Published October 31st, 2006
in Business Social and Shopping Coupons.
RetailMeNot creators are looking to replicate the success of BugMeNot (which is also their web site) by taking a similar approach and applying it in a different field — online shopping.
While BugMeNot is a repository of login/password data for different web sites — RetailMeNot stores coupon codes for online retailers. This taps into the market of traditional coupon databases like CurrentCodes and DealCoupon as well as the social bargain hunting sites like Trezr.
The distinct thing about RetailMeNot is their bookmarket which brings the coupons to where you really need them — your shopping cart. Bookmark the link in your browser and go shopping. When you found what you need — check if there is a coupon for it with a single mouse click.
While the web site is full of bogus coupons right now — inevitable result of sudden publicity — I expect the dust to settle down and the “social” part to kick in. Just need to give it some time.
Thanks to the folks at Consumerist for this tip.
Published October 30th, 2006
in Shopping Promotion.
Running a small business? Take advantage of this great promotional offer from Microsoft.
The download size is 338MB so be prepared to pay for it with your wait time. There is no free lunch. ;-)
Here is a related discussion at FatWallet forums.
Published October 30th, 2006
in Popular Sites Series.
This is October 2006 revision of the Popular Price Comparison web sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
Thanks to your feedback I have added quite a few web sites. The rank change for them is marked as (n/a) while the rest of the sites have the actual rank change since September.
I have noticed an interesting thing. Since lower Alexa rank means higher popularity the negative change is actually good and should be marked green. I have done the green part right but I didn’t keep the “negative” sign. Likewise the positive change is correctly marked red but I added the “negative” sign to it — it just looks more natural this way.
The biggest gainer is become.com with the rank increase of 18.1%. This is not surprising at all. The team is busy adding some very cool features which obviously gets noticed.
The biggest looser unexpectedly (at least for me) is shopwiki.com with a decrease in Alexa rank of 27.0%. Could it be a sign that between the quantity of the search results and their quality consumers really choose the latter?
(*) Note: traffic stats for these sites is the aggregate of all traffic to the top domain (e.g. Yahoo.com or Google.com) and thus cannot be used to judge how popular this particular price comparison service is.
(**) Note: the web site is a portal with price comparison engine being one of the offered web services. Alexa rank cannot be used to judge how popular this price comparison engine is.
Published October 26th, 2006
in Business Social and Business: Strategy.
I have previously mentioned Judysbook’s new home page design here. After looking at it some more I decided that the event deserves a special coverage. Judysbook traditionally has been a destination to get reviews for your local businesses and is competing with such web sites as Yelp and Insiderpages. On September 13 they announced a new direction which actually got them into a much busier market niche. The announcement produced 22 mainly negative comments at the usually scarce for comments company blog. Here are just a few:
UGH! It’s just awful. If I wanted a shopping site, I would go to Amazon, or eBay. I go to Judy’s Book intentionally to get insight into and opinions from MY community…
…Why change what was unique about book? There are better deal sites all around, and this concept won’t gain traction the way you are thinking. You’ve just lost a user fellas!…
…Ick. I hate it. What used to be a review website has turned into nothing more than a mechanism for commercialization.
So why the change? Well, the answer seems to be fairly obvious: money. Before you flame me off let me lay down my thoughts.
- Judysbook has been on the market for longer than Yelp and about the same time as Insiderpages yet it seems to be struggling to compete with the two in all aspects.
- Monetizing reviews business certainly takes more effort than living off of sales commission.
- “Social” is the latest buzz word and it is quickly spreading to on-line shopping. As Bob Tedeschi from N.Y. Times has put it “These sites are hoping to ride the MySpace wave by gathering people in one place to swap shopping ideas.”
The owners obviously got so sold on the “social” part that they rushed off to implement it without giving much thought as to how they are going to integrate it with the existing features.
As a company, we’ve had a bigger appetite for feature and scope than what we’ve been able to digest in terms of delivering users a quality user experience. I am aware of this fact and it is a flaw in our culture that I am working hard to correct.
The last quote is straight from Judysbook’s CEO Andy Sack’s blog.
I personally have nothing against a desire to make an extra buck or two – I just hope Andy has thought it through. Such drastic changes may very well send the old timers running to look for alternatives and I honestly don’t wish that to happen. Judysbook has built a devoted community which is their single biggest asset IMHO. My advice will be – don’t bet everything you have – no matter how green the pot may look.
Published October 26th, 2006
in Shopping Promotion.
If you fill in the form at this link there is a chance you will get $50 worth of clicks via Google AdWords network. The promotion is for new accounts only so be ready to shell out $5 sign up fee. The deal thanks to the eComXpo conference going on right now. More details available here.
Here is another promotion. This time it is a $50 from Microsoft (with a new account as well) to set up your advertising with MSN network. Forum discussion at DigitalPoint.
If you have not been already using either of the networks this might be a good opportunity to start. I am planning to do so with MSN.
Note. If you sign up on any of these deals make sure to read the fine print. I noticed that the MSN one requires you to use the credit within 90 days.
