We just sent out our Christmas newsletter to retailers. It contains some news and announcements. Please check it out here:
http://www.priceme.co.nz/newsletter/Christmas-2011-Retailer-Newsletter.html
The PriceMe team wishes all retailers and users a Merry Christmas! Thanks all for your support in 2011!
We’re please to announce the addition of three new affiliates to the PriceMe network:
AndroidMobile.co.nz - leading source for android news and information
NZMac.com & NZiPhone.com - everything Apple related since 2003 and 2008, respectively.
The era of the smartphone has just begun and mobile shopping has tremendous growth potential in New Zealand. We’re therefore very excited that PriceMe now powers the shopping sections on these sites. The PriceMe affiliate network currently consists of six leading review and technology sites in NZ. Please letus know if you’re interested in joing us!
We are glad to announce the addition of TestFreaks (testfreaks.co.nz) to PriceMe’s partner network. PriceMe retailers are displayed on TestFreak’s shopping pages. Consumers interested in reviews can browse TestFreak’s site and then quickly find reliable online shop for immediate purchase. In short, an excellent new customer acquisition channel for our retailer partners. The PriceMe partner network already includes popular sites such Consumer.org.nz, alaTest and ReviewitNZ.TestFreaks is a consumer buying guide that aggregates reviews from all over the globe including NZ based sites such as PC World, Tone etc. The total number of reviews is large (can’t recall the exact figure, but it’s in the millions). TestFreaks is run by the Swedish guys that founded the popular price comparison site PriceRunner.
Online advertising is growing quickly, as advertisers and businesses compete for eyeballs in the rapidly-changing digital space. According to the latest Online Advertising Expenditure Report conducted by PWC for IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau NZ), $183.45 million was spent on online advertising/paid search in New Zealand to the end of Q3, with that figure likely to end up around $255.0 million by the end of 2010.
Despite this huge ad spend, it seems not all businesses (especially SME’s) seem to track their ROI (return on investment) to ensure that they are receiving optimum value from these ads. A recent survey of 1,800 SME business owners by Yellow Pages has revealed that 69% did not measure or check the return from their online advertising investment !
This is very worrying, when we all know that one of the great things about online advertising is that it’s completely measurable.
This brought home to me something that I had almost forgotten about. When we developed the platform for PriceMe, we went to a lot of effort to create a robust PAM (PriceMe Account Management) tool to enable our retailer partners to easily access traffic and account data, reports etc, so they could track their products performance at any time. We discussed at the time we built the PricMe platform the necessity of this, but now I feel redeemed that we went to the trouble and expense that we did.
On our site, our retailers can enable ROI tracking code to see precisely what traffic is referred from PriceMe and how many of these customer referrals are converting to sales with a high degree of accuracy. We pride ourselves on being an effective customer acquisition channel for our retailer partners, so we like to know how many “real” customers we’re delivering! There’s no excuse for a retailer (no matter how small or large) not knowing the metrics of their online ad spend. With tools such as Google Analytics at their disposal, it only takes a little bit of time, effort and the right advice to come to grips with. You can then be assured of understanding what’s working and what’s not, and what return you’re getting from your advertising investment.
Happy retailing !
Chris
Great news. alaTest, the world’s leading review aggregator, has launched its Kiwi site alatest.co.nz.
NZ consumers will benefit by this new addition to the local online shopping landscape by having easy access to a vast amount of expert and user reviews from both local and international review sites. Some of the local review sites that alaTest co-operate with are Geekzone, Getfrank, PC World, ReviewIt NZ etc.
PriceMe has been selected as the exclusive provider of pricing information to alaTest in New Zealand. This means that PriceMe retailers are now listed on alaTest as well - a new high-quality channel for our partner retailers!
PriceMe will incude alaTest’s review snippets including review score, verdict, pros and cons shortly. We’re planning to add the alaTest reviews under a new ‘Expert review’ tab, which will make the site more interesting and shopping more convenient since reviews and shopping information are bundled together. Please stay tuned.
PriceMe is driving a large volume of traffic to its retailer partners’ online stores.
It’s great to receive qualified traffic to your online store – but are you converting these prospective customers to sales? If not, you may need to have a look at the following checklist to ensure your website is delivering the best ROI on stock units sold and AOV:
It’s worth investing a little time and capital in creating a best-practice website that delivers what your customers want and the best ROI for your business.
PriceMe is gaining in popularity among Kiwis. Traffic to the website keeps increasing as we keep adding products and retailers.
Key stats for the last 30 days:
*Google Analytics (8th April - 7th May). Stats for the main website priceme.co.nz only (Deals, mobile and Australian sites excluded).
