The eBay-owned Shopping.com comparison-shopping site unveiled several major initiatives on Tuesday. Online merchants can use the Shopping.com API to serve up detailed product information and can also create a comparison shopping experience on their own sites. The company also said it will shift to a value-based pricing system: the pricing per click will be automatically calculated based on each publisher's overall traffic performance.

Shopping.com recently made several enhancements to its Cart program, which allows merchants to sell products on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis in addition to the existing Cost Per Click (CPC) model. The Cart, which is now available in more than 90% of product categories, lets shoppers purchase merchants' products directly on Shopping.com with one single checkout process. Recent Cart enhancements allow merchants to opt-in to list products on eBay Express; send email marketing to interested buyers; include multiple shipping rate product feeds; and receive more customer service data with each order.

It has also introduced Product Performance Reporting allowing merchants to gain insight into specific product performance and conversion to sale, day-by-day or month-by-month for up to the past two years, and to better determine competitive pricing. Shopping.com is also developing a SKU-level bidding program which will beta in the fourth quarter with select merchants.

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