Retailer Talk

Case Study Download as pdf

Michael, an online marketing manager, is part of the ecommerce arm of a brick and mortar store located in the suburbs of Chicago. The retailer had more than 14,000 products, most of which were from popular brands being sold by multiple merchants. There was very little competition for the retail store in the area, but his online business faced tough competition from other online stores across the nation. Michael understood the importance of standing out in the crowded appliance category and wanted to be visible in comparison engines – without losing volumes or margins.

“Since we sell highly competitive products, every dollar made a difference.
Every day, we were spending lot of time and effort to find the right price point that would attract the visitor to our site from a comparative shopping engine. Our competitors were breathing down the neck and we were finding it really tough to outsmart them and be visible prominently” said Michael, marketing manager of a medium sized retailer selling appliances.

Re.flex Solution

Michael chose Re.flex to optimize the store’s visibility in comparison engines. Re.flex analyzed the merchant population in comparison engines and made daily recommendations on product prices to Michael. Re.flex made these recommendations taking into account the rank, margin and ROAS thresholds that he had configured in Re.flex. All that Michael had to do was to approve the recommendations and Re.flex, with its patent pending technology, updated the data feeds and submitted them to comparison engines.

Some of the daily recommendations were

a) Increase product price by X% for product ABC
b) Decrease product price by Y% for product XYZ to move 2 ranks up.
c) Add product PQR to comparison engine IJK.

Re.flex helped Michael to achieve visibility without losing volumes and margins. In fact, he saw a considerable increase in volume and margin for more than 70% of his products.

This is what the Michael had to say

“The Re.flex application from Mobius has greatly increased our ability to quickly identify and rectify any pricing issues with our product on the comparative shopping sites. I would highly recommend Re.flex to any company using comparative shopping sites for business referrals.”

Case Study Download as pdf

Bob is an online marketing expert for a merchant who features in the Top 500 of the Internet Retailer list. The retailer’s inventory included more than 80,000 products from multiple categories, but he had listed only the top selling
3,000 products in comparison engines. When Bob wanted to explore the potential for listing the remaining products, he understood that it’s a tiring task to identify right comparison engines, right products and right prices for each of these products. Furthermore, he had to create and submit shopping feeds to the engines and track them regularly.

“Though we enjoy very good organic traffic, we always wanted to be visible in comparison engines as we believed that they send us real buyers, not just visitors. But, the sheer volume of products made us concentrate only on the top performing products for marketing through comparison engines. When we wanted to explore the long tail products, we understood that it’s a job that required dedicated man power and time. But, we never had enough time or resources,” said Bob.

Re.flex solution

Re.flex used the traffic predictor process to find the comparison shopping engines that have chances of receiving traffic from search engines. It also analyzed the merchant population in the comparison engines for long tail products and zeroed in on the right engines. After selecting the right comparison engines for promotion, Re.flex also identified popular products for listing. It then adjusted the prices of these products to offer maximum visibility or margin to the retailer. Product feeds were then created and submitted using the patent pending technology of Re.flex. Re.flex also gave daily recommendations on the most profitable channel, price and product combination after analyzing the traffic data and the information from the market.

The retailer is now listing more than 10000 products in various comparison engines and getting good return on investment.

This is what the Bob had to say

“As a user of Re.flex for a number of months we have benefited by getting a clear picture of our pricing in relation to pricing in our marketplace with minimal effort. I would definitely recommend Re.flex to a close friend”- says Bob

Case Study Download as pdf

Jonathan is the owner of a medium sized online retail website that sells appliances. The company has more than 7000 products in the inventory with an average ticket value of 60$. Jonathan had a small online marketing team that worked on SEO, Google ad words and email marketing campaigns.

To get higher visibility and sales, the team started exploring CSEs and decided to promote over 40% of their products on top 3 CSEs. When the campaign was underway, Jonathan found that a top CSE was performing low as it was sending less traffic compared to the other 2 CSEs. He knew that this CSE was a favorite among his competitors and sending good traffic to his competitors. So, why was it not performing for his website?

Almost 90% products were not getting sufficient traffic from the comparison engine and more over, the products that received clicks experienced high bounce rates. Since we have a very small team we did not have enough time to concentrate on the product level. I had no other go but to stop the campaign” said Jonathan.

Re.flex solution

In May 2009, Jonathan tried Re.flex to help him run his CSE marketing campaign.

Re.flex studied the current state of the merchant’s CSE listings by considering recent ROAS from each CSE campaign. Re.flex analyzed certain important factors such as CSE fertility, product popularity, placement bid, competition, and click through rates. Jonathan decided on the desired profit margins, CSE placement and ROAS thresholds and configured them into Re.flex.

Based on these thresholds and the marketing intelligence that was gathered, Re.flex provided useful recommendations that helped Jonathan decide on the right products to promote on the right CSE at the optimum price. With its patent pending technology, Re.flex also created and optimized the product feeds and submitted them to the comparison engine.

Recommendations from Re.flex

- 15% of the products to be taken out from the non-performing CSE
- 200 long tail products that were not part of the earlier campaign were pushed
to the CSE
- Product prices were adjusted to enable higher visibility or higher margin
- Recommended other 2 CSE channel that would to get high visibility for the products

Jonathan saw close to 30% increase in visibility and sales from CSE channels.

And this is what Jonathan had to say,“Re.flex made our comparison shopping program profitable. I am planning to invest more on comparison shopping engines as I know that Re.flex is there to make daily recommendations on the right mix. Operationally, I can have my team concentrate on other things while Re.flex can take care of creation and submission of shopping feeds.”