does your audience perceive you? This will impact how you formulate your comment strategy.

Don’t accept what WP does with comments by default. Take a step back to analyze your comment plugins and strategy.

Each blog, and each post has certain types of comments that it sources. Debate, props to the author, self promotion, questions, etc.

Two main reasons people comment on blogs is to give the author kudos or to debate a point on your blog in their own community.

It’s important for people to be able to reply to each other. Comment threads in posts. But can your comments or interactions be more efficient with a chat room instead?

(One of my favorite tips that we’ll be using!)  TweetBacks! – Plugin where Tweets are pulled into your blog as a comment.

IntenseDebate, Disqus – comment plugins – what’s best for your audience for comments?

Commoner / Knight / Ruler – what comment rank do you have? The more comments you have, the more control you have on how you display them on your site, and how you ask your audience to comment (your comment policy).

Comment Tips #1: Friction (eliminate it, make your comment system easy to use), Instant (auto approve your comments so people can have an immediate discussion), Participate (answer questions and participate in your comment stream), @ back (thank commenters, they are your biggest fans).

Comment Tips #2: Evangelists (engage your commenters, get feedback from them), Subscribers (get a lot of them!), Policy Page (What type of comments do you want from your audience? Explain this to them).

When is it Time to Graduate to a Custom Theme? – Jodi Kirkwood

With a template you’re restricted. With a custom template, the flexibility gives you a lot of options.

Figure out what type of personality do you want your site to represent?

Doing everything means doing nothing REALLY well. Get the core of your site perfected first.

Custom WP sites can range from $1,000 to $25,000.

Designing Success for WordPress – Cody Landefeld

Cody’s presentation slides (if you have slides of your presentation and would like to add them to this recap, please post a comment with your link and I’ll include it).

First – identify bad designs (check out raft.org if you are so inclined).

How to Achieve Good Design – Plan Your Design Efficiently! Research > Sitemap > Wire Frame.

Plan your design efficiently. Figure out what’s an example of efficient design.

Consider your audience and the mediums they use to find your website (browser, tablet, mobile).

Consider flexible design. How easy will it be to update your website? How costly?

Use text often. But be efficient with it. IMHO: No more than 5 fonts, less is more.

Which plugins will be leveraged in your WP design? Consider this carefully beforehand.

Content Consideration. Content is King. Is your blog: Article driven? White paper driven? Video driven? Plan for the long-term.

Allow for adjustments to your design in the future. This couples with leverage flexible design. Have ownership enough to know you can adjust here & there.

Responsive Web Design With WordPress – Wes Chyrchel

“It may be an even bigger idea than we initially realized” – Jeffrey Zeldman

Why build responsive design? Because 1/3 people have smart phones! Responsive design adapts the web page’s picture size and format to a user’s browser.

Get more continuity with the user experience with responsive design.

TrentWalton.com – Article on Responsive Design - http://trentwalton.com/2011/05/10/fit-to-scale/

Google to begin giving more favor to sites that are mobile enabled.

Town Hall – Matt Mullenweg

Matt is one of the founders of WordPress and was nice enough to take an hour of his day to source questions from the WordPress community at Word Camp SD.

More than 20,000 people use WordPress as their primary source of income. Probably more considering there are more than 50 million WordPress sites.

“Do not Google for WP themes, you might catch something. Use WordPress.org to find a theme.” – Matt Mullenweg

WP looking at auto updates in the near future.

“Think user experience first, work your way backwards from there.” – Matt Mullenweg

Conclusion

Word Camp San Diego was without a doubt one of the most fun events I’ve been to. Packed with informative sessions and cool people, I’ll be sure to be back next year. Word Camp takes place all over the world as well, so make sure you find one in your neck of the woods to attend.

If you have any questions about the event, feel free to post a comment and I’ll respond to it quickly.

The 1990′s brought product data even further when online shopping hit the Internet. Today there’s hundreds of ways online retailers can optimize their product data to influence consumers.

If the first UPC code was scanned in 1974, and we’ve developed product data at an exponential rate since then, how will product data be used 5 years from now? 10 years from now?

Now that’s something to chew on.

If you’re attending IRCE in our homebase of San Diego, CA this year, look for the CPC Strategy team with the custom ties at booth 2035, next to the keynote stage and Amazon’s booth, toward the back of the exhibitor hall.

