Customer Acquisition: Feed Your Need to Sell

And while regular search engines still drive more traffic to FootSmart’s site, the feeds are worth the cataloger’s effort. “If you compare the shopping feeds to paid and organic search, we actually convert at a higher rate through the shopping feeds,” says Kennedy.

Other merchants have been less pleased with their results. Eileen Schlagenhaft, catalog marketing director at Cushman’s, a fruit cataloger, says only 1.5 percent of Cushman’s total online sales come from these sites. But, she admits not much time is devoted to their upkeep.