Cybershop.com Targets Shopping Bots to Drive More
Traffic
Business Wire - December 01, 1999 09:52
JERSEY CITY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 1, 1999--
Online Retailer Targets Shoppers Through Shopping Search Engine Deals
CyberShop.com(R), Inc (Nasdaq: CYSP), a leading Internet retailer of branded merchandise,
announced today that it has agreements with various shopping engines or "bots" to list a broad
assortment of its merchandise from its two websites, CyberShop.com
(http://www.cybershop.com) and electronics.Net (http://www.electronics.net). Some of these
prominent shopping bots include: Inktomi (Nasdaq: INKT), CNet (Nasdaq: CNET), MSN
Buyer's Guide (Nasdaq: MSFT), My Simon, Pricescan, Bottom Dollar and DealTime.
Shopping bots assemble and list product information including price across various categories
allowing their users to comparison-shop among competing products and retailers.
These agreements are structured so that CyberShop.com will send data feeds, daily in some
cases, to each shopping bot detailing product items, product descriptions and prices. The
shopping search engines then publish the products on their site, allowing shoppers to
comparison shop by price, by brand or by type from a variety of competing products. By
presenting its products to qualified shoppers, CyberShop.com believes these shopping search
engine deals will lead to significantly higher conversion rates.
"Shopping bots enable us to essentially republish our product databases consisting of thousands
of SKUs across the Web fully exploiting the Internet's capability to deliver information about
products and services to the consumer," said Jeff Tauber, CyberShop.com Chairman and
CEO. "We believe the uniqueness of our products and brands along with our competitive
pricing will clearly differentiate us and allow CyberShop.com to become the one-stop shop for
consumer's holiday needs."
In many cases, these shopping search engines would have "spidered" CyberShop.com's sites,
capturing data on product currently offered on the sites, however, by proactively sending
datafeeds to these shopping engines, product content and pricing is more up-to-date and
reliable than waiting for a bot to extract the data from the sites.
As shoppers become more web-savvy, they are frequently using shopping bots to guide them
through the online shopping process, for purchasing products or simply to research information.
According to Jupiter Communications (Nasdaq: JPTL), an Internet research firm, 83% of
shoppers visit two or more sites before buying, further underscoring the demand for bots and
their value proposition for consumers.
Wonder how much these agreements cost them?
Jack |
