We sent some questions over to PriceGrabber’s CEO Kamran Pourzanjani to get some insight into comparison shopping sites. His responses to the questions, including the fact that 50% of site visitors browse around instead of searching for a particular item, are below.

eC: With an increasingly crowded field, how will PriceGrabber differentiate itself from the competition?
PG:PriceGrabber will continue to focus its innovation on providing the best user experience and tools and expanding its services globally.

eC: Do you see more users starting their research directly from PriceGrabber, or does a lot of your traffic originate from search engines?
PG: PriceGrabber does not rely on the majority of its traffic coming from paid search as others in the comparison search field do. Organic traffic growth has long been the staple of the service.

eC: PriceGrabber powers MSN Shopping, About.com and Ask, but will these alliances be enough to stand up to Yahoo Shopping and Froogle?
PG: We continue to grow our business by adding sellers, new co-brand partners, and new users on the site. We’ve been in this and continuing to innovate for 7 ½ years and have successfully distinguished ourselves and continued to grow despite many competitors. Competition is good, it keeps you innovating and we will continue to focus on maintaining the best user experience for our users and have great confidence for the future.

eC: Do you have problems with merchants gaming the system? How do you make sure the merchant ratings stay legitimate?
PG: Good Question. Merchant and User Reviews have been a topic of interest on many levels. We have built our reputation as a trusted resource in the space, and monitor the reviews very carefully. We have expanded our in-house security measures to weed out “dubious reviews.”
Taken from CNN interview with Perija Bhatnagar:
One example on PriceGrabber looked like this: “Although you should not expect prompt shipping. (It took 3 weeks and several e-mails before I received my order.) I would order again from this merchant, just because the price was right.”
What is the problem here?
On the surface, the review appeared to be “honest,” even noting a negative aspect with regard to the user’s experience, the company said. However, red flags were raised when the reviewer then proceeded to mitigate the unpleasant experience and claimed that they would shop at the store again.
PriceGrabber subsequently conducted more checks and concluded it wasn’t really a valid review.

eC: Is the coupons section an effective traffic driver? Does it give a decent ROI, or is it simply a novelty to entice more frugal customers?
PG: We want to continue to offer wide varieties of features for shoppers of all interests. Coupons and rebates are and area that some shoppers highly value and others may not find of use. We don’t add anything to the site that we think of as a novelty, just features and tools that real shoppers use.

eC: Is there a future for buying guides like the Back-to-School section? How many of your users come to the site and browse items, as opposed to researching a specific product?
PG: The buying guides are quite popular and are the perfect solution for people who want to quickly identify certain categories and products. We recognize that millions of products can be overwhelming for the user, so the guides will draw out particular items for the user to choose from. Roughly 50% of consumers coming to the site use search to find the product they are looking for while the remaining 50% will browse.

eC: The market research is an added value for signing up as a merchant. Can you give some explanation what value this feature is worth? Can you give an example of a merchant using PriceGrabber research to increase their ROI?
PG: Just as we strive to make the shopping experience transparent and simple for users, we also are committed to providing our merchant partners with tools, reports and data that allows them to maximize their return. We give quite detailed reporting on products that allow merchants to tweak their product feeds, fine-tune their pricing and find holes in their coverage. We constantly are told by merchants, that as a result of this and our focus on driving qualified shoppers that the ROI they see from PriceGrabber is as good as any external source they have.

eC: Mobile ecommerce is developing, but it seems technological limitations have kept it from taking off yet. Do you see the mobile version of PriceGrabber getting much traffic? What effects do you think mobile commerce will have on PriceGrabber?
PG: PriceGrabber.com launched the mobile version of the site in 2002, and makes comparison shopping from a mobile phone easy. Simply accessing at PGw.com from any WAP enabled phone allows users to enter part numbers or product names and get pricing information right through their mobile phone. As far as the effects mobile commerce, we see this as a growing trend moving forward as most of the population will own a cell phone over the next several years.

eC: Besides going mobile, how will shopping comparison sites stay relevant in the future? What innovations will keep users coming back to these sites?
PG: With the Online Comparison Shopping Market growing 40% year over year, and consumers quite clearly becoming more comfortable with buying online it seems clear that comparison shopping is here for the long haul. It works, it’s easy to use, and we will continue to innovate.