Does Shopping.com Save You Time and Money?

Back in January, I experimented with selling digital cameras on Ebay that I didn't own. I'd simply list a camera for sale at a price I knew I could find it for online. If someone purchased it for that price or higher, I'd order it from an online retailer and have it shipped directly to the buyer. Figuring out the right price to list the cameras at proved harder than expected though, due to inconsistent data on comparison shopping sites. For example, a comparison shopping site may list a camera as available for $350 from a given merchant only to find out that it's out of stock.

Over time, I found Shopping.com to be the most reliable service I tried and found myself using Shopping.com or going directly to Amazon for price checks. Shopping.com's comparison shopping site is the best I've found from both a consumer and merchant standpoint. On the merchant side, it's relatively easy to upload products into their store, bidding for position in rankings is pretty straightforward, and the site drives traffic that converts at a very high rate. As a consumer, it's a great place to go to find retailers offering the best price for a specific item. They seem to have tighter controls over merchant inventory and their merchant ratings system seems credible compared to what I've seen elsewhere.

Shopping.com could further improve the relevancy of their data with a few additional features. For example, there are times when the site falls short when calculating fully loaded prices. The site asks visitors to their shipping zip code, then adds shipping and tax into product prices so you know what to expect when clicking through to merchant sites. While this can be information for consumers who won't face shipping surprises and equally valuable to merchants who will see higher conversion rates from visitors who know what to expect price-wise, the system missed a couple key metrics in the buying decision:

1. Minimum order incentives: A product selling for $24.99 could ship for $7.00, yet could also ship for free if you through a second item into the cart, bumping the total over $25.

2. Amazon.com Prime and other membership programs: Accounting for preferred shipping would make Shopping.com more valuable. If they don't, Amazon Prime members will probably be better off just going to Amazon for purchases under $50 rather than price comparing on Shopping.com.

3. Category Coupons: Stores often offer coupons for certain categories within their online store. Those offers aren't displayed on Shopping.com.

My goal as an online shopper is to be both frugal and fast. If comparison shopping sites don't enable frugality - or take too much time to determine the true costs of orders - I'll focus on fast by going directly to Amazon.

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