How to advertise your products on shopping comparison and price comparison sites

People who search for products on shopping comparison and price comparison sites are unlikely to be just doing research for a project. People use these sites because they intend to buy. They just want to narrow down their choice.

Paying to advertise on search engines is not only expensive, but you're advertising to everybody, not just those with an intention to buy.

So, how do you get your products on these sites?

The one thing that all of these sites have in common is that they need the details of all of your products, usually provided as a "CSV" spreadsheet or sometimes as "XML". The details of this shouldn't need to worry you. If you are using a publicly available e-commerce software package, there will usually be a plugin that can create these files for you.

If your web developer has been unscrupulous enough to give you their own bespoke CMS, this could be a problem. Unless they are e-commerce specialists (which any company who uses their own CMS won't be), they are unlikely to have provided the functionality to export these product feed files. Your options are to either move to another provider with a standard CMS, or create (and maintain) your own file by hand, which isn't going to be nice when you have hundreds, or even thousands, of products. You will have to "maintain" the file because if it gets out of sync with the products, and especially the prices, on your website, your account will just get banned.

So, you've got your nice dynamically generated product feed file. Now what?

Well, there are 2 pricing schemes for these sites. Some of them use a pay-per-click model (PPC), others will join your affiliate campaign (if you have one), and some will allow either option.

If you have an affiliate program, your first task should be to target those comparison sites that offer this option. For those that offer both pricing models, your most cost effective option will obviously be to choose the affiliate method. These sites will want the standardised product feed through your affiliate network because it makes it much easier for them to add your products this way.

Next, if your budget allows, target the PPC comparison sites. Because there are no intermediary affiliate networks, they will all have their own product feed format. This is why we recommend using the most generic product feed plugins possible.

If you are maintaining your own product feed spreadsheets manually, this will obviously mean having a separate spreadsheet for each comparison site.

Nice!

You will need to create your accounts manually on each of the PPC comparison sites and give them the address of your product feed on your web server.

This can all get very complicated, especially when using multiple comparison sites. But, as e-commerce specialists, this is where OpenGlobal excels. Our e-commerce promotional packages can manage all of the details so you just have to process the orders as they come in. Contact us today on 0845 269 9624 to find out more about how you can sell your products through comparison sites.