New Players in Shopping and Comparison Search: Become.com, BuySafe

[regic]

An article that mentions several newer shopping comparison services: Become.com, BuySafe Shopping, Smarter.com, Smarter.com, Brilliant Shopping, Cairo, ShopLocal, as well as several shopping blogs.

ps ask Amy and bargainbloodhound about BuySafe.  They're members.  :twistedevil:

Although established players continue to dominate the shopping and comparison search space, a number of new companies have launched promising alternatives that offer even more features for searchers and merchants.

Become.com

Of all the new players in shopping and comparison search, Become.com impresses me the most with its approach and differentiation from other services. You can see the difference right away when you first visit the service—the search form offers two options allowing you to "research" or "shop."

full article: http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt...hp/3573571

[valleygirl]

I joined Become.com yesterday.

[mandy]

BuySafe plans to expand its bonding service to individual ecommerce web sites and the items will be included on the BuySafeShopping shopping comparison site.

What is buySAFEshopping.com?
“buySAFEshopping is a site that aggregates all the buySAFE bonded listings on eBay, Overstock, and TIAS (antiques). Any seller who has a bonded listing will appear on buySAFEshopping.”

“The total number of bonded items on the site stands around 2m; we’ve doubled the number of bonded items in the last 4 to 5 months. We launched the current version of the site in November. The site is meant to garner additional traffic to listings of bonded items. It’s a stand alone environment where people can go and trust that their purchases are secure.”

Are you trying to be a shopping comparison engine with buySAFEshopping?“
We plan to make our service available to individual merchant Web sites (outside of eBay, Overstock and TIAS). This will allow us to include these merchants’ listings on buySAFE Shopping, which will greatly expand our inventory and allow for more of a SKU-based comparison like you see with Shopping.com and others.”

full article: http://www.comparisonengines.com/?p=304

[valleygirl]

eBay, Overstock and TIAS

Rules me out for now.

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=valleygirl link=topic=1938.msg9702#msg9702 date=1140373818]

eBay, Overstock and TIAS

Rules me out for now.
[/quote]

I didn't even know it existed until I saw it in a BuySafe newsletter a few weeks ago.  :-[ There isn't any way to know if its driving buyers to our listings or not because there aren't any account statistics available.  :

Bonded Items deliver better results.
They are 17 percent more likely to sell.** They bring an average price more than 3 percent higher. They earn nearly 15 percent greater total sales revenue.

Don't ask me if the higher average price part is true.  The last time we ran an auction item on eBay was in 2004 and there are no bidding wars on Overstock...and no one has emailed to say "I'll pay you 3% more than the fixed price you have listed" 

On Overstock items are more likely to sell if they're bonded, but only because bonding is a prerequisite for being a Trusted Merchant and Trusted Merchant items are included in the search on the main store site which has 10X more visitors than the auction site.

Sooo, basically I don't know if BuySafe's claims are true.

We plan to make our service available to individual merchant Web sites

It'll be interesting to see how they accomplish that.  It would be almost impossible to insert their seals on individual store listings due to the manydifferent software platforms web sites use...unless they're planning on just working with hosted store providers like ProStores, Volusion, etc.

[regic]

there aren't any account statistics available.

:blinkie:

[valleygirl]

They better add stats if they want to attract site owners.

[amy]

[quote author=mandy link=topic=1938.msg9694#msg9694 date=1140351876]
BuySafe plans to expand its bonding service to individual ecommerce web sites and the items will be included on the BuySafeShopping shopping comparison site.

What is buySAFEshopping.com?
“buySAFEshopping is a site that aggregates all the buySAFE bonded listings on eBay, Overstock, and TIAS (antiques). Any seller who has a bonded listing will appear on buySAFEshopping.”

“The total number of bonded items on the site stands around 2m; we’ve doubled the number of bonded items in the last 4 to 5 months. We launched the current version of the site in November. The site is meant to garner additional traffic to listings of bonded items. It’s a stand alone environment where people can go and trust that their purchases are secure.”

Are you trying to be a shopping comparison engine with buySAFEshopping?“
We plan to make our service available to individual merchant Web sites (outside of eBay, Overstock and TIAS). This will allow us to include these merchants’ listings on buySAFE Shopping, which will greatly expand our inventory and allow for more of a SKU-based comparison like you see with Shopping.com and others.”

full article: http://www.comparisonengines.com/?p=304
[/quote]
[quote author=valleygirl link=topic=1938.msg9702#msg9702 date=1140373818]

eBay, Overstock and TIAS

Rules me out for now.
[/quote]

They now include all BuySafe merchant websites and they're using TheFind to power the site's results.  BuySafe merchant websites are also automatically being included on TheFind.com