Google's comparison shopping supermall

If you haven't been to Google's product search (formerly Froogle), stop by this holiday. For one, Google is obsessed with speed. Fast loading, high resolution image pages, even when the merchants have crummy photos. No need to clunk through a blinky blinky banner ad riddled website, just zing on over to Google. When ebay crashed this past weekend, I spent more time on Google's shopping area because you could still access eBay listings, even when eBay broke down and gave the world nothing for hours.

0.11 seconds and you have your Zhu Zhu pets and compare across big retailers and small independents.

The default layout is a list view, but presto magico select the Grid Layout icon next to the "Sort by" and you have the nets biggest marketplace (I actually believe Google showcases those in the home country based on .com, .co.uk, etc. which I appreciate because hey, global purchasing isn't that spectacular.

Barbie Fashionista dolls are out there and at first glance Toys'R US has beat Amazon in the Glam version. But going into those two shows Google hasn't fully captured the pricing update by Amazon which puts Amazon in the lead plus they also have their Free Shipping Super Saver program. And Toys R US is out of stock, sold out. So how do we get them out of there now? Give me a way to be a good citizen consumer, with a verified Google account and put an alert button so we can notify that retailer with an inventory notification or a notice that it will be put to bed in 1 day. Amazon does that with its merchants, Google can as well




You can also view eBay products though it looks like eBay has alot of problems with their image handling and it's carrying over to muck up Google product search. Full of empty gallery thumbnails. Can't really tell why it's not loading, considering when you go in the product listing it has the thumbnail. Sabotage maybe? LOL


Comparison shopping is a pro-consumer benefit. Being able to scan multiple sites large and small is a challenge, but if anyone can do it, it will be Google and possibly Microsoft's Bing. Yahoo hasn't figure out what they are going to do when they grow up. Shopping.com and ebay.com want money for inclusion and with all those partnerships, it's difficult to understand whether those results are really that consumer focused.


note to Google Product Search Engineers: Find a better way to update inventories real time. When merchants modify their prices up or down it's not reflected. Maybe crawling might be better. Or allow for the site to ping Google to update their product pricing & selection

note to eBay: I noticed going into your site and not logged in you've removed the country location of these sellers. Nothing personal but I don't think that little detail is all that big that you had to remove it. Every gadget I clicked went to Hong Kong. I guess you needed the clicks.

Impulse shopping gone mad

The net's biggest retailers online are planning to turn your brain to mush to get that sale. No longer just the K-mart Blue Light Sale where everyone would run the the blue flashy flashy in the department store. No longer just Woot! where you enjoyed the ambiance of getting digs in as you purchase.


Daily Deals, Countdown Timers
Countdown timers, splashy flashy pages. And it's not just on the web merchants sites, they're all over blogs, iphone apps and social sites. Savings of 60-90% they say. Well no one on the net pays full price these days, they're all using MSRP comparisons to get to their percentages. Grab it before it's gone! Hurry, ending soon! Almost sold out!
It's a good way to influence buyers, That toy your kid has been pleading for you to get, gets the biggest share of wallet for the retailer. It plays tricks on your mind, thinking that you may not find it elsewhere so you better get it fast. If we can't appeal to your inner impulse shopper, we'll guilt you into it. Urgent! Urgent! Other people already bought it, but you.
Daily Deals
Kmart - complete with blue light special
Woot has successfully mastered this online feature and copy cats are all wanting to take advantage of this technology. I like woot! because, well woot! doesn't follow. They lead.
Target
Walmart
JcPenney (at least they offer a preview before it's on sale)
Amazon - Gold box daily deals
Sears
eBay - they go as far as saying mystery deals, so good they're a secret and ask you to come back or sign up. Don't miss another deal plastered everywhere

So buyer beware, its the rise of the daily deals this holiday season. And they're not stopping anytime soon. Try some comparison shopping, look in little hideaways to find smaller retailers who might have the same product at a better price. You can even try Google Product Search, for new items you can see the product comparisons across multiple retailers or dig into Yahoo Stores

If you feel advertisements made to you are deceptive, misleading or otherwise inappropriate, then don't waste time asking the retailer WTF, go right to the Federal Trade Commission and fill out their easy to use complaint form. Or call the toll free hotline: 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) and they'll fill out the complaint for you.

eBay's secret, they don't like their own sellers

Apparently that ebay Norma Kamali was legit. Because eBay decided to actually let consumers interact with that seller ID. Unlike what eBay has been doing for months, which is to confuse shoppers into believing there was no way to communicate with the person behind the selling ID. Before you is a happy, pre-filled in comment box. Nice huh. Simple.


Well that's not what the rest of the eBay's skid row class of sellers get. They get this little redirect, it's a called a FAQ, which is an additional page to shoo you off. Shoo shopper, we don't really want your business.




Really we don't. That must be the message. Must be a hint. Like their usetheyellowbutton.

And if that wasn't frustrating enough. Well heck, why don't you bust a wrist and scroll down, scroll way down.




do you see it

.....


....

Do you?


Oops. Peek a boo!



I see you


You're all the way down at the bottom where no one ever looks





So that's eBay's dirty secret. They don't like their sellers much at all. Or they don't trust them enough to have them interact with the paying consumer. To the point where they would degrade service to consumers and put up barriers that say it all without saying so. eBay must have moved from bringing people together to the We believe in segregation and this kind cannot be trusted. Don't talk to the help.

All I want is to see is the stuff, be able to ask questions if I like. You, eBay. ..Show me their stuff and stay out of my connection. It's a strange living arrangement they have over there.