Come to our booth and:

• check out a demo on our newly launching full service Amazon platform
• get a free assessment on your CSE campaigns
• receive advice/insights on the CSE’s from the experts themselves
• receive information on all the hot happy hour spots in the surrounding, historic gaslamp district
• say hi and linger around in your downtime

And if you’re not attending IRCE you can follow a few of our members’ twitters for all the latest that’s going on here:

@cpcstrategy

@CPC_Rick

@CPC_Andrew

@CPC_Dave

CPC Strategy’s Comparison Shopping News Headlines:

Google Product Search Extends Deadline for Product Identifier Attribute – The May 3^rd deadline for the product identifier attribute is postponed to June 20^th.  The Google Merchant Center has begun identifying missing product identifiers in shopping feeds so merchants can identify potential issues that may arise on June 20^th.

Shopzilla Announces Updates to CPC Rate Card – On June 1^st, Shopzilla will increase the minimum cpc rates for 30% of their categories and lower them for about 9%.  Shopzilla will automatically set your bids to the new minimums on the declared date so be mindful of how it will affect this particular comparison shopping campaign.

Shopping.com’s Value Based Pricing and New Maximum CPCs –Shopping.com rebrands their payment structure with the new “maximum CPC” bids.  The rebranding accompanies an updated rate card that reflects many dramatic increases in CPC rates per category.  Read on to learn more about how this comparison shopping engine is leveraging their Value Based Pricing program to offset the CPC rate increases

Become.com Launches Merchant Blog – Become.com revealed to us that they recently soft launched a new merchant blog with tips for merchants on how to increase your sales on this particular comparison shopping engine.

Shopzilla Acquired By Symphony Technology Group – Shopzilla was sold by Scripps Interactive Network Inc. to Symphony Technology Group for $165M.

Top Ten Comparison Shopping Engine Rankings for Q1 2011 – CPC Strategy releases its Q1 2011 Comparison Shopping Engine Rankings.  New to the quarterly rankings is a breakdown by category that you can download here.

I respect Shopzilla’s straightforward, matter-of-fact announcement of their CPC rate changes, but let’s take a closer look at the actual breadth of the changes.  Tien Nguyen was able to break down the rate changes by category and compare them to where they’re at currently.  Here they are:

The majority of categories remain flat, but 30% of Shopzilla’s categories will see a CPC rate card increase of $0.10 to $0.15.  What does this hold in store for merchants?  Hopeful souls might see the CPC rate increase as an opportunity for Shopzilla to improve the quality of their co-brand and affiliate networks.  In our 2011 Q1 Quarterly Rankings, Shopzilla led the pack with most overall traffic, but came in 9th place for conversion rate and 8th for Cost of Sale %.

Improving the overall quality of traffic would lead to more conversions for merchants and ultimately justify the CPC rate increase altogether.  Whether or not this happens remains to be seen, but I suppose that your faith in the rate increases might depend on what you think of Shopzilla’s new ownership.  I guess we’ll just have to wait until the next round of our CSE Quarterly Rankings to know for sure.

In the meantime, feel free to look at how Shopzilla fared in CPC Strategy’s Top Ten Comparison Shopping Engines by Category.

Shopping.com recently announced an updated CPC rate card in an email that was sent out to merchants Thursday, March 5^th (click here to see the announcement).   The updated rate card which goes live on May 16th introduces new subcategories that should provide better targeted CPC rates and a rebranding of their payment structure with new “maximum CPCs”.

What Does Shopping.com mean by “Maximum CPC”?

When you set a bid in Shopping.com, you are setting the maximum CPC you will pay for that click. Depending on the quality of that click, Shopping.com will charge you either the maximum CPC or a fraction of it. You will be charged a discounted CPC from sources that send you less qualified traffic, saving you money.

How it works

The “Maximum CPC” works in conjunction with Shopping.com’s Value Based Pricing (VBP) program. This program calculates a quality score for traffic being sent from co-brands, or Shopping.com network affiliates, to your website. If traffic from a particular co-brand doesn’t result in actual sales for the merchant, their quality score will depreciate and Shopping.com will only charge the merchant a fraction of the Maximum CPC.

Shopping.com understands that not all clicks are created equal and charges you accordingly.

Note: All comparison shopping engines (CSEs) supplement their direct and organic traffic with traffic from a network of shopping partners and affiliates.  These partners receive a percentage of each click that they send to CSEs’ merchants.

Click here for more info on Shopping.com’s Value Based Pricing.

New Category Minimums

You may have noticed that some of the minimum CPC rates in Shopping.com’s new rate card are higher than before.  These higher rates are being counteracted by the implementation of the VBP program and should actually result in lower average CPC rates for the majority of merchants (according to preliminary testing by Shopping.com).

Bids will be reverted to the new category minimums (or were they “maximums”?) on May 16^th so make sure to check in and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

Check out how Shopping.com compared to other comparison shopping engines in our Q1 2011 Comparison Shopping Engine Rankings. For the first time ever we feature a Top Ten Rankings by category!