PriceMe was a HitwiseTop 10 Award winner for the period July - December 2009.
PriceMe ranked number 5 based on market share of visits among all in the Shopping and Classifieds - Rewards and Directories industry. The previous ranking was number six if I recall correctly, so it seems that PriceMe moved up one notch. Hitwise used to have a quarterly reward, but has chosen to award winners twice a year.
Hitwise is considered an authority in the field of website rankings, and analyses server logs and ISP data in order to determine website traffic, so this is a fairly reliable ranking.
PriceMe is committed to keep growing and improving the website. Please let us know directly if you have some suggestions on how to make the site better. We would especially like to hear what the main problems are and what is lacking. With your input we’ll hopefully be able to improve our ranking in half a year.
You might already have noticed the new link in the footer: PriceMe Australia. That’s right, PriceMe is launching an Australian site and there are currently around 40 Australian online retailers listed on priceme.net.au. Our goal is to quickly expand the number of products and retailers.
Why an Australian site?
Launching across the Tasman makes a lot of sense. First of all, the cross trade between New Zealand and Australia in terms of online retailing is significant. Many Kiwi shoppers buy from Australian retailers and vice-versa. PriceMe’s goal is to be an important part of this trade and to act as a facilitator. Secondly, the Australian market constitutes a market opportunity. The Australian online retailer market is expected to grow at a rapid pace the coming five years. Finally, launching in Australia enables PriceMe to capitalise on its technology, infrastructure and skills that it has continually developed over the past three years. The team that successfully developed PriceMe.co.nz from scratch into one of the larger shopping sites in New Zealand in a relatively short period of time is intact.
How can local retailers benefit from PriceMe’s launch in Australia?
Please let us know if you’re interested in listing on PriceMe Australia. You need to be able to ship to Australia (obviously) and you also need a landing page that displays prices in Australian dollars. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you require more information.
All the team at PriceMe would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year.
Online shopping in New Zealand continues to grow at a rapid pace, and it has certainly been an interesting and exciting year for PriceMe. We would like to share some highlights of the year with you and also mention some of our plans for next year.
Highlights in 2009
Explosive traffic growth
The number of visitors to the PriceMe website tripled in 2009 compared to 2008. PriceMe now attracts 7,000 shoppers per day – that’s 200,000 shoppers per month!
Consumer Institute Partnership
PriceMe provides live pricing to Consumer.org.nz. The partnership adds value to Consumer’s subscribers and also provides a source of highly qualified shoppers for PriceMe.
High Quality Sales Referrals
The average PriceMe user that visits an online shop has on average viewed 9 pages during 9 minutes before clicking through to the retailers displayed on our site.
Online Retailer Conference in Sydney
PriceMe attended the inaugural Online Retailer Conference in Sydney in August this year. It was attended by over 2,000 delegates and was the world’s second largest of its kind and a great learning opportunity. Some take-aways for the conference have been posted on our blog.
What are PriceMe’s plans for 2010?
Improved tools for retailers
It’s imperative that retailers are able to manage their online advertising budgets and control how their products are showcased on shopping comparison sites like PriceMe. We will continue to educate our retailers on how to best use our account management tool PAM (PriceMe Account Management), to enable them to obtain the best value from our site.
Focus on data quality
PriceMe continues to improve the data quality of all verticals in order to provide online shoppers with a better user experience. For example, standardising product names, adding additional product descriptions and ensuring a more rapid and accurate product classification.
PriceMe to Launch in Australia
PriceMe will be launching in Australia the first quarter of 2010. This provides an opportunity and platform for Kiwi retailers to promote their products to qualified Australian consumers and shoppers. The online shopping community in Australia is mature and well educated, with high traffic volumes of consumers using shopping comparison sites to research prior to making purchasing decisions or buying online.
iPhone application
The growth in the number of iPhone users in New Zealand is exciting. PriceMe is currently developing an iPhone application targeted at online shoppers that will be launched in a few months. This will complement our existing mobile version of the PriceMe site at m.priceme.co.nz which is increasingly visited by shoppers on the go or instore using their mobile phones instead of their PC at home or in the office.
Partnerships
PriceMe’s continues to explore partnerships with related high-quality sites in order to generate more traffic to deliver to our retailers. Potential partners include search and shopping engines, media/news sites, telco’s and large directories.
We look forward to providing our valued retailers with cost-effective customer acquisition solutions and strategies again next year, as the online shopping space becomes even more active, competitive and mature.
All the best to you, your family and for your business growth in 2010.
The PriceMe Team
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