Preferred sellers get this:
http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ShowCoreAskSellerQuestion

Slums get this:
http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ShowSellerFAQ

Norma Kamali on eBay, are you sure?

I was shopping over at eBay.com, and up popped in the results at the top, top rated seller Norma Kamali Exclusive. 49 feedbacks apparently is all it takes now! This obviously caught my attention. What caught my attention further was their utter lack of descriptive content for a consumer to make an informed choice. Appears to be rushed, not polished at all (Surprising low grade for a Norma Kamali). Looks like a teenager pushed out the listing.

In the empty discription it's listed as NORMAKAMALIE (hmm)
A google search pulls up this blog url


The cap lock should be the first clue
The blog was pathetically barren and riddled with more cap locks. Ooh. Annoying. Ooh so what were you thinking.


I have no idea if this is Norma Kamali's ebay listings or what, it would appear to be that maybe they need to take a style course. And get the size chart posted, which apparently they think is there. But it ain't.

eBay to customers: We're not worthy, no really we're not worthy

Saturday the front end of the truck busted and bargain shoppers were met with errors, slowness, delays and then nada.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml

They started off at, instead of their weekly one day maintenance, a shove from Nov 19th 11pm PST to Nov 20th 1am. Then on Nov 21st first sighting was at 5am and then at 3:28pm PST they finally acknowledged it. Hmmm sound familar?


Their first formal announcement that's being published/replaced is (note: I don't recall seeing the workaround in the original message so I question whether that was originally in there):

**Original: Issues with Search results and eBay Stores***


November 21, 2009 | 03:28PM PST/PT

Due to errors in some of our backend systems, members may be seeing different errors in Search. This could be that "We were unable to run the search results you entered. Please try again in a few minutes" or a blank page, or simply the browser being unable to display the page.

This is also affecting the ability to access eBay Stores through search directly, and sometimes from the store URL.

Workarounds - Buy It Now Search and Advanced Search
If you use the Advanced Search option at the top of the page, and type in your search query and click the title and description box and then run the search, the results for the title and description search will be returned.

Alternatively, if you receive a 0 results page for title search and click the Buy It Now tab (or choose the title and description box and re-run the search), you'll see the (Buy It Now or title and description) results for your search query.

Please note that we are working as quickly as possible to get this resolved. Thank you for your patience as we continue to work to resolve this.

Now this is more like ebay thinking a little narrow minded. That their customers actually are regular shoppers during a holiday season. First they need to get in, which most of them didn't. And then you have to expect them to go fetch a system announcement. Ebay didn't put up any error code messages to alert that shopper that there was a problem on their end. Instead shoppers had to wonder whether it was their computers (way to waste peoples time) Now granted, some of them got in, but when they searched they got ZERO RESULTS. How's that for a hint. Get lost Shopper, we don't want your kind.

Quoted from trade site Auctionbytes:

The unanticipated technical issue resulted from a surge in live listings as sellers ramp up for the holiday season. eBay currently has more than 200 million live listings, 33 percent more than at this time a year ago. The company said the technical issue, once identified, was easily fixed.

Yah..
1. That's called poor planning. Unanticipated = We made a stupid error in judgment and made this mistake
2. The fact that that once they figured it out it was easily fixed supports #1 above. You're really stupid.
3. eBay couldn't code their way out of a paper bag with their sloppy enhancements. I think maybe the delay of communication involved some motivational speaker to get the team to believe what they were about to stand behind in order to retain users.


I'll probably come back to this later, I wonder whether ebay had control of their system to even put up a customized error message to state the outage. For long time shoppers of ebay, this is classic. Like Meg Whitman era. They brought out Lorrie Norrington who seems to be low exec on the food chain. CEO John Donahoe must be packing his bags. He should. eBay made strong commitments to the net about this never happening again. Stupid, but then again you are owned by your statements so a stupid commitment means a stupid management team.

eBay is back up and running. So they say. Ask regular users of the site and they've got ZERO confidence in that. Zero, kinda like what their search results were returning. They said it was because of a surge of listings. I think that was the only excuse they could use at the time.

My fascination with etsy.. and their sellers

I gush over Etsy, there is just something about them. I hope they never outgrow how they operate. I LOVE the personality and of course, their site is attractive to me. More and more I find myself digging through all the listings even when I'm not on the hunt to shop.

Today at the Etsy Finds section, they have what I love to collect most of all, Kokeshi Dolls. Here is a Vintage Kokeshi Angels candleholder set. I can't imagine sticking a candle on their cute faces, I hope no one does. But I think they're gorgeous.

and look, the Turnip Truck. How whimsical is this sellers name

Are consumers being manipulated this shopping season

I was reading this article from the New York Times, about how some of the luxe retail stores are intentionally cutting back on their inventory in order to produce a higher sales price. I find this practice disturbing. If you're shopping over at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, I'd be angered.

This is the part that fired me up

Saks, the chic Manhattan department store, is a prime example. Its inventory is down by double digits compared with last year. That is partly a response to lower demand, of course, but it is also a business strategy aimed at weaning consumers from deep discounts. By carrying fewer goods and selling them at full price, Saks is essentially telling customers: buy it now or live without it.

“Upscale stores want to train the customer that luxury equals exclusivity and that they cannot assume they can wait and they’re able to buy it on sale,” said William S. Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers, a mall developer and owner.

For those of you who don't watch the financials, last year with retailers slashing their prices, it was brought up as to whether consumers would ever pay full price again.

Exclusivity is one thing, but exploitation is another
SKUSE ME but how do you feel about this marketing strategy