Gettin' Widgie With It: Shopping.com Add-on App By Michelle Megna
September 14, 2006
Shopping.com yesterday announced a free program called Shop Widgets that lets Web site owners add comparative product information such as reviews, images and pricing to their sites. You can cut-and-paste the code to your site or configure your own application using APIs provided by Shopping.com.
Similar to affiliate marketing relationships, Web publishers are paid a revenue-share based on traffic referred from their site, though company officials are not making the details of the pay-off public.
Two Options: Quick cut and paste or customize Web site managers can either use the Shop Widgets program, which provides pre-built shopping modules that are easy to implement and manage, or can select the API program, which allows them to customize and reconfigure the Shopping.com catalog and search tools as needed. API users have more flexibility when it comes to displaying the Shopping.com content on their sites, offering searches by keyword or category, as well as refining results by attribute.
Web publishers can choose to offer Shopping.com products based on a keyword or category that are targeted to a site's content — for example, the publisher of a Web site selling wine can add a Shop Widget that provides links to Shopping.com's best-selling wine accessories.
Add a Widget, Earn Extra Money "It's better than free," says Rob Goldman, vice president of Shopping.com's US Business unit. "It's a revenue producer. Niche merchants can offer products and accessories at the site that they don't carry and get a referral fee if a user clicks on the content."
Shopping.com, an eBay company, uses a performance-based business model in which stores bid for enhanced placement, for instance higher location on the page or color logos, and pay on a per-click basis. However, shoppers can always re-sort the list by price if desired.
Goldman says integrating Widgets requires no technical know-how. "You can cut and paste the code on to your Web site," he said, "right into spots that are usually reserved for graphical ads."
Web publishers can join the free Shop Widgets or API programs by visiting https://partners.shopping.com.
Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.
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